- #WakingUpWhite, American Exceptionalism, Celebrate Recovery, faith, history, Life Recovery Skills, racism, writing
#WakingUpWhite Chapter 41: From Bystander to Ally
Still reading chapters from Waking Up White, by Debbie Irving, and blogging my responses as I read. Quotes are from the book, and my responses follow. I’ve been doing some thinking lately about all this. And by “all this” I mean “all the stuff I read and write and think and say,” because I don’t know if—beyond confirming with others who are already convinced—I’m doing anything effective. And to be as blunt as possible about this: I’m not sure, not at all sure, that what I’m doing is doing anything for me or in me or to me. I’m not sure that I’ve done anything beyond becoming more informed and…
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There Are No Dreams in Space
My latest work, “There Are No Dreams in Space,” is now available on Ripples in Space.
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Short stories and lengthy processes
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#WakingUpWhite Chapter 40: Bull in a China Shop
I’m reading chapters from Waking Up White, by Debbie Irving, and blogging my responses. Quotes are from the book, and my responses follow. How habits that seem so innocuous to me can alienate people of color. What is unbelievable is how timely this is for today, for right now, for this moment. I’m sure it’s no secret that I an consciously engaging in communities that are not like my default white community, for reasons that have to do with my own understanding, to repent of my selfish self-centered ways, to become a genuine human being, to learn about the lives of other people, and to see their value—and ultimately to…
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#WakingUpWhite Chapter 39: Equality Starts with Equity
I’m going through Debbie Irving’s book Waking Up White, along with several friends, blogging about each chapter as I read it and react to it. Quotes are from her book; my responses follow. Another particularly stubborn hard-drive attitude I’ve had to wrestle with is the idea that “fair means equal.” This attitude fits nicely with the myth of meritocracy. This fits in with what I’m thinking at the moment, that there are so many missing elements and gaps in the lives and experiences of my friends. I imagine sometimes what it might be like to be equal, but I hadn’t considered, really, what it might be like to have equity.…
- #WakingUpWhite, American Exceptionalism, Celebrate Recovery, faith, history, Life Recovery Skills, racism, writing
#WakingUpWhite Chapter 38: The Rugged Individual
I’m blogging my way through Waking Up White, by Debbie Irving. Along with a few other writers, we’re reading and commenting as we go. See the end of this post for more information. Learning to value both independence and interdependence. I am intrigued by this already. My predisposition is that independence is valuable in itself, and that is what I focus on. Gotta be honest, this was drilled into me in my formation. I can’t think of any one thing that led to this, but the entire period of my childhood and youth was that I had to go it alone, do it my way, follow my own path, build…
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When Words Fail
I was in a conversation recently where this question came up: “How do we influence people to change their minds and do things differently?” This question is dear to me because it speaks to my own conversion experience—no, not a religious conversion. My conversion was the realignment of my behaviors, connections, and beliefs with the values I already held. I’ve told my story elsewhere, but will summarize it here: I used to be solidly white-centered, and now, not so much— but given the context of living in the Pacific Northwest ten years ago, this was a radical, life-altering change. I know—as does anyone who has lived in the spaces that are…
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The Quarantine of Emotions
If you haven’t been paying attention, there’s a play running right now in New York City that’s controversial and provoking. “The Slave Play” (which I have not seen) questions the intersection between black and white, male and female, slave and free, running from the 19th century into the 21st. From the reviews and news stories I’ve read, it’s deeply discomforting to just about everyone who sees it, and everyone who sees it and talks about it seems to have highly individualized reactions to it. Just reading the reviews and the following comments makes me uncomfortable. I don’t rest easy with depictions of human interactions that depend heavily upon these themes…
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#WakingUpWhite Chapter 37: Boxes and Labels
This is another post in the series Waking Up White, exploring the book by Debby Irving of the same name. For the complete list of posts, see https://stephenmatlock.com/category/writing/wakingupwhite/ I’m not an active snob, just a well-programmed passive one. The problem of thinking that life is either or, says Ms. Irving, is that after we divide people, we stop paying attention to those in the “wrong” group. We favor the “right” people. We become, conscious or not, of class and status based upon our classification system and our values used to rank people. What Ms. Irving suggests as a replacement is curiosity and kindness and respect and active listening. When I…
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#WakingUpWhite Chapter 36: The Dominant White Culture
Continuing the series of examining whiteness while working through Waking Up White, by Debbie Irving. I’m utterly intrigued by the opening of this chapter: Moving from not knowing what it was to feeling it in every recess of my being. We all don’t start at the same places in our journeys; we don’t take the same paths; and we do not go at the same speed. But as far as I can tell, those of us who are working to investigate whiteness and ourselves in that whiteness have similar milestones and markers. Ms. Irving’s words here resonate with me—perhaps not in the same way, because I of course can’t get…
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#WakingUpWhite Chapter 35: If Only You’d Be More Like Me
I’m reading & simultaneously commenting on Debby Irving’s book Waking Up White. Jesus. I mean that in reverence not as a jocular aside or even as a swear word. I just finished writing (and lightly editing) a piece on what others think, using my own self and my own growing understanding, and how little I am doing right now other that reading, writing, or talking, and Ms. Irving opens with this: After years of wanting to help and fix others, I learned I had my own work to do. Like an arrow it strikes: how much of what I do is for others, because the others need my help? Jesus.…
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White Jesus, Bible Jesus: Pick One
Yes, this is deliberately provocative for a blog title, chosen to shake up people settled in their ways like the lees of a wine bottle stored far too long in a dusty cellar. I don’t respond to every bit of white nonsense I hear, for two main reasons: one, I already have a full life of people and activities and interests. White nonsense is everywhere, and I simply don’t have the strength or wisdom or patience to deal with it all the time. Two, I’m white—6F, as I put it—and I participate in white nonsense and sometimes create it. I’m working diligently to do that less, and I own every…
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My Dear White People
This is a love letter. Really. And it comes from someone who has committed every sin that’s listed here—and many more that are not. I embrace you and love you and care for you, and I think you’re fabulous in what you intend. You’re so kind and generous at times! But we need to talk about some stuff. We need to be real. We need to do something that we just don’t know how to do as white people: talk about ourselves without all the fronting and anger and hiding and shame. Because not only are we hurting those around us—even those we call our friends!—we’re hurting ourselves. I’ll leave…
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#WakingUpWhite Chapter 34: Becoming Multicultural
Once again, I’m reading & simultaneously commenting on Debby Irving’s book Waking Up White. This chapter is fire. Creating a racially just world demands a reconsideration of the assimilation (“melting pot”) model long enforced in America… Though its intention may have been to create a united country, its impact has been to create social and economic divisions far from the ideals of most Americans. I see this in my friends’ lives because (a) they don’t fit into the mainstream of whiteness (which is largely invisible to us who make the rules); (b) they are “encouraged” to fit in; but (c) they can never fit in because at any moment they’ll…
- essays, Fifth Avenue Theatre, justice, Life Recovery Skills, musicals, musings, racism, reviews, reviews, Theatre, writing
Pride and Prejudice, Staged
Last week we went to see a production of the new musical AUSTEN’S PRIDE, the story of Jane Austen‘s creation of the world of Pemberley and Darcy and Lizzie and Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Wickham and … well, the entire world that lives between the covers of the book Pride and Prejudice. Precis: Miss Jane Austen has had a successful run with her book Sense and Sensibility, but her publisher wants a new work. Simultaneously, her intended fiancé decides to break with her. She’s been rejected a few times, and is living in genteel near-poverty. All she has now to her assets is an idea with no form or view.…
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The Purpose-Driven Lie
“The purpose of racism is to control the behavior of white people, not Black people. For Blacks, guns and tanks are sufficient.” Dr. Otis Madison There are a few mentors in my life right now, men and women I both respect and admire. They teach me from their wisdom, from their experience, from their souls, and I attempt to listen, process, and adapt my own self to the new information I discover. One of my mentors, Andre Henry, posted this quote, which intrigued me immediately. I’ve been chewing on it for a day or so now, and musing about “what it means.” (Sometimes we do this even if it’s obvious,…
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#WakingUpWhite Chapter 33: Perception and Fear
Once again, a reminder that this series (“Waking Up White”) is from the book by Debby Irving. I read the chapter cold, and respond as I read. Then I answer the questions at the end. I do this work in public not because I need the cookie. When I was lost and frozen in white racism, one of the things that held me locked up was that I had no models of others who had found a way out. For those of you who are locked up yourself, maybe I can give you some assurance that you can be found, that there is a way out, and that it is…
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Carefully Taught, Thoroughly Educated
You’ve Got to Be Taught You’ve got to be taught To hate and fear, You’ve got to be taught From year to year, It’s got to be drummed In your dear little ear You’ve got to be carefully taught. You’ve got to be taught to be afraid.Of people whose eyes are oddly made,And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade,You’ve got to be carefully taught. You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,Before you are six or seven or eight,To hate all the people your relatives hate,You’ve got to be carefully taught!(RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN “SOUTH PACIFIC” – © 1958) I don’t know how much more obvious we have to…
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I Am MLK Jr
A film from the Paramount Network. I was 13 when Dr. King was murdered. I could not comprehend what I was watching on TV from my safe, comfortable living room. The screen was too small, maybe, and my town was too far, and my community too different. I watched cities burn in April 1968, but I did not understand. I watched more since then and I understand more now of what I was seeing. This film is that moment for me, recapitulated, but now I see with the eyes of an adult who has lived through the America of the sixties and into the teens of the 21st century. I’m…
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Walking in and out of Justice
Sometimes we can choose our inconveniences. I was watching a video late last night, far past midnight, and stopped about half-way through because it was one o’clock or so in the morning. Released by Paramount, I Am MLK, Jr., is a powerful new (2018) film about the life of the man who shaped America and was murdered for it. One thing that struck me, again, was the immediacy and fragility of the Civil Rights Movement. It was a seat-of-your-pants operation with multiple streams and leaders, even though MLK had become, for many, the leader, the Man for Justice. I’m sure there was planning — the councils and commissions comprised serious…
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A Place We Cannot Enter
I've watched my friends express their shock, their hurt, their anger, their outrage, their fury, their fear, their hopelessness, their isolation, their understanding of their own oppression in a society that does not see them. Does not value them. Does not, from beginning to end, love them.
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#WakingUpWhite Chapter 32: Getting Over Myself
The liberation of letting go of my self-image. Choosing to engage in the effort to dismantle racism promises to bring with it discomfort, yet how can I compare my discomfort to what people of color endure? While I don’t like this for a few reasons, I think I understand the meaning behind it. Still, it doesn’t help to say “your feelings don’t count because other people have it worse.” This is what we’re told when we feel bad or angry or disappointed—and it’s a way to dismiss the validity of our feelings. White people who work to dismantle racism—to become, as Dr. Kendi says, “actively antiracist,” will experience discomfort, and…
- #WakingUpWhite, American Exceptionalism, Celebrate Recovery, faith, justice, Life Recovery Skills, racism
#WakingUpWhite Chapter 31: Courageous Conversations
Learning to listen and speak across differences Before I start into this chapter, I wanted to update this series on something that is related to this journey. I took part in some conversations this week, and one of them highlighted something that I may have heard before, but it resonated this time: We are not trying to be good white people, but safe white people. There’s a lot to unpack here for me, but I can say that part of my struggle is attempting to deal with what I think and feel, which then becomes what I do and say. I struggle with all the nonsense that it in me,…
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When We Don’t Want to Know
Ignorance is sometimes a lack of opportunity. We don’t have access to resources, including people and their lived experiences, to understand the width and depth of racism. I can understand that there might be such people, although in the connected world of today, I can’t accept that it is a frequent occurrence. But in almost every case, our ignorance is deliberate and our culpability in our lack of understanding is a deliberate choice to avoid the hard truths of American racism, and to avoid the very hard work of breaking that. That awareness and confession and breaking apply to our own individual selves, of course. It is such a common…
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Sliding Away from Relevancy
If you haven’t been tracking the news, there’s been a dust-up in the American Evangelical world. An influential publishing outfit that produces RELEVANT magazine has been having some of its more dysfunctional efforts and people come to light. You can go read the initial posts by Mr. Andre Henry (a former Managing Editor) here, or related posts from Ms. Rebecca Marie Jo here. You can then read RELEVANT’s official response and the response from Mr. Cameron Strang, as well as a fine commentary by Ms. Ally Henny here. And you can read Mr. Henry’s reply to RELEVANT here. It’s kind of a mess, and the temptation is just to say…
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#WakingUpWhite Chapter 9: White Superiority
Beliefs and Behaviors
Jesus as Emperor
- American Exceptionalism, Celebrate Recovery, essays, faith, justice, Life Recovery Skills, musings, racism, writing
What Is the Home That Shuts Its Doors to You?
ETA: I misnamed Ms. Ally Henny in this article & have corrected it. My apologies for misnaming her. I follow people in social media, and try hard to follow people who give me insight into their worlds that I don’t see. I follow people all over the world, mostly English speakers (but I throw in other languages and attempt to puzzle out their meaning with translation tools). Most of the people I follow are here in North America, specifically in the United States of America, and one them recently posted a blog entry about “Leaving Home.” (You can read it here: https://thearmchaircommentary.com/2019/09/22/leaving-home/) It is the story of Ally Henny and…
- American Exceptionalism, Celebrate Recovery, Contests, essays, faith, flash fiction, justice, Life Recovery Skills, musings, writing
When You Fall
I write and edit for a living, and I write for fun. I have a few novels in progress, with one released (so far); I write short stories and poems; I develop short screenplays and radio scripts, some which have been performed. That’s an incredibly heady feeling—to see your words expressed through actors on a stage or from a microphone! Often my stories and scripts come from a prompt as part of a competition. The poems are just extra—no one wants to read my poetry which is their sad loss. I try to be authentic and real, and I work hard—danged hard!—on creating characters who ring true, who speak like…
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Of Course I’m Racist
I don’t think I’ve ever been called a racist—not because I’m not, but because the people in my life are simply too kind and too gentle, and treat me as if I’m terribly fragile. But I will say, with the same level of clear-eyed truth about being in recovery for my addictions, that I am a racist. Thoroughly dipped and dyed, all the way through, head to heart, sole to soul, from earliest memory until today. Being called a racist will not kill you. It might sting because it attacks your self-image of being “not a racist.” Actually being a racist is what kills you. It deadens you to humanity.…
