Earliest posts at the bottom
Whiteness Part 4
July 28, 2020
Now, you may be wondering what this all has to do with education. Programs like Teach for America have been criticized for their status as mostly white groups going in to urban communities as “saviors.” People I love have participated in this programmed, and I know they have done good work and have good intentions, so I cannot say I support this summation of TFA and similar institutions. I am not here to evaluate their efficacy or even intent. I simply note the lack of popularity for similar programs addressing poor whites.
In order to understand this, I examined myself. My efforts to promote equity in education have been city-centric, specifically the city in which I myself was educated and have lived my whole life. I have resources and connections here that enable me to do effective work. It had never occurred to me to focus elsewhere until briefly whilst reading Hillbilly Elegy and then again now, more soberingly, amidst overwhelming polarization and misinformation and grappling with my own whiteness.
I have been called white trash before. I have even called myself that. In a way, this was to make a joke about myself before anyone else could. This never felt good nor just, but I interpreted those feelings of discomfort as an inevitable cost of being white in a society where whiteness is a privilege. Now that I’ve learned so much more about the complicated dynamics of race, gender, class and more in society, I understand the the necessity of educating all on all sorts of inequalities. The dominant narratives currently implement specific identities to forge social groups, thereby emphasizing our differences. In so doing, we define ourselves and others as distinct. In failing to acknowledge our interdependence, the benefits of one group seem irrelevant to the other. Efforts on behalf of the group in power to promote equality necessarily become acts of charity, and if there is one thing I’ve learned about humans, it is this: we cannot rely on charity alone.
I do not believe this is human nature. In fact, I believe “humanity” defines humans. However, our culture promotes competition, so we perceive others’ successes as threats to our own. Of course people fail to empathize with out-group members. I truly believe the social change we desire begins with emphasizing our identities as humans above all others.
I also believe it requires acknowledgiing everyone’s personal narratives and plights, which is a very difficult thing to do when an entire swath of people have their lives threatened daily. God damn, that’s hard. But it is necessary because in addition to a society that breeds self-centered independence, we humans have relatively primitive brains when it comes to empathy. Statistics don’t work to hook readers into caring; stories do. It’s easy to wave a hand at a mass of faceless people, but nearly impossible to do this to someone looking directly into your eyes. In order to address larger systemic and historical issues, we must start with individual empathy.
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Whiteness Part 3
July 28, 2020
White boys love rap. Or at least, they say or think or demonstrate they do. White fuels are beginning to wear hoops and acrylics. Appropriation isn’t new, and I’m not quite sure it’s inherently bad. America is built on exploitation of people of color in every way: economically, socially, politically, culturally. While a burden on those for whom the label is not optional, “blackness” is cool for those selectively extracting from it. More simply, white people (particularly white youth) appropriate aspects of black culture as “pop” culture” as a way to signal their own culture and/or coolness. For example, during the jazz era, wealthy white youth “slummed” in Harlem neighborhoods on the weekends to listen to black musicians. Again, I cannot claim whether this is universally good nor bad; I can just claim it has been and it is.
I wonder the origin of this. Some scholars posit white people, on a deep level, feel inherently inferior to black people, and so absorb aspects of their culture without attribution as a means of feeding their own egos. Stereotypes of black people, such as the black man as hyper-masculine or the black woman as hyper-sexual, can be appropriated by white people to emphasize those characteristics (which otherwise seem to be absent) within themselves. Black author and musician Greg Tate comments that, when it comes to black culture, white Americans seem ravenous for “everything but the burden.”
I see truth in this. I also see truth in a coexistent phenomena: ‘white guilt’, which Wikipedia defines as “individual or collective guilt felt by some white people for harm resulting from racist treatment of ethnic minorities such as African Americans and indigenous peoples by other white people, most specifically in the context of the Atlantic slave trade, European colonialism and the legacy of these eras.” This operational definition explains downstream phenomena such as Benevolent Racism, or the act of responding to one’s own racism with extreme politeness or superficial positivity towards the oppressed group while still ‘othering’ them, thereby failing to confront one’s own racism. White Christian missionary work finds its roots here, as did American slave-holder justifications for slavery that involved the inherent ‘darkness’ of black souls and ‘lightness’ of whites, who must enslave blacks in order to redeem them in heaven.
Those unfamiliar with racism and anti-racism conversations may read this and wonder, “What’s wrong with benevolence”? Uncontextualized, nothing. In practice, however, superficial benevolence vacuums empathy from an interaction. Perpetrators or perpetuators of racism need not engage in actually investigating or abolishing their racism if they use this salve. They fail to see the depths of racism and their complicity in racist structures. Benevolence is safe because it is impersonal, and if it is impersonal, it’s missing the point. Racism is personal for everyone, always, at all points.
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Whiteness Part 2
July 28, 2020
When I think of how to “help the world”, I think of educating children, and to be honest, when I think of educating children, I do not think of American children, so I already feeling shaky broaching this subject. For example, when I think of gender equality in, say, the Middle East, I do not imagine schools for just girls but also the boys who otherwise would grow into men that perpetuate the systems we must dismantle. No vision of a more humane world involves focusing on a singular slice of the population, no matter how much I love them.
As of 2018, 60% of America’s population is non-Hispanic white, and 41% of people below poverty are white. While that’s disproportionate, that’s still a lot: ~16 million people we’re talking. Beyond just the fact that poor white Americans are humans struggling and could use help and attention, they also are necessary for promoting the social, economic and political equality of people of color in America. Simply focusing on the latter populations burdens these very communities with the revolution. The impetus is on them to be stronger, smarter, resilient. That’s unjust.
While we strengthen communities of color, we must also rehabilitate white Americans. This does not mean teaching them of their privilege. This means acknowledging their pain. I know first hand how indigestible lectures of white privilege can be for a white person who’s struggled greatly. I’m grateful my instinct was to shut up and try to understand, but I don’t suspect that’s universally common or even correct.
And yet—
I don’t see too many of my benevolent white peers focusing on poor whites. I know of very few rural outreach programs (for the record: 78% of America’s rural population is white, whereas on average 35% of America’s urban population is white.) And I wonder why.
Firstly, I think it comes across as an “All Lives Matter” effort that may threaten to deter from the BLM movement. Secondly, I think the benevolent white people, like me, are afraid.
I am afraid to seem like an All Lives Matter person, even wondering about educating poor white children, yes, but there are deeper fears and wonderings within me. I didn’t even register at the time that my white peers who left college to teach ended up exclusively in urban schools. Deep in my unconscious, equity in education started in communities of color. Now, I believe unshakably equity begins everywhere. I can’t help it! Therefore, one of the things I wonder is why my first ideas (and those of many others) of equity in education do or did not expand to white children in poor areas. I wonder if this is reflected in the images of social upheaval we now see.
I see ignorance and subsequent miscommunication as causes, and I struggle to determine when to hold someone accountable for their ignorance. I’ve come to use Maya Angelou’s rule of thumb: “if you know better, do better.” People’s ignorance is not their fault. When encountered with illumination one reacts aggressively or rejects the opportunity to learn, then I see that as a hubristic reflex for which the actor is responsible. However, this is assuming the edifier also acted gracefully, which is not always the case. People in the position to educate must also be open to being wrong in either their ideals or their execution. Grace and wisdom are refractions of one another.
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Whiteness Part 1
July 28, 2020
Cities have people. A lot of them. Super close to one another. They also have a lot of coffee, which I’m sure contributes to the frenetic energy. Cities have historically been diverse places with respect to class, which means an educated and/or wealthy elite coexists in awful living conditions of underprivileged communities. All this to say, it’s very easy for a wealthy-ish benevolent white person to see communities of color getting FUCKED.
The reason I’m saying all this is because I’m “curious” (a word which I suspect is beginning to mean “afraid to admit guilty”) about poor white children. I was a poor white child in an inner-city and was able to benefit from some of the programs from the benevolent white people: free breakfast, free books, suburban “pen pals”. I also saw how necessary these programs were.
Now, when I imagine an “uneducated voter”, I imagine a “poor white”, of which I could have been if not for the programs and resources for “urban children” I benefited from that weren’t really for me in the first place. I think of Incels and Neo-Nazis and Florida. I must be honest here; if not, I’m part of the problem. In that vein, I cannot imagine a solution that ignores kindness towards the children of these communities.
White people make me uncomfortable for all kinds of reasons. I’m definitely in my comfortable zone in urban settings and certainly so aiding children from these communities. I’m uncomfortable, though, imagining volunteering in a rural community. If I said it’s because they scare me, I’d be lying. Or, at least, misleading.
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Get Comfortable with Discomfort
July 15, 2020
I love you, human. I don’t even need to know who you are to know that I do. If you feel otherwise, then perhaps you and I have different parameters for ‘love’.
Yesterday I was having a conversation about pitbulls. That morning, I had listened to interviews with mothers of boys slain by police: Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley, Samaria Rice, Sybrina Fulton and more. I was walking past a yoga studio, and I got angry. I was angry at myself.
You see, I feel most alive engaged in the struggle for racial equality. It doesn’t feel good; it feels real. The word “resonant” may ring more accurately. And yet, I spend many days absorbed in other things. Teaching yoga in that studio, for example, calling out botched Sanskrit, playing Hindu songs, appealing to watered-down Buddhists for other white people who were using an Eastern religion to get their cardio in for the day. Of course, I was one of them, and of course, I tried to understand to the best of my capability the history of what I was teaching and playing, but of course, I am human. By definition, I am ignorant.
Other times, I’m teaching wealthy people things that I had to teach myself: math, writing, empathy. I tell myself that every heart I touch makes this world a better place, but it’s hard to keep believing that when I go back home to Bridgeport and see just how much justice there is to be redeemed.
I’m still not sure how best to help the world. I am sure, though, that the solution lies not in what caused the problem. In other words, the revolution will not be comfortable. Social norms and status quo must be broken, and that is by its very nature uncomfortable.
“Pitbulls simply are just violent dogs. They’re bred to be that way.” I couldn’t help but hear antebellum eugenicist rhetoric deep below these comments. I don’t believe anyone in the conversation consciously intended so. All I can say is this: there seems to be a lot of overlap between stereotypes of pitbulls and those of black Americans: violent, irredeemable, should be caged.
Part of me put water on these thoughts: that’s a fire that doesn’t need to be fanned right now. What’s more, no one was trying to have a conversation about race. We were just trying to have a conversation, to keep the empty space filled with commentary on safe aspects of reality, to be comfortable. Besides, the conversation would move quickly into another topic. Nothing needed to be done.
Every moment when that decision is made— to decide against mentioning racial implications of a conversation or action— reinforces the status quo. It perpetuates the comfort zone of white people who can navigate society racelessly. For Americans of color, though, racial implications are unavoidable. To be in an all white space and to completely avoid the racial dimensions of a conversation is to essentially reconstruct reality, effectively destroying it. The conversation’s narrow scope appears complete and conclusive.
I’m ashamed remembering the times when racial undertones of a conversation screamed out at me, but I said nothing. I’m also ashamed that I’m unable to remember certain moments when this was the case because I failed to notice them myself. I prioritized keeping others comfortable, convinced mentioning race would do more harm than good in terms of understanding. However, it’s precisely because these topics are so emotionally fraught that they must be discussed in more casual settings. Confronting racism must be normalized. It is pervasive because it is normal. It is baked in to American’s daily lives. Thus, relegating it to the occasional forum or bedside book misses the point and the mark.
Confronting racism doesn’t mean confrontation. It starts with a question: “What kind of person do you imagine owning a pitbull?” or “What does ‘urban’ mean to you?”. It starts with a presumption of humanity and love. It starts with a humility that your perspective is the one that’s limited. It starts with a longing to learn, not to teach.
That is how I love you. Whoever you are, I come to you from you. I know you have humanity within you, and love, and pain, and wonder. If I can’t see it, I need to look harder. You must do the same. We all must, and it will be uncomfortable, but the only way to a better world involves growing pains.
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The Nature of Perception: Schemas
July 8, 2020
A woman has been hypnotized. She is on the ground, barking like a dog, in front of an audience of hundreds. The hypnotist snaps, she comes to, and the hypnotist asks, “Why were you on the floor?” The woman, without missing a beat, replies, “Oh, I was looking for my contact.”
People will reactively reject or explain away anything that doesn’t fit into their existent schema. For example, if someone doesn’t believe in ghosts and late one eve, they see a flash of white out of the corner of their eye, they’ll reason, “Oh, that must have been the cat.” It would take a lot of flashes and a whole lot of terror to change this person’s gut exclamation to, “Casper?!” People will even reject foreign knowledge or systems that benefit them. It’s like Stockholm syndrome but for ideas. Someone with an extremely high self-concept will not register evidence of their self-centeredness. If someone highlights it, they’ll rationalize: “Oh, you’re just jealous.”
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Personal Experience with Race 3/3: College: But I'm not the ones you're talking about...
June 30, 2020
Trayvon Martin got murdered when I was in high school. The Diversity Club at Hopkins hosted a not-as-poorly-attended-as-usual meeting in a bio classroom where they showed a powerpoint about police brutality. After those 26 children at Sandy Hook were massacred, the school hosted a day of conversation.
Police brutality didn’t rise to the forefront of social and political conversation until I was in college, when Michael Brown was killed. My college became an epicenter for racial demonstrations and education. I witnessed my peers bravely face administrators and demand humanity. Countless cultural groups, that had been fighting for a voice for years but never given a mic until then, stepped up and set up demonstration after demonstration until actionable change happened.
I attended protests and teach-ins. I read and read and read. I changed my course-load to reflect my crystallizing passion for racial equity. I felt it personally, viscerally. The rhythms of the movement mirrored the rhythm I was raised it, and some part of me that had been dormant re-awokened.
As did intense anger. At first, the source of was unclear, and so it manifested as defensiveness. I wasn’t one of “those” white people. I grew up listening to patois and “ayo, gringa!”’s. I couldn’t go to all the protests because I couldn’t skip work because I needed to stay in school because I had nothing else. Since I was eighteen, I had no financial support besides myself: my mom had stolen thousands of dollars from me and ghosted my financial aid applications and payments. I had four on-campus jobs to pay my tuition and living costs. My grandma had died, my aunt overdosed, my dad got hospitalized, my brother was suicidal, and so was I. I watched my peers of color find inspiration and life during the demonstrations, and I envied their ability to assert their power in public. I wanted to wear my struggle and demand respect in a megaphone. I wanted to dance and rejoice in my resilience. Most of all, I wanted community. I had a chip on my shoulder: Shit’s hard out here for me, too, and I don’t even have a community or music or movement in which I can find solidarity. I’m struggling, too, but I’m alone.
What I resented most , however, was the fact that some of my peers who were demonstrating also had to work to keep themselves in school. They also bore the weight of their own future and a nation’s history. Their families’ livelihood also balanced on the investment in this education. But they went out anyway because they couldn’t not. Although financially similar, I could afford to choose my progress over the movement’s. What I thought was anger and resentment was actually the familiar shame of my whiteness. The inventory of adversity I was keeping was just to protect me and justify my self-oriented lifestyle.
I abandoned my foundational friends. I chose my whiteness and the privileges it allotted me above my friends that had shaped me, taught me, listened to me, loved me. They were two babies or jail sentences deep, and I hadn’t talk to them since I learned how to code switch to academia and cashed in my whiteness. I was fake. I was a flake. I was white.
I now hold more empathy for my younger self now. I see clearly the dichotomy I created (between advocating for the liberation of others versus my own) is false. Also, having lived through more years and experienced more people, I’ve learned this polarized thinking isn’t unique to me or white people. Years of studying psychology has taught me this: we’re more alike than we are different. Black or white, we grew up in a culture that values and thus rewards individualism and independence. We learn “success” means to “get ours”. This leaves feeling many of us— especially without solid home lives— feeling valueless, lonely, unseen. We need to work to prove our worthiness, but society gobbles up our time without giving us just enough to sustain us to the next day, when we can do it all again.
Thus, there seems to be no time to “work” for someone else. This is the problem, though, of deep unhealthy psychology such as hyper-individualism or depression. The “cures” require exactly that which the diseases prevent. People struggling with depression need to get up, eat, exercise, socialize, do acts of service, shower; depression, though, renders them nearly catatonic, lethargic, without appetite, anti-social, self-oriented. Individualism is a lie that must be countered with community and time and space and honesty; it devours community, time, space, and honesty and promotes isolation, efficiency, and self-aggrandizement.
“I am not free while any woman is unfree,” activist and author Audre Lorde declared. This first half of the sentence is more often quoted than the second: “Even when her shackles are very different from my own.” We must reconfigure the entire system. Regardless of the demographics of the oppressed, oppression will continue as long as a hierarchical system scaffolded on historical inequality persists. Throughout the era of modern nation-states they teach us in school, we’ve been playing, as a globe, King of the Hill. At any moment, we can be the one on top, and you can just as quickly become again the one on the bottom. We can never be confident in our position while the game persists unless we do one of two things: 1. Resign ourselves to the bottom rank, out of which no one will try to knock us, or 2. STOP THE GAME ALTOGETHER.
We have stakes in any conversation for freedom, for equality, for ourselves or our peers. The fight is for humanity, and we all benefit from acting more humanely.
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Early Experience with Race 2/3: Amongst the whites.
June 30, 2020
Occasionally, I’d occupy white spaces. My church, for example, had more white people than I was used to. I attended a couple summer camps. My dad refereed basketball games at schools in the suburbs. I never felt more out of place than in these environments. I had the same skin as these girls, but just like I didn’t have the newest Jordans, I didn’t even understand why someone would want Uggs. If I tried to speak to them, they’d find ways to walk away or change the subject. They called me ‘weird’ and wouldn’t talk to me. They thought I was gross for loving McDonalds and not owning an eye-lash curler. Unlike my peers of color, who judged my whiteness, the white girls my age judged me. I resented these white people, who were allowed to live in the privileges of whiteness without abandon. I felt like they didn’t get, and I also didn’t get it, but I was reminded every day that I didn’t get it, and they just got to not get it and also get everything they wanted. These feelings strengthened my solidarity with people of color.
In the same vein, when a friend of color stayed over my house and commented that shit there was crazy, I felt weirdly vindicated. I was definitely embarrassed while the ‘crazy shit’ was going down, but ultimately I liked my friends acknowledging my difficulties. Finally, I felt like I was seen beyond my whiteness. A human-connection. A taste of community.
When I started private high school as a scholarship kid and the only student from Bridgeport, my racial identity was even more muddied. I looked like my peers, but I didn’t dress like them, or talk like them, or know what the fuck they were talking about 95% of the time. Their conversations were boring, about thigh gaps or Ke$ha songs. Where were the spontaneous free style sessions? Fights? Hilarious aunts and the never ending co-ed Wall Ball games?
The school was doubly segregated, by gender and race. Girls didn’t eat the lunch food. They complained about it. They dumped full plates of food and went back for basic cereal. I was in heaven, and didn’t mind asking for or eating their left overs. Girls just sat around trying to be noticed by the guys who were playing lacrosse trying to be noticed by the girls. Boys sat around waiting for someone to do something to make bad jokes about. The students of colors all sat at one table, and I wanted to sit with them so bad. They were talking and laughing and living how I was used to, but they were all from New Haven outreach programs and already knew each other. What’s more, the school was so obliviously white that students of color needed to create their own safe space. Their discomfort amongst our white peers was unfathomable compared to mine.
As I had learned to do, I dove into my education inside and outside of class. I got lost in art and what I loved. I hung out with whoever I ended up around and made the most of it. I struggled to keep up with my peers, since I had an unstable home life, a longer commute, fewer resources, and no money, and also no awareness that this was the case. I didn’t realize how different my peers’ home circumstances were. I understood my struggle to be a fault of my incompetence and not a consequence of class chasms.
Race and class discomforts became less dominant narratives as my identity as a perpetual outsider developed. I felt “other” because I, as an individual, was defective. The world was doing me such a favor letting me stay here, and all I could do to show my gratitude was continue to live with as much earnest love and passion as possible.
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Early Experiences with Race 1/3: I hate my whiteness.
June 28, 2020
My first understanding of whiteness was: ew.
White people were annoying, unattractive, untalented, oblivious, bland. In Bridgeport, CT, as a rare white girl amongst mostly people of color, I hated my whiteness.
I could have embraced white culture, gone to Goodwill and bought some Abercrombie, chewed on bubble gum instead of Now and Laters, but I’d get ripped a new one, Wayne Brothers Style. If I went in the opposite way and started to roll my r’s and gel back my greasy bun, I’d get reamed for being a poser, an “uh-oh oreo”.
The last thing I wanted was to get called out for trying too hard. To me, nothing was more painful than publicly attempting something, bearing your heart and soul, and being laughed at. So I just embraced being the quiet and polite white elephant in the room.
What my peers and I all understood, albeit unconsciously at the time, was that ultimately, white people had the power. When an old white man on my block told the black family that just moved in to go back to Africa, no one was surprised. In a sense, we kids were all jaded. We didn’t expect the presidents in our text books to be anything other than white men. We didn’t waste our breath questioning why most of our teachers were white or wondering where they lived. If we had any special guest speakers come in to talk to our school, they better bring food or else we’d demolish their confidence. We had this one substitute teacher who died her hair blonde one night and the next day, we called her “Sunshine” until she cried. Classical musicians would come perform for some sort of enrichment program, and all I remember is making fun of the way they jerked around when the music overtook them. Police were lazy, corrupt, racist—useless.
In accordance, I was bullied for my race, usually “playfully” but sometimes seriously. Strangers have approached me on my street and told me to go back to where I come from. More than once, friends have unprompted punched me straight in the face. I couldn’t complain, though. I didn’t want to be seen as the weak, annoying, or uncool white girl, so I didn’t complain, and quite honestly, if it happened now, I wouldn’t either.
Despite all this, my friendships were pure. I’ll never forget Amony Stancil standing up for me when a group of boys laughed at the baby food I had brought for lunch: “Shut up ‘cause you know it taste good!” Or staying up all night with Danaisha Wheeler talking about life, crying, laughing, and being perfectly prepubescent. Or Peggy Colas spending hours giving me corn rows and making me feel less lame about my bright red scalp and teary eyes.
With phenomenal gratitude, I remember my friends growing up. Their capacity for love and laughter astounds me. Even though I lived in the same neighborhood, attended the same schools, and drank the same water as my peers of color, the life-altering difference between us was obvious. Of course I was annoying: my skin was screaming.
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What is this? START HERE.
June 27, 2020
This is for people who are white and want to do the right thing on a societal level but who need guidance digesting on the personal level.
Hello. I am a person and my skin is white. My whiteness has both benefitted and hurt me. Life has brought me success and struggle. It’s easy to remember the latter and see how my difficulties have directly affected my trajectory. I admit, therefore, that at first, I had some difficulty digesting the word “privilege”.
Overall, I have organized the parts of me that this word and its ideas have upturned. I am in a healthy, peaceful place. But it has not been easy, it is not easy, and it will not be always easy. But it can get easier.
Making it easier— and making sense— is why I write this. I hope that is why you read this. Let’s figure that out, if you haven’t already:
Are you a person who is white?
Have you tried your best to live morally and do what’s right?
Have you felt deep pain and/or faced deep struggles?
Do you have people you love?
Are you interested in racial justice?
Do you attempt to learn and listen more about racism in America and feel it’s something we must address?
As you learn and listen, does some part of you still have questions you are afraid to ask ? Or parts of the rhetoric that don’t sit right with you?
If you are a ‘yes’ to most or all of these, then I am writing for you. If not, then you can stay with us if you’d like. You are included amongst we humans, though you may not be able to directly relate to all the topics discussed.
Things you may feel that you’re afraid or embarassed to admit:
How do I have ‘white privilege’ when such shitty things have happened to me?
I know people who are black that seem way more privileged than me.
I feel defensive when my ‘white privilege’ or ‘fragility’ is mentioned.
I hate being grouped in with ‘white people’.
Sometimes, I feel attacked.
I feel I need to hate myself for being white, and that feels unfair and wrong.
Violence makes me uncomfortable.
I’m terrified to say the wrong thing.
How do I be an ‘ally’ without being a ‘white savior’? Is being an ‘ally’ even a good thing anymore?
I do feel guilty for being white.
Sometimes I do feel racism towards white people, and that upsets me.
I feel like I’m only allowed to be ‘white’ and not a full person.
If you’ve engaged in the movement at all, you’ve certainly heard activists imploring white people to educate themselves. It is necessary to learn about history, policy, society, and everything in between, and there are so many amazing resources besides this to do such. This is to help process it all.