A reading/viewing example of white supremacy

There are, to my mind, two kinds of white supremacy.
There is the definition everyone thinks of, in which white people believe they are superior to other people who are Black, brown, yellow, etc.
This is what I always thought of.

But then there is white supremacy in which whiteness is the dominant color that society thinks about as being "the main."
Reading "White Fragility" helped inform this other meaning.

Because supremacy doesn't just mean superior.
It also means dominant, influence, or advantage.

I caught myself having an experience of white supremacy last night when D and I watched the first two episodes of HBO's His Dark Materials, a trilogy based on the novels of Philip Pullman.

This series of fantasy books has long been a favorite of mine, but I decided I needed to reread it.
And so I started reading it to my kids this summer before bed.
The 16-year-old even participated in the listening.

Now, I have always, in my mind, visualized the characters as white.
Was this because Pullman is white?
Maybe.
Is this because I was influenced by the 2007 film version of The Golden Compass?
Maybe.
Is this because I am white?
Maybe.

So watching the new HBO series, in which the master of Jordan College is played by a black actor, and John Faa is played by a black actor, and Boreal is played by a black actor, it struck me how sneaky and subtle supremacy is. It informs your thoughts even if you aren't aware that it informs your thoughts.

It was a bit of a wake-up for me, an awareness of how unaware I am all the time.

White fragility and what may be an unusual conversation at the fireworks tent

I can think of a few situations, a couple I've written about on this blog, in which something happens that just seems weird like maybe its got God's fingers in it.
Or maybe it is just coincidence.
Or maybe it is me doing what my high school students say I do ALL.THE.TIME with literature, which is reading too much into something.
The blue curtains are simply blue curtains and not metaphors for something else.

Yesterday, I finished reading White Fragility, which is all about how conversations about race make white people 50 kinds of uncomfortable.
The premise is that when white people are forced into having these conversations (because they often don't willingly do so) and must recognize their own racism, they then get angry or upset or cry or do other things to not deal with their own racist thoughts, actions, or reactions.

I've been thinking about my own experiences and conversations about race and how I have acted or reacted.

Today, I went to the fireworks tent near my house to pick up sparklers and pop-its that the kids throw on the ground.
I walked up and greeted the people who were running it, all of whom were Black.

There were one adult and numerous children (I'd say ranging in age from elementary to middle school).
(They had accents which made me think they are from Africa but I don't like to be nosy and ask because it is none of my actual business.)

The middle-school-age girls were very helpful, showing me different items, and the gentleman showed me things, but I told them that we're chickens and don't like the big fireworks.

I said that I'm the one who lights the fireworks, and I can't lose my hands because who will do the cooking?

When I was paying, one of the middle-school-girls was bagging my stuff and humming.
She asked me if I knew that song.
I asked her what it was.
She said it is a Christian song.
I said, "Oh."
She said, "Are you a Christian?"
and I answered, "Er....."

Because I was raised Catholic (which is Christian) and I half-assedly attend a Disciples of Christ church (which is Christian), but I don't think of myself as Christian because, honestly, a lot of Christians do a lot of not-even-remotely-Christian-stuff, and I don't want to be associated with them.

A lot of Christians do a lot of talking about being Christian, but they don't do a whole lot of acting like Christians in the way that I think Jesus would think is cool.

The girl saw me hesitating and said, "Am I making you uncomfortable?"
And I said, "No, it's just that I have some issues. I believe in Jesus, but I don't always like the church."
The girl then asked me about gay people and trans people, and I responded that I support them.
And I said, "I don't always like how churches treat women, for example."
This then led us to briefly discuss how Catholicism doesn't allow women to have a major role in the church as priests (which is just one of many issues I had with that particular brand of Christianity.)

And then I said, "I believe in treating people the way you want to be treated."
The gentleman said that this is the most important thing.

I couldn't help but think this conversation was sort of bizarre.
I meant it's not every day that people start conversations about religion with me.
But it was also bizarre because of its timing.
I was the sole white person at this tent.
The people who operated it were all Black.
The girl asked me questions about religion and asked me if they made me uncomfortable (which relates so much to what I'd just been reading about except in terms of race).
And we ended up discussing the Golden Rule, which I think has a lot to do with how white people treat Black people in both obvious and non-obvious ways.
Many white people do not speak about or to Black people in the same way that they would want to be spoken about or to.
They don't like the idea of Black people having the same opportunities as them even though if they traded positions, white people would want to have a fair shake at opportunities.

The video above is, to me, a pretty obvious example of white people not doing unto others as they would have others do unto them.

So, I don't really know what to do with this whole thing.
But I know I'll probably think on it for a good long time. 

Take your uncomfortable feeling and sit with it

Affrilachian poet Frank X. Walker published a poem this week.
Reading it made me feel uncomfortable.
That uncomfortable feeling was me recognizing that the poem's sentiment was honest and accurate.
What role do white women play in the raising of men who perpetrate brutality against blacks?

From my experience with OCD, I know that one of the ways to make it better or lessen its impact is to do what is called "sit with your anxiety."
Part of the reason people with OCD do their compulsions is to reduce the uncomfortable feelings they have.
The problem of giving in to the compulsion is that while it makes a person feel better for the moment, it makes the anxiety worse overall, which requires you to do more compulsions or new compulsions to make the anxiety go away.
"Sitting with your anxiety" is extremely uncomfortable but it is what is necessary to help truly master OCD and not be controlled by it.

I have seen at least two instances this week in which white women I know have posted their thoughts and/or feelings on social media regarding protests or wishing all this what they call "meanness" in the world would go away.
When their comments were challenged, they did not "sit with their feelings."
They deleted what they wrote and went back to "only happy, positive posts now."

While doing this may lessen their negative and/or uncomfortable feelings, it is indicative of white privilege.
They have the luxury of not dealing with the meanness of the world because of their color.
It is easy for them to slip back into the comfy, secure confines of whiteness where life is, perhaps not always easy or simple, but easier than if their skin color impacted how they were treated or viewed by others.

Sitting with the uncomfortable is, in my opinion, part of the hard work of understanding what your bias and prejudices are.
It isn't fun.
But it is necessary.

This week, a teacher friend posted the Harvard Implicit Bias Test.
There are numerous tests a person can choose, but I took the race one.
And before I took it I was scared.
I did not want to know what it would tell me.
What if what I thought I knew about my bias/prejudice was not accurate?
What if I had to look my bias/prejudice in the face and see myself for what I am?

And yet, that feeling of being scared that I felt was a luxury.
Feeling scared by what an online test will tell me about myself is so far removed from the feelings of fear that come from
driving while Black.
jogging while Black.
babysitting while Black.
eating ice cream while Black.
sleeping while Black.
bird-watching while Black.
kneeling while Black.

I am so mad at white people right now

This is my blog to attempt to make sense of what I'm feeling.

I am angry.
I am sad.
I am ashamed.

All of these feelings stem from the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
And they stem from the arrest of Omar Jimenez while trying to do his job.
And the video of Christian Cooper and Amy Cooper and her call to the police.
And the non-arrests or delayed arrests of Arbery's killers and Floyd's killers, as well as no-knock entries of police in the middle of the night.

But the cherry on top of the aforementioned shit sundae is the white people I know living in their white, upper-middle-class world and having not a clue that they don't have a clue.

I say this as a white person who knows damn good and well that I cannot possibly wrap my head around the POC experience.
Whatever I might think I know, I'm 100 percent sure I don't have even the slightest grasp.

"Violence doesn't solve anything" is the white person's lament that would be better said as, "I don't understand why black people protest and riot even though I did not say this same thing when armed white men went to the state capitol and screamed at law enforcement."
Unarmed POC are tear-gassed while white men with weapons that could reduce a crowd to dust are allowed to just hang out in the state rotunda.

"I don't understand why they're destroying their community" is another common refrain I've heard and seen. What this screams to me is, "I live on the other side of town than those people, and as a person who has been able to utilize business and economics to my advantage, I cannot imagine destroying something that provides me entertainment and a way to spend my disposable income."

How many freaking memes are about white women shopping at Target for fun while their husbands tailgate in the parking lot?
In the upper-middle-class white world, destroying a Target might get you a one-way ticket to hell assuming there is a hereafter. I like Target, but I know it screams "white person shopping place."

And just the fact that these statements say "their community" implies that you, as a white person, aren't a part of the person of color's community.
Even if shit is happening across your town, it is still your community.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention white people who do live all the way across town, some 15 miles from where protests happened in my city, commenting about gunshots at 3:30 in the morning near us.

I don't know how this appears to them; perhaps as concerned citizens of our little niche.
But in my frustration, all I hear is: "OMG, the chaos of the blacks is coming to our secluded little nugget of nirvana in the east end."

The comments of "This is horrendous" and chiming in on what you think you heard is the verbal equivalent of clutching your pearls.

Imagine hearing gunshots every night and not just on the night that a protest ended up in shootings?

Imagine being woken up at 3:30 in the morning because the police are ramming your front door down during a no-knock warrant? And then actually being shot?

Did you say "This is horrendous" when you saw the officer kneeling on George Floyd's neck?

What I want to say is "Will you PUHLEASE check your damn privilege at the door and quit freaking out about a non-event? You can walk down our street any time and rest assured that you are not going to be shot by anyone, and especially not a police officer."
Quit thinking about yourself when you have so many privileges you can't even begin to understand them all.

There are the white people who post a photo of an uplifting story about a friendship between whites and blacks and think this means they don't have a bias, implicit or otherwise.
Or because they have a black friend it means they don't have prejudices and don't have to do any internal wrangling and work about what racism is and how it impacts all of us.

If you have moved outside the school district or to another neighborhood in order to keep your kids at the "good" middle school, maybe you aren't as color-blind as you like to think you are?
(The whole notion of "Colorblindness" being part of white-people idiot-speak.)
Ahem, is the "good" middle school where there are more white kids?
Because while I'm pretty sure I don't understand the POC experience, I know white code when I hear it.
I have people in my family who stopped shopping at "dirty" Kroger even though it went through an extensive makeover and expansion.
I know what they meant by "dirty" Kroger.

This blog post was me reacting out of anger and frustration, and it is a terrible mess of lashing out and perhaps hurting the feelings of my white counterparts who read it.
Is it any wonder that the anger and frustration of POC has resulted in fires and looting.

Or does it explode? 
(White folks, this is code. Go Google it.)

We do have a race problem

It baffles me when white people say that there isn't a race problem.

Such statements are like me saying, "I don't have a cancer problem."

I mean, right this second, I don't have cancer (as far as I know) and no one I know and love has cancer (as far as I know). 

But beyond the bubble that surrounds little ole me are a LOT of people and many of them do have a cancer problem. 

Since they live in my neighborhood, in my community, my church, my city, I guess that means that the collective "we" does have a cancer problem. 

The collective "we" does have a race problem.

Why do I think this?

Yesterday there was a shooting by a white man of two black people at a grocery store that is less than 5 miles from my house.

When a man with a gun confronted the shooter in the parking lot, the shooter apparently told him, "Whites don't kill whites."

Also, our illustrious president keeps haranguing the NFL over its peaceful protests (in addition to lambasting any person who has skin that is a shade darker than him). 

Also, also a high school I was just at had students protest because white students have been using the "N" word as if it is perfectly ok. 

As far as I'm concerned, it is not up to white people to decide if there is a race problem, just like it is not up to a man who cannot be pregnant to decide if a pregnancy is difficult or a pain in the butt or if labor hurts.

It is not up to me to speak about the plight of poverty or whether it is as bad or as hard as it appears because I have not lived that experience.

I know we live in a time when experts and experience are worthless.
When anybody can just have any old random thought and it is accepted as the truth, without data and facts and relevance to back it up.
When scientists and economists and doctors are evidently lying and telling us untruths.
When living a certain life does not give you any real-world relevant knowledge with which to speak.

It is like my pre-parent self thinking I had any freaking CLUE what being a mom was actually like.

When white people say there is not a race problem, I suspect some of them, at least, are trying to be "beyond color," which many white people think is what it means to be non-racist.
We do not live in a world that is "beyond color," so this seems like a pointless endeavor.
Furthermore, not seeing someone's race is not seeing someone in their entirety.
Race isn't the sole determinant of a person's experience, but it is part of who they are, and to act as if their race has zero influence or impact seems absurd.

If I am working with students, I think if I said something ridiculous like, "I don't see color," the students would have every right to roll their eyes at me.
It is a lie; we all see color.
Just recently I was teaching about Kate Chopin's The Awakening, in which a quadroon nurse is mentioned. (A quadroon is a person who is one-quarter black.) I made the comment that I don't think to myself, "I wonder if that person is a quarter black or half black or an eighth black."
I don't do the Elizabeth Warren test of heredity.
But what I asked the students is what it says about a society if they refer to people as quadroons, if the society is even interested in how much of a percentage of a person is black.

Some white people who say there is not a race problem allude to the fact that they know a black person or are friends with a black person.
And my response is as follows: So what if you have black friends you occasionally see every once in a while.
This doesn't mean you don't have bias and feelings of racism inside, where the social media masses can't see.
(Also, like 98% of your "friends" are white, so give me a break.)

I work very hard to think deeply about racism and its impact, but I know darn good and well that I have had thoughts that stem from things I was taught or heard or "picked up" when I was a kid.
Even though that is not how I want to believe, it is there in my head.
Because I know it is there, I tell myself on the regular that all people feel as I do.
Whatever feelings I am capable of having, others are capable of having as well because we share a common humanity.
I guess if you're gonna have a mantra running through your head, there are worse ones to have.

Talking about racism is hard and uncomfortable.
I'm having a conversation with myself in this blog, and I feel uncomfortable right now.
I worry whether and how I offend black people, not because I'm intending to but because I just don't understand.
I want to understand.
I want to know.
I want to do better.

Yapping, anxious white people

Two weeks ago, when I subbed, a black male student said something interesting that I have not been able to stop thinking about.

It was during morning announcements when the white male principal was talking about the upcoming state assessments. He repeated himself at least twice about the students showing what they know, working hard, etc.

The student, who was standing near me, said, "Why does he keep talking?"
When I asked him what he meant, he said, "He just keeps talking nonstop."
The student then mentioned his social studies teacher who talks nonstop.

I have been in this social studies teacher's classroom with this student, and the teacher does talk forever. He lectures the class, gives them work that is entirely too hard for them, and refuses to take suggestions from the ECE teachers who have tried to get him to modify the work so that students can be successful. He is never prepared for class, which gives students entirely too much time to start talking, which he then lectures them about.

It is painful for me to be in the class, so I can't imagine how much it sucks to be a student in there day after day.

Perhaps it was the blend of hearing this student's words and reading Homegoing by Ya'a Gyasi, which is about colonialism in Ghana and slavery, that made me realize for the very first time:

Brown-skinned people are probably very sick of listening to white people yapping at them in the same way that, as a woman, I get tired of groups of men yapping at me about what I should do or think and making legislative decisions for me that they cannot possibly understand in an "I've been there" kind of way.

The recent Starbucks and Colorado State University situations, and now Yale University situation in which a black student had the police called on her for sleeping, makes me ashamed to be white. It has made me more aware of what thoughts go through my head whenever I am with brown-skinned people.

One of the things I think about is that I don't have to think about my skin color, usually ever. I don't have to think about how others will perceive me when I walk into a store or a restaurant.

Another thing I think about is whether I think someone is a threat just because they are brown-skinned.

A couple months ago, D and I were taking a walk in our neighborhood. We saw a black man with a package walking along with a confused look on his face. I asked him if I could help him, not because he was black, but because he looked lost. He was trying to deliver a package, so I told him where those neighbors lived. The entire time this was going on, inside my head, I was asking myself, "Did you ask him if he needed help mostly because he looked confused or mostly because he is black?"

I feel like as a white person, I second guess my intentions because of the other white people who see a brown-skinned person and automatically feel threatened (for reasons I can't fully understand).

The recent slate of 911 calls by white people makes me think of the old lady busybodies in neighborhoods, who stare out their windows and know what their neighbors are doing at all times. On the one hand, it is good to be aware, but individuals (regardless of their color) also have the right to be left.the.hell.alone.

I feel like I'm fairly aware of my own prejudices (although I also recognize that I probably have some that I'm not aware of).

I know for a fact that I make a concerted effort to help black students when I sub, and maybe this, in itself, is prejudiced. I do not do this because I think black students are dumber than white students. I do it because I feel strongly that they are ignored more often than white students. If I can do something to remedy this, in whatever minuscule measure I can, I do it. Plus, I feel like if I am helpful and compassionate in whatever capacity I can be, it helps them see that not every white person feels threatened or overreacts or paints all brown-skinned people with large strokes.

Last summer, our neighbors had a happy hour, and one of our black neighbors came (I think this was the first time ever.) He was sitting with everyone, but I felt that no one was making an effort to engage him directly or pull him into the conversation (it felt a little cliquey), so I did.

From my perspective, I wanted to include him, but I wonder sometimes whether that was perceived as me gushing over him (although I don't think I really give off that gusher vibe), which I know white people do sometimes with brown-skinned people in an effort to make them feel welcome, which usually results in them feeling weird and even more "outside" the circle than they might have felt.

It is very possible to know brown-skinned people, have brown-skinned friends or colleagues, and still have feelings of prejudice, even if you aren't aware of those feelings. I have a hard time understanding how anyone can say things like, "I didn't own slaves, so I think we've moved beyond that."

Blame it on reading books, but I very much see how the impacts of travesties linger for generations upon generations. Even if slavery ended in 1865, Jim Crow laws didn't. Brown versus Board of Ed was 1954, and the Civil Rights Act was in 1964. Those are not quite two, possibly three, generations in the past.

Due to the current political climate and the propaganda about how dangerous the US is (despite what the facts are), white people feel scared like every brown-skinned person is a threat waiting to happen.

I had to laugh when the woman who called the police on the Native American kids at Colorado State said something like she could tell they were lying when she asked them what they were going to study. My first thought was, "YOU ARE A STRANGER TO THEM SO WHAT BUSINESS IS IT OF YOURS WHAT THEY ARE GOING TO STUDY IN COLLEGE?"

Maybe those boys reacted strangely to her because they didn't feel like it was any of her business to question them? Maybe they could tell that she felt uncomfortable and was feeling them out which made them feel uncomfortable? Did she ever think that there are differences in how people communicate whether it is due to personality or culture? I don't necessarily speak to my 10-year-old the way I speak to an adult colleague, and teenagers don't speak to their friends the same way they do their teachers, so why would this woman think everyone speaks the same way she does?

There are an awful lot of white people living in a bubble of whiteness that is dangerous to brown-skinned people. Unfortunately, these bubbles also hurt the white folks because they miss out on a whole lot of understanding and relationships.