Here is an interesting thing. This topic makes me… uncomfortable. It is the ultimate irony, I know. I am sitting here at my desk and giggling to myself as I have to pep talk myself into even starting this post. Ha! It’s uncomfortable to talk about being uncomfortable. Full Disclosure here: I am going to talk about my own personal experiences. Some things that come up may cause you personal discomfort. I am going to encourage you to lean into that and get curious about it. We will talk more about that later.
I could go very far back to when I was a kid and talk about ways that my assumptions of people, especially people with power, were proven wrong time and time again. I was in high school both when the Columbine shooting happened and 9/11. They were the bookends of my high school experience. I believed at the time that the “grown-ups” were doing every single thing within their power to protect us, the kids, from future violence and issues that would threaten us or put us in harms way. It turned out, the people who had Power didn’t do squat to make changes that could protect us. In fact, they made decisions that added to the gun violence epidemic and started a war that had massive repercussions on both a personal and global scale.
But we are going to go more recent. This is uncomfortable. You have been warned.
On February 26, 2012 a young Black man named Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in Sanford, FL. He was 17 years old and walking around a neighborhood with a hoodie on. It was dark and his hood was up. A Hispanic man named George Zimmerman saw him and went out to ‘investigate.’ We all know what happened. Trayvon had a bag of Skittles in his pocket. Zimmerman says he ‘felt threatened’ and believed there was a weapon in Trayvon’s pocket. He shot and killed him in the street. Zimmerman was arrested and later released. I’m not going to go into the details here but it was a whole big and complicated mess. Everyone seemed to have an opinion and if you didn’t agree, you were ‘wrong’ and Black people were saying it was all about race and white people were saying it wasn’t about race and meanwhile, Trayvon was dead and his killer was free. Zimmerman ultimately was not convicted. He is a free man today.
(This is Trayvon Martin. Photo is from AP Photo/Martin Family)
I did not go to law school. I am not an expert in how the judicial system works. But I do know that when you have a Default-like how the largest population in the US still identify as white and we live in a country that was founded by white people and for the success of white people… you will have a bias or a blind spot when it comes to the systemic impact of whiteness. Until you spend time unlearning the ways you have been conditioned to believe that you are superior in every way to Black people, people of color and indigenous people, you will have that built-in racism inside of you. You will still have it showing up in many ways even AFTER you begin your journey of Anti-Racism and deconstruction.
Guess who we all need to listen to when it comes to systemic issues? You need to go to the group of people that have been most oppressed by that system. The ones the System of Power, in this case, Whiteness, wants you to know are morally inferior. The ones they work the hardest to dehumanize and subjugate. In the case of the USA and its Whiteness, what is the group of people that has been the MOST dehumanized? The most oppressed? The most spat upon? Anyone?
Black people. They were LITERALLY STOLEN FROM THEIR INDIGENOUS LANDS AND FORCED INTO ENSLAVEMENT. Those choices and systems have repercussions. The result of creating a nation of Enslaved Black Individuals has been making its imprint on the generations that followed. I would highly encourage you to watch “13th” by Ava DuVernay to see how the line is drawn from Slavery to the Police Force and down to laws like Jim Crow and the civil rights movement as well as mass incarceration of Black people. It is a truly eye opening documentary.
There are many many names of Black people who have been killed in the United States. The ones that make the news are only a small percentage of the actual number of people who are killed. Black people killed by white people, often times by Police. We all know the name George Floyd. The Black man murdered by a white police officer while many people looked on a took videos in 2020. George Floyd called out for his mother while laying in the street with Officer Derek Chauvin’s knee on his neck, slowly emptying his lungs of breath and his brain of oxygen. I have since learned that there is a moment when the brain is on its way toward death that the person will call out for another person who is a secure attachment for them. So, even though George’s mother had died years before, he called out for her as he lost oxygen. His brain and body were already dying.
Heart. Shattered.
George Floyd’s murder set off a waking up and racial reckoning in the entire world. One that has led to more and more polarization. More white people deciding to stand next to Black people and POC and Indigenous folks and help them fight instead of placing themselves on a higher plane than them or thinking it was their job as white people to come in and ‘save’ the Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) people. And more (mostly white) people doubling down and insisting that the officer did the right thing and that George Floyd deserved it because he had a record and THC in his system.
It has been a long journey of profound growth and a lot of confronting of systems that are very solid and hard to challenge. The growth for the collective is slow. The individual growth can move along a lot more quickly.
When I think of who I am now and how I view the world, my whole outlook is different than it was 4 years ago. I have realized in many different ways that the systems of Power are not going to change overnight and not by magic. It takes interest, education, empathy, compassion and real conversations that are very challenging and uncomfortable. I suggest for white people who are curious about deconstructing from white supremacy an incredible book/workbook by Layla F Saad called “me and white supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor.” This is a deeply challenging look into the ways white people benefit from being white. And also the things we do or assume about other people who are not white. We have the privilege to insist that things just “aren’t about race” or that our kids don’t need to learn about “that kind of thing” because it will upset them. It sure may upset the white kids to learn that their ancestors were possible slave owners and contributed to the dehumanization of an entire Race. But if we don’t confront those things, we are doing that now. We are dehumanizing an entire race in the name of our own comfort. The scale may be different, but white people/we are contributing to the problems way more than helping get rid of them by staying silent or frozen in our boxes of privilege.
It tends to take something being directly in front of our faces for us to get how bad it is. That is why I would highly encourage you to lean in to Curiosity about this subject. Are you a white person? You have unconscious/implicit bias. That is a fact. It is hard to hear, especially when we white people have been raised to be “Good People.” We see racism as bad, because it is, and we see ourselves as good therefore we believe we simply cannot be racist. It is just not that Black and White. Good people are conditioned into beliefs that don’t serve themselves or the collective every single day. Ask Black parents if they can opt out of teaching their Black children about race. Ask them if they can choose not to teach their kids that there is implicit bias in the systems of justice, policing, education, society. They just don’t have a choice. If they have to learn about it so they can keep themselves safe from people trying to uphold the system… we can teach our white kids about the systems early so they can see it for themselves and work to change it from within. Black people don’t need us to ‘save’ them, they have been saving themselves from the absolute worst of humanity for generations. But the SYSTEM of white supremacy must fall. And White people must be the ones to break it to pieces. We can all come up with new creative solutions together, on footings that are equitable and flexible to meet with the new ideas. I know we can do it.
It starts with Curiosity, goes into Education (self-education, please pay Black educators for their work), keep it up with conversations with other people around you. Challenge the status quo. Challenge the people in Power systems. I am hopeful for the future and know there are many people working to create new solutions. I want to be a part of those groups. The ones trying to make it equitable and safe for everyone. We are all human beings. We are the same and we are different. We need each other and need ourselves. Lean into your discomfort. It is a guidepost that will show you where you need to learn.
I realized about 10 years ago that I had never had a Black teacher. Kindergarten-High School and 4 years of College and I NEVER had a black teacher. How can I think that I have learned all about the world around me when I have only ever had teachers that had the exact same skin color and similar economic circumstances as well as mostly White friends and family. The more homogenous your life is, the more you will need to be intentional about seeking out differences and ways to learn. You will grow more when you have a chance to experience the world with different points of view.
I want to mention. The names I talked about here are only a few. There are many more Black people who were murdered that have very much crushed me. Woke me up to the true problems with the current systems. Tamir Rice. He was 11 and playing with a toy gun at a park… shot and killed by a police officer. Philando Castille. Pulled over by police… shot and killed.
You get the idea. People want to tell you it’s political to care about the destruction of human life. Okay, you can call me Political. I care very much. Humans before systems, ideologies and dogma, ALWAYS.
I am going to share a few resources here that have been helpful to me. If you want a more comprehensive list you can email me at mattandstef23@gmail.com. I would love to talk more about ways you can educate yourself.
Sending love to you out there in the ether,
your friend in Discomfort,
Stef
Me and White Supremacy by Layla F Saad
Stamped from the Beginning by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X Kendi