On Losing Faith
A while back, I wrote something that I didn't share. I can't really remember if there was a specific incident that prompted it, but it was a little essay that went something along the lines of Black, indigenous, people of color have to live a life of forced empathy, that in a society in which white supremacy has been foundational, we have to live our lives constantly calibrating our positions to whiteness, white institutions, white history, white people, white feelings and though we must always know where whiteness stands, our proximity to whiteness will never protect us from violence. And I showed it to my white husband. Who, you know, said it contained some truths, but was also a rather blunt and painful tool. And so I put it aside to think about.
I could write about the strange micro-aggressions I face all the time. Some personal anecdote in which maybe you yourself are implicated. Or I could point out all the systemic ways our society fails those who fall outside the white, Christian, able-bodied, cisheteropatriarchy. The needless deaths of Black boys by police, the brown children in cages, the asylum seekers getting tear-gassed at the border, people with disabilities having their healthcare access threatened, the residential, educational and economic segregations of where we all live, go to school, work, do business. It really is all in front of us to see if we choose to. All the intimate ways racism plays out. All the structural ways too.
But what's the point? It's not just that we all may live inside echo chambers. Our connections, the ones to ourselves, our bodies, to each other, to the earth, to our implacable place in space and time, are all being eroded. I lack faith in the goodness of people only because it is so shallow. What does it mean to be a "good" person in a society that apportions its suffering and its power in such unaccountable, unjust ways?
We live in a shallow culture that is deeply uncomfortable with interrogation of the status quo. We teach our children that history happened a long time ago. Time and people are static snapshots to look back on. We don't show them how those stories are continual threads that reach into the present, how we are all linked by history. Indeed, we are made by history. Even a horrific one. And some of us, with enough privilege, can live a life that presumes the scars of history are healed; some can choose to exist inside this capitalist, patriarchal, imperial, white supremacist matrix without shame or guilt.
The question that my white husband had for me was what can white people do? It's such a primal question for white people, I think. It gets asked over and over again. As if the history of race in America hasn't already revealed the answer--use your relative power to demonstrably stand in solidarity with the liberation of all people. Instead, the question often gets framed as if non-white people are withholding some secret, painless, sacrificeless path to racial harmony, or a simple, palatable prescription regimen to cure society's ills. The onus is placed on marginalized people to not only prove our full and precious humanity, but also rehabilitate white privileged people's disconnected one.
Maybe it seems like white people have the most to lose in the future with its changing demographics and seeming power shifts. Certainly, there are lot of white people in this country who think so, who are willing to let corrupt, dangerous traitors rule them so long as "the right people are hurt" and they are still beneficiaries. I know that a lot of white people disagree with those sentiments too, but I do have to wonder how deep and entangled our racial loyalties are.
Like many Americans, I followed what was happening in the Nathan Phillips and Covington Catholic boys encounter in DC. I was not surprised by the back and forth of it in the media. The whole incident is emblematic of the two strains of U.S. history. One centered on whiteness and privilege, using wealth, means and connections, and arrogance to obscure an individual's culpability. The other centered on human dignity and a deep, battered but unbroken connection to history and sacred culture. I'm not surprised that some people watched those videos and chose to see themselves inside the adolescent smirk and frenzy, and others chose the steady drumbeat. What should white people do? Maybe stop being so damn disappointing and predictable. For once, don't try to rewrite history in your favor. Accept your shortcomings and commit to restoring your compassion and sense of justice. Seek the answer to this question within yourself, and maybe it will lead to you to the frayed and tenuous connection that the rest of us are still forced to hold onto at the other end.
I could write about the strange micro-aggressions I face all the time. Some personal anecdote in which maybe you yourself are implicated. Or I could point out all the systemic ways our society fails those who fall outside the white, Christian, able-bodied, cisheteropatriarchy. The needless deaths of Black boys by police, the brown children in cages, the asylum seekers getting tear-gassed at the border, people with disabilities having their healthcare access threatened, the residential, educational and economic segregations of where we all live, go to school, work, do business. It really is all in front of us to see if we choose to. All the intimate ways racism plays out. All the structural ways too.
But what's the point? It's not just that we all may live inside echo chambers. Our connections, the ones to ourselves, our bodies, to each other, to the earth, to our implacable place in space and time, are all being eroded. I lack faith in the goodness of people only because it is so shallow. What does it mean to be a "good" person in a society that apportions its suffering and its power in such unaccountable, unjust ways?
We live in a shallow culture that is deeply uncomfortable with interrogation of the status quo. We teach our children that history happened a long time ago. Time and people are static snapshots to look back on. We don't show them how those stories are continual threads that reach into the present, how we are all linked by history. Indeed, we are made by history. Even a horrific one. And some of us, with enough privilege, can live a life that presumes the scars of history are healed; some can choose to exist inside this capitalist, patriarchal, imperial, white supremacist matrix without shame or guilt.
The question that my white husband had for me was what can white people do? It's such a primal question for white people, I think. It gets asked over and over again. As if the history of race in America hasn't already revealed the answer--use your relative power to demonstrably stand in solidarity with the liberation of all people. Instead, the question often gets framed as if non-white people are withholding some secret, painless, sacrificeless path to racial harmony, or a simple, palatable prescription regimen to cure society's ills. The onus is placed on marginalized people to not only prove our full and precious humanity, but also rehabilitate white privileged people's disconnected one.
Maybe it seems like white people have the most to lose in the future with its changing demographics and seeming power shifts. Certainly, there are lot of white people in this country who think so, who are willing to let corrupt, dangerous traitors rule them so long as "the right people are hurt" and they are still beneficiaries. I know that a lot of white people disagree with those sentiments too, but I do have to wonder how deep and entangled our racial loyalties are.
Like many Americans, I followed what was happening in the Nathan Phillips and Covington Catholic boys encounter in DC. I was not surprised by the back and forth of it in the media. The whole incident is emblematic of the two strains of U.S. history. One centered on whiteness and privilege, using wealth, means and connections, and arrogance to obscure an individual's culpability. The other centered on human dignity and a deep, battered but unbroken connection to history and sacred culture. I'm not surprised that some people watched those videos and chose to see themselves inside the adolescent smirk and frenzy, and others chose the steady drumbeat. What should white people do? Maybe stop being so damn disappointing and predictable. For once, don't try to rewrite history in your favor. Accept your shortcomings and commit to restoring your compassion and sense of justice. Seek the answer to this question within yourself, and maybe it will lead to you to the frayed and tenuous connection that the rest of us are still forced to hold onto at the other end.
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