(Originally written May 2020)
Over the years in racial equity and social justice work, a pattern I’ve noticed in myself and other white folks is the tendency to externalize. When we begin learning about racism (often thanks to the unpaid or underpaid labor of our Black and brown colleagues, friends, advocates, and community members) one of the first things many white folks learn to do is “call it out!”
We become adept at identifying racism in tv or movies, in politics, history, maybe even in our family members or coworkers. But the closer the focus comes to ourselves, the blurrier the picture gets.
The first point of Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale’s "Ten Point Program" establishing the Black Panther Party is "We Want Freedom. We Want Power To Determine The Destiny Of Our Black Community.
The Combahee River Collective went beyond the mainstream feminist movement slogan “the personal is political” when writing their historic statement:
“There is also undeniably a personal genesis for Black Feminism, that is, the political realization that comes from the seemingly personal experiences of individual Black women's lives.”
Audre Lorde’s “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” centered personal experience and challenged whiteness:
“As women, we have been taught either to ignore our differences, or to view them as causes for separation and suspicion rather than as forces for change. Without community there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression. But community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist.”
Two and a half decades later in “Courageous Conversations About Race,” Glenn Singleton and Curtis London suggested that being “personal, local, and immediate” is the first condition for conversations about race. These are just a few of many examples calling for marginalized people to lead, while inviting privileged people to move from theory to personal practice.
What would it be like for white folks to get personal, local, and immediate in the deepest sense right now? I believe what history asks of us is to first get extremely clear about the ways that we as white folks are personally enacting white supremacy in this moment. I believe we must identify and interrupt where we further whiteness, while at the same time understanding how we too are being harmed by it.
How can white folks identify our own growth areas beyond saying or sharing the right things? What I notice as I navigate unemployment is that it’s easy for me to slip into scarcity and an increased sense of individualism around money, which makes me hesitant to invest in racial justice efforts because I feel no guarantee of more money coming into my own accounts.
I‘ve also found myself easily catastrophizing when my unemployment checks are late or when I was turned down for the few jobs I’ve interviewed for, as if my good credit, social capital, and assumed capability as a white person won’t allow me to get credit cards, find work, or identify other ways to bridge being laid off without ruin.
Challenging myself in these ways is deep and difficult self work to be sure, which surfaces my own background growing up with financial uncertainty, my lack of a college degree, and the unconscious bias I experience as a disabled trans person in hiring processes. And because it is challenging to do the work of examining this, I know it is the right work to do. It would be easy to use these other factors to brush off how I benefit from whiteness. It is harder to hold all of these truths and see them as intertwined. It is more difficult to examine the difference between, for example, feeling broke and being broke.
When I explore these nuances with other white folks, I often connect this with my experiences as a trans and non-binary person. Though transphobia is not the same as racism, there are similar flavors of externalizing which I believe stem from white supremacy. I can think of many cis (non-trans) people in my personal and especially professional life who have learned language and built ability to call out transphobia and gendered injustice. The problem is that they didn’t internalize these practices.
Those same folks professing allyship would take all of the airtime in meetings about trans issues. For the most part, these people held positions of decision-making power and would unconsciously act as gatekeepers, not allowing myself or other trans and non-binary colleagues the self-determination to work for our own communities. In subtle ways which they often weren’t even aware of, the colleagues in my life who considered themselves “cis allies” were and are responsible for creating many of the workplace barriers faced by me and other trans and non-binary folks.
When it comes to racial justice, I have often been on the other side of these examples: the privileged self-proclaimed “white ally” doing very similar things to unconsciously silence or burden Black and brown people. I have benefitted in hiring processes because it’s seen as exceptional for white people to do even mediocre work toward racial justice. I know that because of racism, it is easier for most white people to read about my experiences as a trans person than those of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color.
I don’t think I will ever completely shed these unconscious behaviors and benefits, and I am continuing to learn to ask myself: How much power am I willing to share? How do I react when challenged by people I have privilege over? How tightly do I hold onto the idea that I know best? If I believe that transphobia and other oppressions grow from the roots of white supremacy, then I also must be dedicated to divesting from whiteness.
What does this look like in the simplest terms? Right now, I am regularly donating 15-20% of my unemployment payments to Black and Indigenous-led groups or individuals. I am writing this (as all things justice-related) with citations and caveats to invite that this piece of writing should not be considered as simply insight from my brain or an end-point to my learning, but rather derived from the wisdom of the many many people of color who chose to teach me, directly and indirectly.
I must resist supremacy or feeling "better than" as I engage with fellow white folks in my life who decry the actions of Black community-led actions across the country or silence the racialized impacts of COVID. I must ensure that I am not distancing myself from other white folks as I do this, to see that I too am "those white people."
Again, if it was easy, then it probably wouldn’t be the right work. Because it is uncomfortable, it is probably where I need to bring deeper focus. I invite other white folks to join me in this unsettling space of looking inward for our most personal, political, local, and immediate actions.
Suggested places to donate, many learning resources, important information for those taking part in actions, and much more here: https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/#