Impact, Intention, Attention and Choice
I've just read @Shaft's summary of trying to 'call in' a white person who believes they are an ally to people of color in the United States. His illustration of how that white-embodied person’s response “centers whiteness” sparks my own fresh, personal reflections on the challenges of undoing whiteness and preventing the socialization of embodied supremacy acting out through me and harming others.
Already I've made assumptions by describing the initial overture and subsequent explanations as calling in, and by describing Shaft's interlocutor, Mark, as a self-identified ally. To be clear from the outset, I agree that Mark has acted out whiteness. My motivation in responding is to expose my own growth curve in learning how even the most subtle actions I take can be infected by whiteness, and further, that attempts to explain why (or how) my actions could not possibly originate from any aspect of my white-embodied lived experience are an insidious mode of white supremacy.
Mark, I'm guessing you won't read this but if you do, please note that I have empathy for your position. I too want my expressions (on any topic, in every context) to be interpreted by others in the way that I desire or at least in the way that I expect.
It's the latter point that has been a focus of my own self-reflections for quite awhile. I've noticed in a huge variety of situations how thrown off I am when things don't go the way I think they're going to go. Usually this is an implicit expectation: I don't consciously realize that I have an expectation until the course of events is disrupted in a way that elicits an emotion. In my case, that emotion is nearly always either frustration or impatience. And, for a myriad of reasons which I won't elaborate here (tl:dr), my emotion usually shows.
Suddenly I'm in a situation where the other person(s) are witnessing and/or experiencing being, shall we say, 'on the receiving end' of my emotional expression. What does the frustration|impatience of a white cis lesbian look like to others? It usually ain't good: this seems to hold true regardless of similarity or differences of identity. It's a character flaw, a manifestation of my (mis)being in the world that I've been working on for a long time. What is it, I've been asking myself for most of my adult life, that I'm so attached to that I find myself unable to be flexible in a moment when "suddenly" it seems like things are "deviating" from a trajectory that I was moving along in an unproblematic way?
Looking at your situation, Mark, the statement in question seems (to me) an attempt at humor. You probably didn't literally think you were putting yourself in danger when you went to that concert [as a teenager?], did you? Then you arrived and enjoyed yourself until things suddenly changed. Maybe you had misjudged (or, more likely?) not even considered how 'welcome' or 'unwelcome' you might be at such an event? The bubble of white privilege (which, at the time, you probably weren't aware of as 'a thing') suddenly seemed like it could evaporate. I can imagine casting an event like that in the frame of humor, and anticipating that everyone would understand I'm processing a situation that was kinda scary.
Just like me, anticipating that (for instance) once a group has made a decision then we're all moving together, unproblematically, along identical trajectories indicated by that decision. This happened to me recently but is not by any stretch a new phenomena -- it's another manifestation of my same old problem: what is so hard for me about encountering another person whose mind/energy/heart/spirit is in a different place relative to any particular decision - and especially those that I thought were settled and synced?
The insight that finally clarified in my mind is to honestly explore if my 'attachment' to going along in a particular direction is a manifestation of my socialization as a white-embodied person in a society designed for white supremacy? Is this a way to 'keep control' because I have some sense of the terrain and boundaries if we continue along (what I now project) as a predetermined path? Do I react emotionally to even the possibility of a change because at some deep internal level I feel threatened? Note, the moment of difference isn't even a guarantee of change! Through conversation we might wind up ratifying the previous agreement (or what I believed was an agreement), or perhaps even improving it! Really, what is my problem in those moments? Because it is my problem if I'm manifesting emotions in a way that requires others to have to wade through their own emotions. My expectation that they should or even could interpret my emotional display as something simple, clean, and devoid of even potential harm is a demand to embrace, excuse, or adopt my worldview--in other words, for others to surrender to a privileged or even supremacist attitude.
I recently read an excerpt from bell hooks' famous book, Teaching Tolerance. Part of the argument she lays out is the intergenerational influence from white women's blatant disregard, double-standards, and racist judgement of black women who were forced, through slavery, into domestic servitude. Black women have inherited a deep mistrust of white women that white women earned and continue to perpetuate through our behaviors. Now, I could excuse myself from that through any number of linguistic maneuvers. But what happens if I actually try it on?
When I became able, just this past week, to realize that whether or not I want it, I am cloaked by rightful mistrust, this provides a whole new lens for understanding why and how my emotional expressions of impatience and frustration might be experienced as a kind of judgment, and if our identities are different enough, as a racist judgment. The fact that I have been impatient/frustrated with white-embodied persons in a wide range of circumstances does not excuse me from the fact of being responsible for triggering the memory or suspicion of hierarchy in those who have been intentionally and deliberately oppressed by hierarchy.
In other words, rather than claiming, defending, or further asserting my 'right' to my own emotional experience, the better response (more humane, more just, more equal, more respectful) is to own that my expression of those emotions can be harmful. This does not feel good. This does not make me happy. I am upset at the harmful effect on someone who I respect and admire, who is an excellent intellectual partner. How many times in the past has my entitled expression of emotion resulted in bad feelings? Obviously too many.
I need to get a grip on this. I need to learn how to pivot away from the expectation|attachment trap toward adaptability and acceptance (rather than surprise or even shock) when someone – anyone – comes at things from (what I experience as) an unexpected or unanticipated direction. It is the attachment that is the source of the problem. That attachment seems associated with time and timing, with things going in accord with my expectations, and -- more literally than I've ever realized before -- with maintaining a sense of personal control, which is how I feel safe. That's the enculturation of whiteness in white-embodied people, the way privilege manifests in such damn subtle ways.
