Tag Archives: racism

Now it Can Be Told: The Case of the Missing Blogger (Me)

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“The drought is over, precious rain’s returned at last…” is how a song of mine begins. That lyric’s been in my head these days, because even though our particular Pacific Northwest drought ended a month ago, in my personal climate, it’s just beginning to sprinkle. This post promises to be the first downpour in months.

Got your umbrella handy?

drought-stressed cedar

Although I’m a writer, I don’t tend to use this blog to talk about writing—with exceptions, of course, when I have actual Author Events to report, like a new book.

Has it really been four years?!

If you scroll through the last couple of years, you won’t find more than passing references to the writing project I’ve been working on since traveling to New Zealand  for research in early 2019 (and before that, in 2017). Casual readers of Wing’s World as well as casual friends could easily assume, if Gretchen’s not blogging about writing, it’s because she’s busy actually, you know…writing.

So what to assume when she stops blogging at all? Shrug emoji.

To make a short answer long: I stopped blogging this summer because my writing project stalled so thoroughly that I temporarily lost my identity as a writer. Yeah, I dabbled in poetry, wrote a few articles for local publications. But having lost control of my larger writing goal, I didn’t feel Wing’s World had anything to contribute.

I’ve been waiting. Thinking. Journaling. Keeping silent, then talking. Mourning a little. And finally, just now—planning. And Step One of this plan involves telling y’all about it.

The best way to tell this story is to share the pitch I had been working on, with my then co-author, who will remain nameless here. Take it away, GW & __.

Book Proposal (V.8) for The Limits of Empathy: Why a White Author Ran in Black Shoes—and Took Them Off

These phrases—white fragility, white defensiveness, white appropriation—have a habit of standing in for the complicated mess of a true conversation. –Claudia Rankine, Just Us

Just how messy, how complicated, is “true conversation”? Is that why so few people are actually having them?

Systemic white supremacy—intentional and enabled—has become a red-hot literary topic: in the summer of 2020, fifteen of Amazon’s top twenty books dealt with race and racism. 

Right on. I read Kendi and DiAngelo. Now what?

What indeed?

Entitlement. Exceptionalism. Deniability. That’s what white author Gretchen Wing discovered after writing a novel with a protagonist of Color. The Limits of Empathy: Why a White Author Ran in Black Shoes—and Took Them Off will be the first book to expose how white supremacy culture unspools silently onto the fictional page despite the best of intentions. Through the medium of conversation—complicated and messy—between its Black and white co-authors, The Limits of Empathy probes the implications of writing across the racial divide.

In a mix of literary case study and cautionary tale, Wing splays Kiwi Crossover—the fast-paced tale of an elite biracial American collegiate runner who flees to New Zealand to escape her trauma—on the examining table for her Black co-author, ____, and readers, to dissect. In the process, ____ and Wing demonstrate the next level of the ongoing dialog on race which Claudia Rankine alludes to in Just Us, but which no current anti-racism book offers.

Like Americans everywhere on the streets in the summer of 2020, the authors came together on the question of what matters. Meeting online with one purpose—to edit Kiwi Crossover—they discovered another: to expose and discuss, with care and personal vulnerability, the limits of authorial empathy. Who gets to tell whose stories, and when, and why?

In his critique of Kiwi Crossover, ____ illuminates how our lived experiences of race can erect a barrier too solid for good intentions to pass…and why those good intentions may cause more harm than understanding. The authors’ mutual pathfinding through this thorny thicket gives hope not only to writers and readers of fiction, but for anyone who yearns to bridge divides of understanding.

If published as originally planned, Kiwi Crossover could have joined the controversial ranks of The Help and American Dirt: another white narrative written from the perspective of a Person of Color. But Fate had other ideas.

First, in early 2020, seeking race-focused critique more stringent than that of her Black friends, Wing hired a recommended editor: ____, a Black man (married to a white woman, father of biracial children). That same week, Breonna Taylor was murdered by police, though national media took a full forty-four days to notice. Three days after Taylor’s murder was exposed, Ahmaud Arbery’s execution finally made national news, along with the horror of its having been ignored a full two months. And twenty-six days later, on May 25, George Floyd was tortured to death…and the Movement for Black Lives swelled around the world. By the time ____ submitted his notes, Wing no longer trusted her ability nor right to portray biracial protagonist, Delaney Grace. Kiwi Crossover appeared stillborn.

Facing the death of her novel, Wing felt the insistence of a transformational choice: the novel’s autopsy suddenly outweighed the story itself. So she asked ____ to join as co-author to examine how white supremacy culture had invaded her own work of fiction. He agreed.

Contents

The book’s structure immerses the reader in conversation. First, a brief, wry dialog between Wing and ____ invites the reader into their mindset as they face their daunting work. A preface entwines their personal stories: who they are, how they came to this moment together. Next, the main body of the book: the page-turning beat of Kiwi Crossover front and center (200 pages), with red flags on the margins. Those red flags signal “let’s talk,” and at the end of each flagged chapter, ____ and Wing do just that. Starting with ____’s comments, questions and discussion about the novel’s assumptions and blind spots, the conversation delves and winds through layers and mazes of understanding between two people of different race and gender. In what Claudia Rankine calls “the complicated mess of a true conversation,” ____ and Wing raise more questions than answers, but attest to the value of the questions themselves. The book concludes with Authors’ Q & A, and Discussion Questions for individuals and study groups to examine their own assumptions, or have their own conversations.

Still with me? Good.

The book proposal continues, as good nonfiction pitches should, with suggested readership, and ends with a roundup of seven comparable books, ranging from Ibrahim X. Kendi to Ijeoma Oluo. I wrote draft #8 in May, then sat back to wait for ___’s edits and suggestions. Since ___ is both a teacher and a parent of young children, I knew I shouldn’t expect anything from him until June. The poor guy was exhausted from a year+ of teaching and parenting under COVID, not to mention all the stress of Black people being constantly manhandled and murdered. He deserved a rest. We had all summer to get back to work together.

Then, on Memorial Day weekend, ___’s sister was found dead in her house. No explanations.

I gave him lots of space, checking in occasionally just to see how he and the family were doing. No doubt in my mind that our project was on hold. I just didn’t realize for how long.

Time to make this long story short. In September, ___ and I finally checked in with each other through more than just texting. In a long phone conversation, he acknowledged that his suppressed grieving had plunged him into a summer-long depression from which he was only now beginning to emerge. I said what I knew I had to say: “___, you’re too kind to do it yourself, so I’m going to pull the plug on our project. Your heart’s in the right place, but you just don’t have the capacity right now.” His response: “My therapist will thank you.”

Since that conversation, the rains have finally returned.

Drink up, thirsty Earth!

My own extended family’s tribulations also suddenly increased, causing the death of my/our book project to seem like that Casablanca-esque “hill o’ beans in this crazy world.” Only now, having given myself several hours of journaling-for-clarity as a 60th birthday present, has my personal drought loosened its grip.

I have worked up to a new idea: to turn this entire saga into a magazine article and pitch that. ___ has given his blessing. He even gave his blessing to this post. Thanks, ___.

What do you think? Have I piqued your interest? Does this sound like an article you’d read? Be kind but honest, please. I’m ready for the rain.

Ibram X. Kendi Says,”This is the Book I’ve Been Waiting For.” I Say: Yep.

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Kendi’s blurb tops all the praise on the back of Heather McGhee’s The Sum of Us. And if Kendi–Professor Antiracism himself–has been waiting for this book, this research, this analysis, how much more do the rest of us stand to gain from paying attention?

The full title is, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together.

At the high school where I taught, one of my favorite principals used to say, “Tell the truth and point towards hope.” McGhee’s title does just that, and so does her book’s contents.

McGhee’s chief metaphor for the costs of racism, whose image graces her cover, is the destruction of public swimming pools all across America, following orders to desegregate them in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board decision. Cities and towns of all sizes literally poured concrete into their pools or bulldozed them rather than let Black people swim there. As a result, everyone lost:

“Over the next decade [1960s], millions of white Americans who once swam in public for free began to pay rather than swim for free with Black people…The classless utopia faded, replaced by clubs with two-hundred-dollar membership fees and annual dues. A once-public resource became a luxury amenity, and entire communities lost out on the benefits of public life and civic engagement once understood to be the key to making American democracy real.” (p. 28)

McGhee, an expert in economic and social policy, goes on to demonstrate this “close the pools” reaction–and its evenhandedly negative effects on communities–in more current policies such as the expansion of Medicaid (nearly all Republican-led states refuse it, even though the people who most stand to benefit are the poor whites calling it communism); the fight against raising the minimum wage; and the choice of southern white automobile workers to vote down a union.

From the beginning–Bacon’s Rebellion in 1675, when poor whites and Blacks joined forces and scared the pie out of the ruling class–McGhee shows how the ruling class has used race to keep poor whites attached to “zero-sum” thinking: Any gain of a racial minority means a loss for me. Through her narrative, it’s not hard to understand why generations have chosen racial identity over any other potential benefit, be it wages or cool water on a hot summer day.

I knew this. Ibram X. Kendi knows this. I’m willing to bet you knew it too. And most of us probably knew that the Brown v. Board decision outlawing segregation in public institutions relied heavily on psychological research that showed the damaging effect of segregation on Black children–the famous “doll tests.”

But here’s something neither I, nor my Constitutional Law-professor Mate, knew. Take it away, Ms. McGhee:

But there was another path from Brown, one not taken, with profound consequences of our understanding of segregation’s harms. The nine white male justices ignored a part of the social scientists” appendix that also described in prescient detail the harm segregation inflicts on “majority” children. White children “who learn the prejudices of our society,” wrote the social scientists, were “being taught to gain personal status in an unrealistic and non-adaptive way.” They were “not required to evaluated themselves in terms of the more basic standards of actual personal ability and achievement.” What’s more, they “often develop patterns of guilt feelings, rationalizations and other mechanisms which they must use in an attempt to protect themselves from recognizing the essential injustice of their unrealistic fears and hatreds of minority groups.” The best research of the day concluded that “confusion, conflict, moral cynicism, and disrespect for authority may arise in [white] children as a consequence of being taught the moral, religious and democratic principals of justice and fair play by the same persons and institutions who seem to be acting in a prejudiced and discriminatory manner.” (p. 182-3)

When I read this, it knocked me breathless. Those quotes from the early 50’s sound like they’re describing white folks of 2021. And I’m not just talking about the “confused” folks who carried the Confederate flag into the capitol building. I’m talking about people like me, “nice white people,” who, in middle age, are just starting to acknowledge what we’ve lost by living whole lives without close friends of other races.

[photo “Hermandad” by Rufino, Wikimedia Commons]

But. I told you this book’s title promises hope, and the book delivers. McGhee constantly pivots to examples of what she calls the Solidarity Dividend: white and Black workers in Kansas City joining together to win a $15 minimum wage; conservative Connecticut passing “a raft of popular public-interest bills” like paid sick days and public financing of elections; the 95% white town of Lewiston, Maine, at death’s door economically, embracing African immigrants to bring itself back to life. McGhee ends with a clarion call:

Since this country’s founding, we have not allowed our diversity to be our superpower, and the result is that the United States is not more than the sum of its disparate parts. But it could be. And if it were, all of us would prosper. (p. 289)

God knows it’s hard to feel optimistic at this moment in our history. But these concrete examples show what is possible because they already exist. If we all keep pointing to them, divisive fear will stand less of a chance.

Question for y’all: have you seen this Solidarity Dividend in action? Please share.

The Big Antiracism “Now What?”: Can There Be Angels in the Details?

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Erin Aubry Kaplan, in her op-ed in the New York Times, “Everyone’s an Antiracist. Now What?” makes a rather devastating point: Congratulations, White People. You have arrived…at the beginning of something:

Recognizing that Black people matter as much as all other Americans is only acknowledging what’s always been true. Embracing Blackness as a something of value and dignity is a baseline for progress, not progress; it is moving into position at the starting line, but it is not the race.

I am finding my days heartened currently by the scope of racial education among people and groups who have, like me, always assumed themselves to be “good,” “non-racist” folks without doing any real work to back up that assumption. People who’ve coasted on privilege for generations (like me) are finally scrutinizing that fact and grappling with the implications. BUT, as Kaplan writes,

But this is all part of Step 1. Being truly antiracist will require white people to be inconvenienced by new policies and practices, legal and social, that affect everything in everyone’s daily lives, from jobs to arts and publishing.

It’s one thing to declare your support for Black Lives Matter with a lawn sign and quite another to give up segregated schools, or always seeing yourself and people like you as the center of the moral universe. The privilege to not engage is one that many may be loath to give up, even if they believe engagement is the right thing to do.

This is the part where people usually say, “Yeah, antiracism’s great, but the devil’s in the details.” As in: what do you mean by antiracist work? What if it’s not only inconvenient by messy, complicated, hard, threatening?

To that thought–my own thought!–I am trying to give this reply: What if those aren’t devils but angels in the details? What if we can find our own redemption as a dominant race by taking some nitty-gritty steps toward REAL equality, REAL justice? Doesn’t that sound like a blessing to you?

So, for my own work, my own “angels,” I am committing to the following:

  1. actively engage in the struggle to protect voting rights in “battleground” states, by phone-banking to promote mail-in balloting, along with promoting progressive candidates from the bottom to the top of the ballot; continue to mail letters to individual voters to urge their participation in November
  2. continue to advocate, through phone calls and email, for the closure of the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, WA, run by the private prison company Geo Group
  3. continue to educate myself about the American carceral state, to see what else needs advocating for (restoration of voting privileges for former felons? prison defunding? what else?)
  4. look for opportunities to support Black businesses, like WeBuyBlack.com (gorgeous dresses!)
  5. stay open to calls for action from organizations like Color of Change, using the privilege of my free time to advocate on specific cases of injustice whenever I have a moment

    Not gonna lie–it’s a tough read.

When I find myself foot-dragging on any of the above actions–which, face it, are not inherently fun–all I have to do is re-read Kaplan’s line: The privilege to not engage is one that many may be loath to give up, even if they believe engagement is the right thing to do.

Photo Courtesy of Color of Change.org

I admit, I’m writing this as much to keep myself motivated as anything. Privileged non-engagement is very, VERY comfortable. That’s why I’ve lived there for most of my life.

Anyway–thanks for reading about my commitments. I’d love to read about yours! Please share your current or next steps, wherever you are on this journey.

 

White, Horrified and Helpless: Six Ways to Find Your Direction

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Let’s say you’re White. Let’s say you’re not in close touch with many People of Color. Let’s say the reality of being Black in America is coming home to you in a deeper way than it ever has. Let’s say you are feeling ready to do more than just feel bad, attend a demonstration or write a check. Let’s say you are wondering where to start.

That was me, following the election of 2016. From what I’m hearing and seeing on social media, it’s a lot more people now. If it’s you, please keep reading.

Since struggling in the winter of 2016-17, I’ve begun to find some direction, some guidance. I would like to share it here.

  1. First, rip off your emotional blinders. Read Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

    This book is soul-changing.

  2. Learn the history you never knew you needed to know: Wherever you can fit it into your day, listen to episodes of the podcast “Seeing White” by John Boewin, with special guest Chenjeria Kumanyika.
  3. Get personal with that history. Read The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson.

    Better yet, read it with a friend.

  4. Turn the lens on yourself. Read Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility or Debbie Irving’s Waking Up White. Or both.

    Start a book group.

  5. Reach out. Investigate groups you may have never heard of, like Color of Change. What work are they doing? Do you want to support it, and if so, how? Watch Netflix shows like “Dear White People” or “BlackAF”–they’ll make you laugh while your mind is expanding. Read People of Color. Listen to People of Color. Think about what you’ve never thought about. Think about where this country has an opportunity to go.
  6. Get involved with a group like VoteForward or Common Purpose to defeat Donald Trump. While we find a way to move forward, we have to keep our country from sliding further backward. How can you help?

    Racism is like COVID, or cancer. If you can’t study it and talk about it, you can’t cure it.

You know and I know, it is no longer possible just to dislike racism. We are either doing anti-racist work–starting with ourselves–or we are permitting racism to hold its grip. Please add your own suggestions here for what people like you, like me, or ANY people can do.

Fighting the Empathy Dearth: How Do We Feel What Has Not Been Ours To Feel?

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Even a blind Republican could see that Brett Kavanaugh was lying last week…about his drinking history, at the very least. The sight so many powerful men choosing to ignore this professedly devout Christian’s breaking of the 9th Commandment filled me, like so many others, with disgust.

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford swearing in (courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

But the root of their hypocrisy and misogyny is something more basic, and more troubling…a dearth of empathy. These men simply cannot see life through a woman’s eyes.

This may sound shocking, but guys–I understand. As a white person, I’ve been struggling for some time now to see our world, country, daily life for goodness’ sake! from the perspective of a person of color.

Empathy is HARD.

Empathy requires humility: “How much in the past have I unwittingly been part of the white supremacist structure?”

Empathy requires focus: “Imagine how Philando Castile’s family is feeling right now, as the President–ooh, shiny! Gotta revise my to-do list. Do I need to get milk?…wait, where was I? Oh yeah, Philando Castile…”

Empathy requires commitment: “I’m going to read this book/listen to this podcast/have this conversation even though it’s going to make me horribly uncomfortable about being white.”

And empathy requires change. What kind of change? Depends. Which means empathy also requires acceptance. Which brings us back to humility.

Not the dominant trait of white male Senators. It hasn’t had to be. What kind of humiliation have they ever experienced? I’m not talking about work performance or being rejected by a girl on the dance floor. When have they ever been humbled, brought low, much less threatened, because of their race and gender?

Individually, it appears possible to infuse empathy by trapping a lone white male Senator in an elevator. But there isn’t a big enough elevator for all the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, and if there were more than one in there at a time, they’d just maintain eye contact with each other.

Out of ideas, out of elevators, I’m back to this: Empathy is hard, and I’m going to stick to my own work in that department. If you’re white and working on your own work, please read on.

I owe these excerpts to several women, who have passed them along: first, author Iris Graville. Second, author Heidi Barr, whose post Listen to Black Women Iris re-blogged. Third, and most importantly, author/teacher Layla F. Saad, whose post I Need to Talk to Spiritual White Women was listed as a resource on Heidi’s blog.

Layla F. Saad, photo by Anter Blackbird on Saad’s blog

This passage from Layla Saad struck me especially as I think about the empathy dearth. Notice how many times she uses the word “imagine.”

…I am a black muslim woman. I carry within me both the experience from my own lifetime of racism and discrimination, and the collective trauma of belonging to a people who were slaves for centuries.

Last year… I remember reading about the witch burnings. And how, as women and modern day witches and priestesses, we carry this trauma of being burned with us even today. And how that fear holds us back from speaking up and being seen in our full wild mystic power. I see many women in the spiritual community who understand just how much of a trauma this is for women, and who are doing the deep work of healing the witch wound and reclaiming their right to be here in their full authentic presence.

But can you imagine how it is for people of colour?

Can you imagine the trauma we carry from centuries of slavery, police brutality, discrimination and racial hatred?

The witch burnings happened at one period of time and yet we still remember. Imagine how it is for black people and people of colour. The hateful treatment against us never ended. It just went underground. And now it is resurfacing, emboldened by leaders like Donald Trump and others like him.

This weekend the KKK marched without their hoods. Do you understand what that means?

Can you imagine if a powerful group rose up in the western country you live in who wanted to burn women as witches, and they were seen as being legitimised by the country’s president? That sounds ridiculous right? And yet an angry mob of KKK white supremacists just marched with burning torches screaming racist and anti-semitic slogans in Charlottesville USA this weekend. And Donald Trump and others have said too little, too late.

Can I imagine how it is for Black folks in this country? Not fully…but it is my responsibility to try. Can men imagine how it is for women in this country? Not fully…but it is their responsibility to try.

Anecdotes, personal stories…those seem to work better. Here’s one from Saad:

The house I grew up in, in Wales, was right next to a children’s park.

My brother and I would go there everyday by ourselves, especially when the weather was good, to play on the swings and slides. We loved that park.

But one day, when I was about 6 or 7 years old, a new boy started coming to play at the park.

And the first time I saw him, he sneered at me and told me that my skin was the colour of poop.

My face still feels red just thinking about it. I felt so ashamed. I couldn’t say a thing. All I felt was the shame of being in the skin that I was in. Of not being white like everyone else. I ran straight home with tears in my eyes.

After that day I refused to go to the park anymore without my mum. I never told her what happened. I felt too ashamed to even say it to her. I believed that everyone must be laughing at me and people who looked like me, because our skin looked like the colour of poop. I took that shame and buried it deep inside myself. I internalised this idea that I was other. That I was in some way, wrong. And that I was less than. And most damaging of all, that I did not deserve to be seen, because you know, my skin was the colour of poop. I recognise how ridiculous that sounds now, but as a 7 year old I took it as total truth.

As I make my way forward into this week, I will continue the work of empathy, creating my own “elevator moments” through reading and listening…and pondering the question, “How can we help someone feel what has not been theirs to feel?”

Remembering An Awful Day: The Murder of Dr. King

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April 4, 1968. I was six. I remember looking down from the top of the stairs to see my mother looking up. She was crying.

Courtesy Wikimedia

If you are old enough to remember the day Martin Luther King died, where were you?

If you are too young to remember…here’s a song for you. It’s about Coretta, because April 4, 1968 was worse for her than for any of us.

 

Coretta

 

Every city in this land got a street named for your man;

We celebrate his birthday, we sing and hold hands.

But sometimes I wonder if we’d ever be here

If you hadn’t stood beside him for all of those years.

                        All of those years…imagine the tears.

                        Coretta Scott King, your name hardly appears.

 

Lovely young soprano, Alabama to Ohio:

Your music could’ve carried you even further, you know.

But Martin sweeps you off your feet, or you sweep him,

And you’re swept into the movement, sink or swim.

                        Sink or swim…opposition is grim.                     

                         Montgomery Bus Boycott is the first big win.

 

 

Martin’s filling up the jails, says that love will never fail              

And you’re right there with him, center of the gale.

But your four little children can’t be left alone

And Martin says their mama needs to stay at home.

                        Stay at home, keep the children calm.                          

                        Thank the Lord you are out when your house gets bombed.

 

 

Klan don’t need to wait for dark; Selma’s like their personal park.           

Cross the Pettus Bridge to face Sheriff Clark.

On that Bloody Sunday you can hear the cries

With your hands in the laundry and your eyes on the prize.

                        Eyes on the prize…when a martyr dies                                  

                        Best step aside, feel the power rise.

 

Martin goes to Memphis town; hand of hate cuts him down.          

Now they’re looking to you to lead ’em to high ground.

You’re still in shock, you don’t know what to feel

But just like Martin, you’re made of steel.

                        Made of steel…Lord, this is real:               

                        41 year-old widow of a slain ideal.

 

So you take up Martin’s cross, learn to be a movement boss         

And you march and you rally and you  pay the cost.

You tell your fellow women to embrace their role:

“If you want to save the nation, you must become its soul.”

                        Become its soul…it took its toll.    

                        But Coretta, look around, we’re approaching the goal.*

 

 

For over thirteen thousand days, you walked those weary ways      

Speaking out against the war, supporting the gays.

For the poor and persecuted you carried the flame

And never got a monument. Ain’t it a shame?

       Ain’t it a shame? No one’s to blame.                              

                        But Coretta Scott King, we remember your name.

                        Ain’t it a shame? No one’s to blame.

                        But Coretta Scott King, we remember your name.          

 

G. Wing, March 2013

*I wrote this song in a more optimistic time. Not sure I still believe that goal’s getting any closer

White Privilege, Part…II? XVIII? Who’s Counting?

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The US election of 2016 ushered me, like a lot of folks, into a new era of reading, listening, and discussion, all aimed at understanding, to paraphrase Hillary, “What the Hell Just Happened (And What Does it Mean)?”

I quickly figured out that it was mostly my fellow white people who were asking that question. People of Color (whom I’ve mostly just been reading and listening to, since leaving very-colorful Tacoma for this very-white island 7 years ago) not only sounded less surprised on the whole, but also less shook. The overall message seems to be more along the lines of, “Really? Didn’t see this coming?”

For these thinkers, Trump isn’t the blacklight lighting up the creepy-crawlies in the sofa cushions; he’s just one more creepy-crawly in a house whose infestation was built into its foundation-–which some of us have been noticing only intermittently. I realized I had something to learn.

One of the most powerful passages of one of the most powerful books I’ve read this past year comes from Ta-Nahesi Coates’ Between The World And Me. He writes of the Dream—NOT Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream,” but quite the opposite. This Dream, to Coates, is the illusion of fundamental American fairness, decency and democracy that middle class whites cling to in order to feel good about living the way we do when we know others have not been, and still are not, able to live that way.

The mettle that it takes to look away from the horror of our prison system, from police forces transformed into armies, from the long war against the black body, is not forged overnight. This is the practiced habit of jabbing out one’s eyes and forgetting the work of one’s hands. To acknowledge those horrors means turning away from the brightly rendered version of your country as it has always declared itself and turning toward something murkier and unknown.

Coates concludes that stark paragraph with this statement:

It is still too difficult for most Americans to do this. But that is your work. It must be, if only to preserve the sanctity of your mind. —pp. 88-89

I think I might change that last word to “soul,” or perhaps “heart,” because I feel Coates’ challenge more there than in my mind. And for me the challenge is not to change my opinion about America so much as it is to change my focus. To think about what I haven’t had to think about. And to let new voices have my ear.

One such new voice I heard recently on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show: Grammy-winner Chance the Rapper, debuting his new song, “First World Problems,” accompanied by Daniel Caesar.

Son One likes Chance and Caesar, and urged me to listen. I now urge you to do the same. Not your style of music? It’s not mine either. But give this song—pun intended—a chance. And pay attention to the lyrics.

These lyrics especially–notice the connection with Coates’ Dream?

[Verse 3: ]
Three verses, hell yes
I still ain’t get my Grammys in the mail yet
I just want my mama happy like a toy sale
And to stay connected to the world like a long-ass voicemail
I hear the seams snappin’, and I’m the team captain
No more knee slappin’ or shoe shinin’ or shoe signin’
‘Til the dream happens, I’m just gon’ keep rappin’
And y’all just keep clappin’ and keep actin’ like
Flint got clean water and y’all don’t got teen daughters
And black friends and gay cousins, y’all just gon’ say nothin’
Know that the day comin’, knees bowed, tongues confessin’
The last ones gettin’ first dibs on blessings

[Pre-Chorus 2: Chance The Rapper]
Now these the first world problems that niggas make up
Keep on playin’, we gon’ shake this shit up
Keep on tellin’ us we makin’ it up
The American Dream, may you never wake up

[Outro: Chance The Rapper & Daniel Caesar]
The day is on its way, it couldn’t wait no more
Here it comes, ready or not, ready or not
Ready or not, ready or not, ready or not
The day is on its way, it will not wait another day
No more, no more (it’s on its way, way, yeah)
The day is on its way, I cannot wait, here it’s to stay
No more, no more (it won’t wait, yeah)
The day is on its way, it couldn’t wait no more
Here it is  

Now—think about what you are thinking about. And let me know. Keep the conversation going.

 

“I Do…Right?” Maybe It’s Time For An American Recommitment Ceremony

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You may have noticed I have some strong opinions. But one of them, which has been gaining strength since Trump’s inauguration, is this: I don’t want my own strong opinions irrevocably dividing me from my fellow Americans.

Easier said than done, when most of what I see and hear through the media fills me with reactive rage, disgust, and sorrow. But rage, disgust and sorrow are exhausting. So the temptation is to stick with my tribe, to talk only with  people who feel the same way, and to shut out the “ugly voices.”

Problem is, we’re all in this together—”this” being This American Experiment.

All in this together. “Togetherness,” by Author Woldh, October 2015, courtesy Wikimedia

So when I venture outside my tribe, I try to connect over shared values: music. Food. Sports. Children. Animals. And when I’m alone, I make myself read articles and listen to podcasts that force me to consider the downside of my own tribalism.

Recently I was struck by this bit from an “On Being” podcast—a dual interview with an Indian-American journalist from Ohio and an activist from rural White Tennessee. Here’s the journalist, Anand Giridharadas:

…the word that comes to me is “commitment.” … You’re committed to your home… in a way that…almost sounds more like the way people talk about marriage. You’re not there because you know it’s gonna be good; you’re willing to be there even if it’s not great. And I think what’s happened to us is that we’re not committed to each other as a people, so it’s almost like we are in this kind of situation where any disappointment that we encounter in our fellow citizens is like a reason to break up, and any deviation from deeply fulfilling each other as fellow citizens is like a tragedy. And part of commitment as a citizen is embracing other people’s dysfunction, and embracing other people’s incompleteness, because you know you have your own. And we’ve ended up in resistance to each other.

Embracing other people’s dysfunction? Does that mean their racism or homophobia? I don’t want to do that. But if I do nothing but entrench myself against it, nothing changes. So if “embrace” means “engage with, talk to, try to understand…” OK. MAYBE I can do that. No promises. But I can try.

The activist in that interview, Whitney Kimball Coe, had this response:

… I’m always thinking about how do I show up? How do I show up in the world and in my community and beyond, and am I going to show up with an open mind, an open heart, and with curiosity? Or am I going to go in, guns blazing, looking for a high for my ego, and see if I can nail this interview right now…? And it’s such a freeing way to live, if you can approach all of these interactions from a more open, curious perspective. That’s where I am, these days — ‘How am I bringing myself into a space?’

The journalist replies with a suggestion I love:

We live in an age that loves the solution. One of the things you experience, when you’re a writer in this age who tries to partake in an age-old tradition of writing as criticism, as holding up a mirror…is that you get shamed for not offering solutions…When we actually relax our need for solutions, I think we create space for…curiosity, when…instead of saying, “How do you solve this?” — if you like Ta-Nehisi Coates’s work or are provoked by it, instead of being like, “OK, what’s your plan?” — let’s start some curiosity. What does he make you curious about? If you’re white, what does he make you — now that you’re unsettled or angry or agreeing or whatever, what are you left curious about?

The host of “On Being,” the articulate Krista Tippett, finishes with a quote from the journalist, stating our challenge:

“It is hardly the fault of the rest of us that those wielding unearned privilege bristle at surrendering it. But it is our problem. The burden of citizenship is committing to your fellow citizens and accepting that what is not your fault may be your problem.”

And Anand Giridharadas sums up, in his response, my entire point here, using that marriage metaphor:

I think the despair is that we’ve fallen not just out of love, but out of interest with each other. I actually think more and more of us love “our” America, but don’t necessarily love America or Americans. We love the ones we love. We love the ones who love us. It’s kind of become like a bad college relationship. We’re a country peopled by these rowdy, restless gamblers who tried to make it work, and I think we have lost our way. But I think if we can remember that the whole enterprise here is simply to try to make it work — that’s the experiment. That’s it…We’re not trying to make it work to create wealth. We’re not trying to make it work to create innovation. We’re not trying to make it work to restore some illusory, lost greatness. We’re trying to make it work to make it work — and if we can make this work, it perhaps suggests that the world is not one as a world, but the world is actually one here, in America. What a great, great thing to try.

America, I want to keep trying. Let’s keep talking.

 

White Privilege for Dummies (Like Me)

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I have been thinking about white privilege, trying to articulate its meaning…then here comes this teacher who just sums the whole thing up visually:

(…with thanks to Allison Snow, from whose Facebook page I first saw this, and datniggakel, whose YouTube I used.)

As this worthy teacher/coach would probably say after a lesson: “Any questions?”

Scrubbing Our American Nooks and Crannies: Racism and Other Filth

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I don’t want to write about Charlottesville. I don’t even want to THINK about Charlottesville.

Last weekend I was in a sleep-deprived daze, going straight from wilderness camping to back-to-back days at my bakery job. And the Mate was out of town. I didn’t see any news, and since the twentysomethings I work with were even more exhausted than I, we talked mostly of cinnamon rolls and music.

Now the Mate is back home, the news is back on, and a weight has settled in my stomach, completely at odds with the fresh, beautiful view I see from our window.

So I’m going to write about my kitchen floor. It’s spotless again. So is the nook behind the toaster, and the gap between the dish drainer and the wall. Because–as I just mentioned–the Mate is back home.

It’s not that I’m a terrible housekeeper. I’m great fine perfectly quite competent. I keep my dishes washed and my counters wiped. But somehow, when the Mate is away for any length of time, my kitchen starts looking filthy.

It’s not that he’s a major cleaner. He’s a MINOR cleaner. He wipes a different spot each day, making the rounds. Today: behind the toaster. Tomorrow: under the fridge. Like painting the Golden Gate Bridge, once done at one end, it’s time to start back at the other. But it’s no sweat, ’cause each spot-clean takes maybe two minutes, max.

Gotta stop pretending this ugliness will just disappear if I don’t look at it.

We live on an island of mostly left-leaning, mostly-white people. Not all privileged, by any means, but protected by race and by distance from the ugliness on display at Charlottesville. That weight in my stomach is for my country, not for myself.

But it is my weight just the same. Our weight, whether we live near or far. The threat of virulent, presidentially-approved racism is, in fact, a threat to us all. Our community.Our democracy.

A visitor told me this week he had seen a Confederate flag flying near someone’s driveway at the far end of our island. I don’t know when or how, but I’m going to find the person who owns that flag and talk to him/her. I’m not looking forward to the conversation. But that flag is a little pocket of grime in my kitchen, and I know what happens when you let those little pockets alone.

Begone, Confederate flags. You know what you really stand for.

Huh. Guess I wrote about Charlottesville after all.