BORROWED ADVICE AND WISDOM when our own wisdom fails

Hello again, dear reader. It’s been a while.

During that time, I have been rehearsing, writing, and re-writing in my mind what I might say as a response to the recent rally of white nationalist and their counter-protesters in Charlottesville, VA. But it seems that the words I come up with seem trite, and do not bear the weight of the gravity of the situation and the hatred, racism, and white supremacy revealed there.

I’m also aware that in my visceral reaction to President Trump’s statement in the wake of the events, I may so something I regret later.

Therefore, I am going to borrow the words and wisdom of songwriter and storyteller Courtney Ariel. My blog post this time consists of an almost entire reproduction of her essay For Our White Friends Desiring to be Allies published on the website of the Sojourners Community in Washing ton, DC-www.sojo.net. In this essay, she gives some sage advice to white people (most of the readers of this blog are, indeed, Caucasian) as to how to express our support for and alliance with African-Americans, Jews, Native Americans and First Nation Canadians, other marginalized groups, and others targeted by the white supremacists.

 

FOR OUR WHITE FRIENDS DESIRING TO BE ALLIES

“I’m not going to do much coddling here; I don’t know that I believe that love requires coddling. Here are six things you can do to be stronger allies.

1. Listen more; talk less.You don’t have to have something to say all of the time. You don’t have to post something on social media that points to how liberal/how aware/how cool/how good you are. You are lovely, human, and amazing. You have also had the microphone for most of the time, for a very long time, and it will be good to give the microphone to someone else who is living a different experience than your own.
2. For one out of every three opinions/insights shared by a person of color in your life, try to resist the need to respond with a betteror different insight about something that you read or listened to as it relates to their shared opinion. Try just to listen and sit with someone else’s experience. When you do share in response to what someone has shared with you, it can sometimes (not always) feel like “whitesplaining” — meaning to explain or comment on something in an over-confident or condescending way. This adds to the silencing of the voices of people of color.
3. Being an ally is different than simply wanting not be racist (thank you for that, by the way). Being an ally requires you to educate yourself about systemic racism in this country. Read Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crowand Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me and Claudia Rankine’s Citizen and so many other great books and articles that illuminate oppression and structures of white supremacy and white privilege. Use your voice and influence to direct the folks that walk alongside you in real life (or follow you on the internet), toward the voice of someone that is living a marginalized/disenfranchised experience.
4. Please try not to, “I can’t believe that something like this would happen in this day and age!” your way into being an ally when atrocities like the events in Charleston, S.C.,and Charlottesville, Va., happen. People of color have been aware of this kind of hatred and violence in America for centuries, and it belittles our experience for you to show up 300 years late to the oppression-party suddenly caring about the world. Don’t get me wrong, I welcome you. I want for you to come into a place of awareness. However, your shock and outrage at the existence of racism in America echoes the fact that you have lived an entire life with the luxury of indifference about the lives of marginalized/disenfranchised folks. Please take several seats.
5. Ask when you don’t know — but do the work first. This is nuanced. Some marginalized/disenfranchised folks will tell you not to ask them anything; don’t be offended by that. Folks are tired, and that is understandable because it is exhausting to be a marginalized person in this world. However, there is something special that happens within human connections and relationships. In a nutshell, don’t expect for people to educate you. Do the work to educate yourself. Ask questions within relationships that feel safe, and do so respectfully.
6. And finally, stop talking about colorblindness.It’s not a thing. Colorblindness is totally impossible in a nation whose land was taken from the indigenous inhabitants through an attempt at genocide and horrific colonization. The same nation that enslaved humans and exploited them in every way imaginable built a nation on their backs, hung them, hunted them, and for centuries kept them from their basic inalienable rights and still does. The same nation that exploits and deports immigrants who were promised refuge within the American Constitution. The same nation that incarcerated Japanese Americans during World War II and continues to promote bigotry, exclusion, and violence against LGBTQ/gender non-identifying folks. This nation that allows swastika-wearing, Confederate-flag-toting, anti-Semitic racists to have a platform for their hate. The same nation that promised religious freedom, yet targets those who do not believe in a white, capitalist Jesus.

I love Jesus. And promise, Jesus was not white (literally brown, and wonderfully Jewish) and would have never been a capitalist.

It will never be possible for us to be colorblind, and we shouldn’t ever want to be.

I heard a saying once at an Al-Anon meeting that offered me liberation: “We are only as sick as our secrets (and our shame).” Shame can only live in the darkness; it can live within the systems of denial and defensiveness that we use to cover it up. We have to name these things, acknowledge them, and begin to do the deep work of transformation, restoration — and reparation.”

Sage, thoughtful advice, indeed, Courtney. Readers: until the next time, live today to its fullest.

JAS