Since summer, I've been part of a very small book club about how to be a BLM ally. I have to tell you that I'm not a good BLM ally yet. I don’t know if I ever will be. My modus operandi is to babble, to make excuses, to make it about me, to go silent, to cry.
Over the summer, I wrote some embarrassing tweets on Twitter in an attempt to be a BLM ally. I even deleted some of them because I was afraid of blowback.
I succumb to white fragility. I made excuses when I offended a Black coworker years ago when we were talking about education. She didn’t accept my modified apology. I didn’t realize how rude I’d been, how superior. More recently, I froze once when a Black woman at the dog park told me that she needed to get out of the rain before it ruined her hair. I literally couldn’t breathe for a moment. I’ve made the mistake of asking a Black friend to be the face of all Black people and explain racism to me. I wanted to know the answers. I hated being uncomfortable.
In my book club, I’ve told stories of my racist moments, and talked about my ignorance about the fact that I didn’t have to belong to a white supremacist group to be racist. I’ve made excuses. I’ve felt the shame and wondered how I could be such a bad person to fit so easily into white supremacy. I wanted to whine that I wasn’t one of those kind of white people.
But after reading a dozen books, I realize I am.
Even now, I’m sure I’m making some kind of mistake so I think I should probably delete all this and quit approaching the subject. It’s a hot topic. I could get burned.
Yet more than that, I’m afraid that the forward progress of last summer will fade and the system will fall back into place.
Did you ever turn over a rock and look at all the bugs and worms wiggling and writhing in the unexpected light? Doesn’t it feel like that was what happened last summer? A rock was turned over. But why do I feel like scrambling out of the light?
If I don’t have courage, that rock will tumble back into place and all the worms and bugs will go back to their lives unevolved. I will be unevolved.
I’ll say it: I benefit from living in a white supremacist culture. Regardless of my other categories, I have white privilege. I have trouble speaking up, joining a BLM group, or even replying to a coherent Twitter thread about racism. I have the privilege to stop talking about it.
We’re supposed to be quiet about racism, you know. We’re supposed to let it slide if we hear a nice person say something off about race. We’re supposed to let the status quo stay in place.
Police brutality?
Inequity in the school systems?
The injustice in the justice system?
The prisons? Oh, I feel so disconnected from the racist problems in prisons.
Inequity at work?
The fact that I live in a diversity desert, a place that was historically redlined? Is it still?
And what about all of the small parts of racism? What about that reluctance to even start talking because I want so badly to be one of the nice people? What are we going to do about all that if we’re not supposed to say anything uncomfortable?
I want to go sit under my rock for a bit. And then, I hope I’ll come out. I hope I’ll help keep that light shining in places where it needs to shine.
But doesn’t that make me have the savior complex? I can’t win. That’s what I’m learning as I read: that I can’t be comfortable if I’m going to do this work. I shouldn’t babble excuses. I shouldn’t change the subject. I shouldn’t go silent. If I go back to being quiet, that will be worse. The stone will roll back into place and racism will win.
Thank you for listening, jules