I’ve been asking people to bring me their questions as topics for posts. A friend brought me this one that I have heard echoed in different words but with the same wonderings from many white folks: How do I bridge the gap between POC saying “You can’t possibly understand how I feel…” and “You have to listen and understand how I feel…” ?!
I’ve been ruminating over this question ever since it was brought to my attention. My answer is: you don’t. Both things are true. And there is no gap.
But of course there’s more to it than that… and yet there’s not. I worry that my answer is too simplistic to be well received. It is also what feels most true to me.
Our job is to learn as much as possible about systemic racism and our role as white folks, our job is to continue to increase our capacity for empathy and our job is to sit with the discomfort that arises. Our job is also to recognize that while racism negatively impacts everyone, it is absurd to say that we as white folks could ever fully understand the lived experience of people of color in our society.
The tension this generates reminds me of a quote from Audre Lorde (1981):
“I speak out of direct and particular anger at an academic conference, and a white woman says, ‘Tell me how you feel but don’t say it too harshly or I cannot hear you.’ But is it my manner that keeps her from hearing, or the threat of a message that her life may change?”
In my experience discussing racism in multiracial spaces, white folks tend to want to censor how emotions are expressed. I believe the motivation is partly socialization and partly guilt. Guilt and shame can often be incapacitating and therefore useless emotions, but they seem to come up for us a lot, so it’s important to name them. If we can identify our feelings of guilt, then we can evaluate whether our responses are coming from a place of shame or fear. Transformation is possible only if we first become aware of what is motivating our reactions.
Later on in her presentation Audre Lorde says “yes, it is very difficult to stand still and to listen to another woman’s voice delineate an agony I do not share, or one to which I myself have contributed.” And that is the sticking point I think for us white folks. To listen to the hurt and pain and fear and rage of another person who’s experience we do not share and are at least partially responsible for cultivating is very, very hard. It is also perhaps the most important, most courageous thing we can do.
Where do I start?
The first step is to not get defensive. If you are listening to a person of color discuss their lived experience of racism, of macro or micro aggressions, defending your whiteness is unproductive, and so is trying to prove you “get it.” Bite your tongue. Just listen.
What is the next step?
Listen better. I’m serious. Keep listening. You will know your listening skills are improving when people start telling you things that are harder to hear than before. Keep listening.
How do I get unstuck?
Quit thinking you deserve a break from the harshness of the truth. Quit thinking you have arrived somewhere. Quit thinking you are the exception to all white people. It’s not about you. It never was. All of this is bigger than you. It’s bigger than all of us, and yet POC have been expected to carry the burden of the weight of all this injustice all along. And now we white folks are expecting to be included with the “in crowd” of understanding before we’ve done the actual work. If a person of color in your life: a friend, a colleague or a stranger has decided for whatever reason to unburden themselves temporarily by speaking with you about the latest racial inequity and affront to justice they have confronted, do not try to bridge the gap between the impossibility of understanding and the necessity of it. Just listen.
In my opinion, we do not get to call ourselves allies. It’s not a title we can give ourselves. We can commit to being anti-racist white people as an ongoing, ever-evolving process, and we can commit to interrupting systemic inequity. Sometimes that might look very obvious like marching in a protest or calling your representatives and demanding that they defend DACA. Yet in day to day interactions, one of the most important ways to interrupt systemic injustice is by listening deeply and without defensiveness to the people who are most adversely affected by it. Because there is no gap to bridge: We may never understand, and yet we must always seek to.
Until next week,
Stephanie
P.S. Click here to read the entirety of Audre Lorde’s 1981 Keynote “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism”
Actively Disruptive 