People of Color live race every day. These 3 practical steps are meant for White and White-identified people trying to figure out where to start.
Photo courtesy of @claybanks
Step one is to see whiteness as a race. Growing up as a person of color, I naively didn’t think that white people were a race. They never talked about themselves as a race and still don't. But whiteness is “raced” right alongside brown and black, with a recognizable white group identity and culture. If a white race is hard for you to comprehend, think of it like a regional identity, as in “I’m a New Yorker” or “I’m a Californian.” So I’m Chinese. You’re white. It’s important to see your own racial whiteness as a color alongside the others because lack of that knowledge is simply white supremacy.
Next step is to feel your grief: Many white people say, “I’m not racist.” Maybe not, but you did inherit a wound of racism by simply being born white in America, even if you believe you do no conscious harm. That’s because racism is America’s great wound, the elephant here in the room. Whiteness is practically defined by racism the way dark colors define a white shape. When did this wounding happen? Wounds of safety, worth and freedom get established in early childhood between ages zero and 5 when you were babies with no defenses at all. Wounds got inherited from your parents and their parents, pop culture and institutions of school, healthcare, business and government. Racism was the water we swam in. There was no way for any of us as babies to fight this racial programming. We are all of us wounded by racism. In many ways this wound is what makes us American. We can all grieve this together.
Hardest step is to Feel your shame: All racism is shame, including self-racism, where you become not proud of who you are. At this moment, many of us feel self-racism. Black and brown Americans have always felt it. After seeing George Floyd murdered, many whites also feel some self-racism and are not proud of being white, knowing now without a doubt that supremacy over others is an inherent part of their whiteness.
Even though it’s hard, feeling white shame is your first real step to change, much more than publicly protesting. This is individual, private self-work and coronavirus is a perfect time to dive in. This transformation is something I can help with and guide as a coach. It is crucial for white people to feel the emotions of grief, shame and disappointment through their entire nervous systems without bypassing them. The act of feeling those hard emotions transforms them into true empathy. In fact, that is the only way to generate empathy, through feeling hard emotions. The mind cannot think its way to empathy. You’ve tried that. If it could, we’d already be there. The danger is getting sidetracked into anger, which is simply the surface of grief and shame.
I believe white fragility comes from an inability to sit through these excruciating feelings of shame and grief all the way through to transformation. Because it always ends in the unbearable truth that is the wound itself: “Here is everything my people have done, here is the pile of bodies, and I must own them as my own.” But that is the emotional labor white people must do to transform racism. Of course, you don’t want to go there because it hurts so bad. Black and brown people very much want true empathy from you but fear that you are too fragile to reach it. But these days, I believe in you, that you are honest and brave enough to bear intensity, to feel the depths of shame and transform through this great disappointment.
Empathy feels like soul, the visceral feeling of finally being seen. Remember, all of us are children in this racial wound and it changes everything when children feel seen. You let yourself deeply feel the hard emotions of grief and shame, however painful, until they transform into empathy. Change the system within yourself first. Then, like great sex, social activism from a place of empathy is a lasting and fulfilling labor of love.