One week ago, the United States capitol was breached by a violent mob of white supremacists, Qanon conspiracy followers, and Trump supporters. Doors were broken, windows smashed, walls scaled, offices broken into. Information was stolen, nooses were brandished, and 5 people died during the course of the siege. I needn’t go on, I’m sure you’ve read the news. And it’s not the news that compels me to write today. I write today to reflect on how I’ve reacted to the historic events of last Wednesday and how my reactions have everything to do with whiteness.
When the news first came through, I listened with a heavy heart, alarmed, but not surprised. Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric had only been building since the election ended and I knew the historic election of Reverend Raphael Warnock in Georgia would surely stoke the flames of resentment further. In my white body, far removed from Washington, secure in my apartment in Essex, Vermont, secure in my white body, I felt myself closing, hardening. I knew that the takeover in the capitol was a reflection of myself, but I did not want to see that.
I stayed off Facebook, avoiding the onslaught of incommensurable viewpoints, futile debates and righteous expressions of fear, pain and anger I knew would be swirling around my feed. I usually avoid Facebook anyway aside from posting petitions here and there and communicating directly with people, but this time, I knew my avoidance was grounded in denial. Denial of how I’m implicated in the takeover, denial of my whiteness, my privilege, my connections. Not that Facebook is the place for engaging in courageous conversations to expose those lies and create real change, but rather that I knew Facebook was a place where I could clearly see the need for me to step up, to reach out, to leverage my connections and create space.
Instead, I focused on work and being busy. I wanted to produce and be of service because moments like these make me feel unworthy of my role as a social justice consultant. How can I deserve such a position when I am so far removed from the physical violence of white supremacy? Though I’ve been to many protests, I’ve never had to put my life on the line for the values I believe in. My research on racism and my work as an educator have never put me in physical danger. I am cocooned in a protective shield made up of social privilege and the segregation of violence so deeply ingrained in the modern world.
As a white person, I have been socialized to believe that the actions of violent extremists have nothing to do with me as a progressive, anti-racist white person, but the truth is, the siege on the capitol has everything to do with people like me. All white people are implicated in the attack. When we denounce the actions of a violent mob without opening our hearts to white people in our lives who are caught in even deeper denial about racism, we strengthen the division, denial, exploitation, and abuse that allowed the attack to happen. Preaching to the choir won’t change the tune of the nation. The United States has always been a country of palpable contradictions and incommensurability - the land of the free built on stolen land and slave labor. Those contradictions came to a crescendo last Wednesday; blocking out the deafening clamor reduces my capacity to meaningfully respond.
The part of me that hardens off and closes down in the face of blatant white terrorism and the paltry response of our country’s law enforcement is the same one that believes I am unworthy of my work and that I am only useful so far as I can be productive. It’s a binary belief - I’m either good or bad, anti-racist or racist, an aspiring accomplice, or a hopeless perpetrator forever trapped in the lie of my intentions. Yet, binaries are not the full truth. I am all of those things. I have caused harm and made mistakes in my work as a social justice consultant, in my research about racism, and in my daily life. I am imperfect, ever learning, never an expert.
Striving to be perfect, to always say the right thing, to work the hardest and sacrifice the most, to be at the right place and the right time to prove myself as an ally are self-serving and self-destructive patterns. Guilt and shame will not facilitate the transformative change required to upend systemic racism in the United States. I am blessed to have many experiences that have given me a deep understanding of how intertwined my liberation is with the liberation of Black, indigenous and people of color in this country and around the world. My responsibility to act on that gift is brought to the fore in the aftermath of the siege in Washington. As a white person, my most vital work at this moment is to make time and space for connecting with the white people in my life whose views about racism are the farthest from my own.
That work won’t be public or popular and it certainly won’t be perfect. I will inevitably make mistakes and I may have nothing to show for my efforts in the end. And yet, it is my responsibility, for my identity as a white person gives me access to white spaces that are dangerous for Black, indigenous and other people of color to enter. I do not have all the answers and I need to stay accountable to following the leadership of Black, Indigenous and people of color in my anti-racist work, but I also need to take responsibility for myself. When I peel back my resistance around engaging more deeply in addressing the siege, I find underneath tenderness, rawness, vulnerability. Seeing myself reflected in the violent attacks and self-righteous responses to it is unnerving, and it is also an invitation to soften the hard edges whiteness has built in me.
White supremacy is built on lies and fear. The specific lies have changed over the years, but fear is an ever-present component of racism. Fear of other, fear of change, fear of self. Racism and white supremacy stoke the egos of white people, inflate our credibility, and make us believe that we deserve to have more resources and power than Black, indigenous and other people of color. Yet even as racism builds systems of physical safety and material wealth around us, racism ultimately makes white people cruel, empty, delusional shells of our full potential as humans. Dismantling racism is the only way white people can reclaim our humanity and in that endeavor, I believe love, truth and vulnerability will prove to be far better tools than guilt, shame and self-righteous indignation.
