Day 11
Without going into the circumstances of my life, it is accurate to say that I have a lot of white friends. There are a lot of white folks in my life that I care very deeply about. White and non-black folk that I love. When I moved to St. Louis, I went through a period of struggling deeply with the fact of this. I was interpreting messages from others (often people I didn’t really know, on social media) that to have intimate relationships with non-black folks was to be anti-black. And I internalized this message. I moved from this place. Perpetually fearful of being found out. Perpetually fearful of being labeled some sort of race traitor. All this, despite the fact that my own mother is not black. The family that I grew up with was not black. So much of my racial history was out of my control from the very beginning; but somehow, I was anti-black?
One of the most important things that my therapist told me before she retired is that I have the capacity to decide what is good, to me. What is beautiful, to me. What I am curious about. I had handed over this power to other people. Many of whom I didn’t even know. As “they” say, I had put the keys to my happiness in someone else’s pocket. Over and over again, I did this, allowing other people to determine what was appropriate and good for me. And over and over again I felt like I was performing. And failing miserably. I did not want to sever my relationships with the white and non-black folks in my life. It did not feel like it fit for me, regardless of all the messaging telling me it ought to.
But when my therapist said that, I realized I was ready. I stopped worrying about all of this external messaging. And began focusing on the types of relationships I wanted to cultivate. The people I felt safe with. The people with whom I felt generative and creative and hopeful. Some of these folks are black. Some of them are white. Some of them are neither. But one of the qualities of all of these relationships is that I feel comfortable having hard conversations, even about race. A lot of that I attribute to my personal work; to my ability to bring compassion and hold space and to be patient and to take the longview, no longer berating people for not being where I wanted them to be. A habit I had picked up and internalized for a time. It didn’t work for me. I needed humility, instead - I needed to be right-sized when it came to my relationships. Not imagining myself better or worse than others. But simply a fellow traveler to the people around me.
I have no problem holding space for white folks who are willing to talk about race. I have no expectation of perfection, from them or from me. I have no expectation of ease. There is no handbook on how to go about this work, and my arrogance used to tell me that there was. And that, somehow, I had it. I was the expert on liberation, despite feeling so shackled by my own anxiety, and the suffering of my creation. Again, I don’t believe this anymore. I believe that we are wading around in these deep, dark, waters together, trying to find a way to get free.
When I reflect on my time in the Catholic Church, I believe that one of the best things I internalized was the idea that people have so much more depth than we often make space for. Call that depth a soul or spirit or whatever feels right here. But this belief fostered my desire to ask “deep” questions; I don’t think I have ever been very good with the small talk. But tell me about your soul, or how you perceive your inner world, and we can talk for days. I wanted to know about these inner workings of the people around me. I wanted to know how they felt about god and faith and freedom and fear. Something about my pre-adolescent self was deeply interested and invested in the stories of other people, and how they chose to tell them.
I believe there was something sacred about those moments. And that there is so much to delight in when it comes to the inner workings of our fellow travelers.
A Practice for Today:
Have you ever had a relationship that felt sacred in these ways? A relationship that made the room feel energized and generative and hopeful. Do you have someone with whom you feel safe talking about race, and all of the inner workings of your world that have been impacted by it? Describe the impact of these relationships on you. How can you continue to cultivate them?
If you have yet to experience a relationship like this, what do you imagine you’d need from another person to feel safe talking about race? What would you offer to that exchange?
