What's next?

I am lucky in my mostly white family to have several international additions amongst my neices and nephews, including people from Mali, the Philippines, and Mexico. I have been thinking for the past few weeks about their kids. All of them are young, and what we do now shapes the world they will grow up in.

In the wake of the killing of George Floyd and the upwelling of protest of the last weeks I have been thinking about what kind of world I want for these kids. I want better for them than the world that George Floyd and Trayvon Martin faced. I want them to grow up strong and confident in their own value. I want them to be able to contribute. I want them to thrive.

Systemic racism keeps people—certain people—from mattering as much as others. It is a way of downgrading groups of people for cultural, economic, or political aims. Systemic racism is not something happening “out there” to other people, and it is not primarily just bad people doing bad things. It is something that I am part of, that we are all part of in this country. I am part of a system that privileges whiteness and punishes blackness—as well as “otherness” of many kinds.

Not acknowledging this is the wrong kind of silence. But it is also too easy for me—as a white person—to say that what happened to George Floyd is awful—and then move on. This senseless killing IS awful. But this killing is not an isolated incident. It is only one of many such killings, which were no less awful; and it is part of the long history of racism in this country that has been with us since this country began.

If I want a different world for these boys to grow up in, I need to do something different. And that could start by simply saying: This is unacceptable. And I am willing to do something about it.

The first change I need to make is a change in my awareness. Savala Trepczynski, Executive Director of the UC Berkeley School of Law’s Center for Social Justice says:

…a white person rushing to do racial justice work without first understanding the impacts, uses, and deceptions of their own whiteness is like an untrained person rushing into the ER to help the nurses and doctors—therein probably lies more harm than good.

So I am starting with a commitment to myself: to learn what it means to be white, how systemic racism works, and what the many colors of people in this country actually experience. I am starting by grappling with my own racism.

My goal is to spend at least 15 minutes a day for the next year doing this. I can hear a voice in my head saying: Only fifteen minutes? That’s nothing! But this is actually a sign that I am serious. Systemic racism isn’t going away anytime soon, and I need a goal I can keep for longer than Black History Month. This is not a solution, this is a practice. 

And honestly, I am doing this because I want to. I can see that real freedom lies in awareness—even if that awareness is uncomfortable. Everything I read, every conversation I have with a friend, supports that. In my friend Mark Goodman’s podcast¹ he talks about Zen Master Bernie Glassman, who practiced bearing witness to suffering by holding meditation retreats at places like Auschwitz—or closer to home, on Native American lands. Freedom comes from seeing what is, the joy and the pain.

I should also make it clear that really I am doing this for all the children in my family. Those who identify as "white" will be no less impacted by racism, though they will be much less likely to be aware of that impact unless white people like me speak up.

Once I get started on something it is hard to stop, and I spent far more than my 15 minutes a day thinking about this the past two weeks. I read so much that is worth sharing that it was hard to narrow it down, but here's a taste. Watching attorney and mother Catherine Ayeni talk about why white silence is painful helped me have empathy. Reading Savala Trepczynski talk about why white people are responsible for what happens next inspired me to learn more. And reading Kleaver Cruz talk about why he started the Black Joy Project gave me hope.

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1 Soul Matters, "Episode #12 Soul Reaction--Responding to George Floyd", podcast with Mark Goodman and Julianna Pope