Decompiling Oppression #36
Sam McVeety
I'm going to try something a bit different this week, and ask for your grace as we dance with the unknown. An idea that I've been workshopping on and off for the past year (with gratitude to Dean Mario Barnes for the encouragement and delightful name; all mistakes are my own) has been to write about "overthinking whiteness" as seen through my own eyes and others. I'd like to explore that more this week.
One of the starting points for this journey was a set of reflections on the presence of white people in race conversations, set against known pitfalls like imperial scholarship. The topic came up again recently, as I talked with some colleagues about how to invite and equip new members for various DEI working groups, many of whom were working through feelings of how not to take up too much space as someone who is white, male, and/or holds some other privileged identity. So, having been at this for a while and accumulated some experience, maybe there's something interesting I can share.
Thinking back to those original reflections, I was contemplating facilitating a workshop on race (as a cis white man) to a mostly white audience, and thinking about what implicit messages I might be sending. On the one hand, I might have advantages as the messenger because of various unconscious biases. But: am I reinforcing those biases, so that the audience comes to expect answers on "what to do about race" from other white people? Am I creating the conditions for tone policing in the future, because I delivered the message in a certain palatable way? How do I stay accountable to my goal of amplifying the voices of others and representing those voices as they would like to be represented? If my co-facilitator is a person of color, (how) does that change things? (You can begin to see where my professor thought "overthinking" was an appropriate title.)
Often, those questions generated more questions, and it may be disappointing to some to hear that I haven't "resolved" these questions in any sort of final sense. What I can offer, however, is a sense of progress. I feel like I have learned how to better sit with some of these deep questions more comfortably, acknowledging and honoring their presence while not allowing myself to be paralyzed by the prospect of the misstep (and to be sure, inaction can also be a misstep). At the core of this feeling is a resonance with the way that Angela Harris describes identities and categories themselves, when talking about the richness of identities within groups:
My suggestion is only we make our categories explicitly tentative, relational, and unstable.
For me, that captures beautifully how I want to engage in this work of equity, justice, and belonging: holding beliefs that feel true, but are also tentative and unstable. I want them to be inherently relational, because I can't truly be accountable to others if those beliefs are set in stone.
Importantly, that tentativity isn't feeling like I can't have a point of view, but it is holding that point of view lightly and with constant curiosity. Put another way, it's being able to move around in this world and exist in spaces where you seek out the unfamiliar, while being simultaneously ready for the possibility that you will feel "wrong" about something, and maybe even realize that you caused someone to experience harm. If you do, it's being able to extend grace to others who might reflect that behavior (including yourself!) while also holding yourself accountable. For me, taking action can be as simple as speaking up to raise awareness (even when you don't know if you'll find the right words) or as complex as having difficult, critical conversations about the harm someone has caused.
That accountability can take many forms. Maybe you learned something that not only makes you want to change an immediate behavior, but also makes you want to change a pattern of behavior (that led to that specific situation). For example, let's say I've been using a word that I realize causes some people harm. I could choose to stop using that word. I may also think about how I could have avoided using it in the first place, and think about what I'm doing to educate myself about other aspects of my behavior I might not be aware of. I picked words as an example here because they embody the simple but powerful idea that concepts change over time and in relation to different people.
For a more recent example, we can take the Seattle Police Department's actions over 2020 (content warning on one of many examples). For those who aren't familiar, there were massive uprisings in the city, with one of the consequences being the resignation of Carmen Best, the Black woman who ran the department. While my own perspective might center on removal of harmful systems, I might also need to create space for people to mourn the idea that yet another Black woman has been put in an impossible situation, and made complicit in systems of oppression. It doesn't mean that I throw out my whole belief system or dismiss it as contradictory, but instead it demands that I widen my appreciation of the world and the perspectives of those around me.
With this newsletter, I've tried to have accountability take multiple forms. I feature authors with lived experiences for the topics we discuss and supporting organizations that are engaged in the work of change. That said, it's a work in progress, just like all of us. Maybe I'll look back in a year and cringe, or maybe I'll be proud. Living with that uncertainty is part of doing the work.
Here are this week's invitations:
Personal: Reflect on the relationships you hold, both to individuals and communities. Where is accountability strong and where is it missing for you?
Communal: Think about the systems of power and wealth that operate in your community. If it's a community of relative privilege, how might you share and give up some of that power?
Solidarity: Support the The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond and their commitment to anti-racist organizing priniciples and collective work.
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