Nov. 2019:
“It feels like I’m joining a cult”, I sobbed. “I’m on thin ice at work, I’m alienating my friends and yoga students, I don’t know how to navigate conversations with my mother and I don’t know how to read books or watch tv shows without noticing various racist and problematic rhetoric. I feel like I’m joining something I’m not sure I’m supposed to. Even though I know systemic racism and white supremacy is real, it feels like antiracism is a cult.”
Tina held her gaze on my face and took a breath.
“Erica, I’d like to offer that you are not joining a cult… but leaving one. Whiteness and all its damaging dangerous outcomes are a cult you were born into; the false belief that you could distance yourself from racism by being kind; that electing Obama twice meant we resided in a post-racial country; that anyone can achieve the American Dream; and believing that this country started out as fair and equitable declaration of democracy only to be ruined and “trumped” by power-hungry racists. This is what you are walking away from. Where white supremacy and racism are destructive, antiracism and divesting from whiteness is disruptive. You do not weep as you walk toward a cult, you lament as you leave one. And leaving this cult is a process.”
(I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep on saying it; if you are white, PLEASE hire and work with an Antiracism Coach / Educator.)
Oct. 2020:
I was sitting at a friend’s kitchen table this week, sipping from my $40 water-bottle, resting my feet atop her plushy Golden Retriever when she passed her phone to me. On her screen was an email from a friend requesting that she at least watch minutes 11:30 - 13:30 of a 2017 video where trump denounces white supremacy and condemns the neo-nazi groups who marched in Charlottesville.
My friend also showed me a text from her white friend— a non trump-supporting republican woman who expressed her frustration with being characterized as “heartless” or “racist” etc. and wondered when she would be heard; when she’d have a chance to either explain herself or see these kinds of conversations accurately represented in various media; i.e. podcasts.
Since the trump/biden debate last week, there’s been a scrambling search from right wing conservatives and neo-trump supporters for evidence that, indeed, our president does not support racism, that he is not a racist. It’s like when an 8 year-old holds up a card during a poorly executed magic trick exclaiming, “see! look! i didn’t cheat! im a magician see look see!”
I mean, if we have to go in search of footage that confirms the leader of our country doesn’t support nazis, that proves nothing except how low our standards for leadership and honor have fallen. However I’d argue that a land stolen from its Native people by way of broken treaty, rape, pillage, plunder never really had standards for leadership and honor in the first place. But I digress…
I had a moment, at that kitchen table, where I asked myself, “am i wrong about trump?” “How can such ‘nice’, educated, thoughtful and intelligent people vote for him not just out of allegiance to the GOP but many former anti-trump folks align with him as early as several weeks or days ago?” (including a family member I am close to, which is a real bummer).
The empath that is me, wants to understand all sides and hear people, especially since i have a burning, innate, fundamental need to be understood, to the exclusion of almost everything else.
Part of divesting from whiteness, white supremacy and covertly defending racism is to take constant inventory of how I’m upholding oppression— an example of this is doubting that donald trump is a racist; that he is misunderstood; that his words are purposefully taken out of context and mangled by media etc. etc.
I divest from upholding oppression by remembering that racism and white supremacy didn’t start with trump and it didn’t start with MSNBC. It didn’t even start in 1776 or 1690.
I divest from white supremacy when i reject everything straight white able-bodied men say about trump.
I divest from white supremacy when i reject everything straight white able-bodied men say about pretty much anything.
I divest from it when i acknowledge that joe biden is the problem, both systemically and historically and that, once again, we don’t have a good choice to make.
We cling to our whiteness and privilege when we’re more concerned about how we’re portrayed and perceived by our peers than the lives of Black people who’ve been and continue to be characterized as beasts, thugs, thieves, criminals and addicts.
I think about the white woman’s text and how her desires to be understood are valid...and unequivocally irrelevant.
Straight white women, (hi hello, me!), don’t have a good deal any way we slice it; even when we follow the rules, we’ll always be second to men; when we are antiracist, we will come second to Black womxn, folks of color, members of the LGBTQIA+ community and disabled folks.
We’ll never be at the top of the hierarchy.
Collective liberation will have to look like sacrifice on top of sacrifice on our part, but it won’t be the kind of sacrifice we’re used to; where our desires, womanhood and aspirations are under attack and placed on the back burner in favor of raising the children, roasting the chicken or faking an orgasm to let our partner off the hook during oral. No, it will be a daily sacrifice that doesn’t require us to betray ourselves in exchange for patriarchal protection. We were never protected anyway.
Straight white women like me will be able to cultivate agency, our ability to be employed and honor without leaving ourselves behind or retaining an innate need to be centered or coddled.
I don’t know when any of this will come to fruition— I doubt it will happen in my lifetime but here’s one thing I know with every fibre of my being:
As long as there are straight white men in positions of power, humanity will be disposable and unreachable.
As long as straight white men hold power, my mother will gladly break bread with the man who sexually abused and assaulted me and call me a liar.
As long as straight white men hold power, I will lose my mother, I’ve already lost her.
As long as straight white men hold power, my white friend will lean in my ear with great resolve and whisper, “I love watching Black people and white people being friendly to each other. We’ve some so far.”
As long as straight white men hold power, i will second guess what i know to be true about where we came from, about racism, about the monster of a man in the White House, about myself.
As long as straight white men hold power, my “no” will mean “yes” depending on what i was wearing and how pretty, poor or educated i am.
As long as straight white men hold power,
women will believe it their right to tell me what to do with my body, to demand laws that support their perceived right.
As long as straight white men hold power,
my identity, my personage, will be reduced to, “filthy little liberal” or “democratic bleeding heart”
and the opposition will be reduced to racists, savages and nut jobs, as…the opposition.
It is impossible. It is impossible. It is impossible for straight white men to find redemption in positions of power.
Healing, atonement amends and reckoning are not born from tufted chairs, ill-fitted suits, big houses and debate platforms. They are not cultivated from podiums, pedestals or pulpits.
So there is no doubt. There can’t be any doubt about our current president needing to go. It doesn’t matter how much video evidence there is of him denouncing white supremacists, because we live in a white supremacist cult, where white supremacy worries itself with perception of political affiliation. It insists we at least watch minutes 11:30 - 13:30. White supremacy searches for any evidence of its own innocence and most importantly, white supremacy makes room for more than just white people; it invites Black police officers, Black congress members, Biracial social media influencers, Native American trump supporters and multi-racial preachers to the table.
Kamala Harris, for all her flaws, her professional error and probable personal blunder, is our first step to removing straight white men from a position of power.
And for anyone convinced donald trump has a strong hold on “race relations” in America, at minute 14:57 a reporter asks, “what do you think needs to be done to overcome the racial divides in this country?”
trump responds: “well I really think jobs —I think if we continue to create jobs, substantially more than 1 million…I think if we continue to create jobs at levels that I’m creating jobs I think that’s gonna have a tremendous impact, positive effect on..”
Reporter interjects: “and how do you think more jobs will impact the racial divide?”
trump: “because they’re gonna make a lot of money, people are gonna be working and making a lot more money than they ever thought possible.”
And that’s just it—
White supremacy births capitalism and convinces us, promises us that money solves our problems, re-wires our minds, opens our hearts and closes out hate.
If you have money, you know deep down that’s not true. In fact, often times wealth leaves us in search of our humanity. The more money we have, the more afraid of losing it we are.
Because money isn’t everything; because money isn’t enough.
Money doesn’t ask us to love anyone— not even ourselves. It doesn’t demand real justice or reconciliation. Money isn’t the thing that takes us where we need to go— it is a detour.
We buy our fancy houses in safe neighborhoods, we stockpile our herbs and drive big cars and so far, none of that has saved us.
At some point we will be done waiting for the cult leader that is white supremacy to deliver on that promise and realize the only way out and our only salvation is kindness and care.
I’ll leave you with a Cree Indian Proverb:
Only When the Last Tree Is Cut Down, the Last Fish Eaten, and the Last Stream Poisoned, You Will Realize That You Cannot Eat Money.
