Dear White Supremacy,
or rather,
Folx who struggle with white supremacy with me,
Whew! This was a tall cup of tea.
I hope it's not so bitter as to keep you from drinking it with me.
This week, we're looking at metabolizing pain caused by WS.
-Tara
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This week's list of offerings:
1. Stark Absence of Information
2. I am more Valuable to Me than I am to You
3. Wordless Pain
4. Positive Pencil Marks
5. Hurdles of Self Loathing
6. I Am My Body
7. It Is Love
8. Be in Relationship With Me
9. Never Taught to Give an Apology
10. A Better World for Me
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STARK ABSENCE OF INFORMATION
My own self-knowledgement has still only been acquired in the places/relationships where white supremacy did not hold sway.
The only relationships in which I could personally develop were the relationships where I could learn about myself in ways were contradictory to white supremacy. The relationships in my life that concurred with white supremacist ideals all end in betrayals that the other person might not even recognize.
Think about the stark ABSENCE of information that has been created by all those relationships where I could not get passed the unconscious guards of the gate which rule white supremacy.
If I'm to break this stuff down into components that I can pass (read "shit out"), it might help to demystify some of the toxicity with which I was left.
In those relationships there are some consistent toxins left behind that we can examine:
1. In those relationships, I was somehow ALWAYS WRONG. Wouldn't being perpetually wrong, for no obvious reason, confuse you too? Even a power-dead clock is right twice a day! Surely I couldn't be ALWAYS WRONG... There you are WS.
2. In those relationships, my questions were labelled as "asking too much"or "inconsequential", or sometimes (maddeningly) both. It has often been assumed that my questions about the rules I have been asked to follow as a student/person/creator was a signifyer of my Inadequacy as a person/student/friend/actor/creator rather than my adequacy. But asking questions makes us forge connection where there is none, so that doesn't make sense... OH! You didn't want me to make connection to the material in the first place! Found you.
3. In
those relationships, I was already wrong if I need to ask questions.
In asking questions, I loose more credit, more points, more respect.
Don't you know that the first rule of being in white spaces is blind
ACCEPTANCE? So if NEEDING to ask questions is vulnerability, then children at 5 are like the dumbest, worst people ever. Is that right?
Yeah, I thought so, come out from behind the plether couch, WS, I see you.
4. Bullying
was the norm, but it was never stated as acceptable. Sneaky sneaky! Bullying can come in so many shapes and sizes, it's like a candy store, ever rotting your fucking head and heart with the same ingredient in completely different wrappers. But if no one is interested in your concern, if the Groupthink is really deep, if the teachers are really inscrutable, you can bet there's WS sugar in that shit. FOUND YOU.
I kinda tired of playing. I'm going to have a popcicle. You want one?
***************
I AM MORE VALUABLE TO ME THAN I AM TO YOU
With Covid-19 still ravaging the sorrow-soaked lungs of this dying democratic nation, I have had to make lots of choices to hunker down properly. I've had to make honest accounts of my liabilities and my assets, my joys and my sorrows, my living hopes from those that have died and passed through the veil of potential.
I have been stupendously fortunate in this life: I have so many privileges and comforts, I have family and love and abundance. I am deeply grateful, and I know that in no way have I earned any of it.
But what I do with my good fortune IS in my own hands.
I have chosen to not return to work as a theatre adjunct this semester. Though I have had numerous offers, some of them included risking my health by returning to a classroom. Accepting some of them would have meant changing the scope of the work I do so drastically that I would not have been able to respond to my students genuinely.
I was finally, after years of wanting to attain work in higher education settings as an adjunct, I was receiving offers, but they were all tinged with an assumption that was more obvious than ever: your safety and offerings are not as important as us getting their tuition.
I'm sorry. Too many people have gotten this whole pandemic completely wrong, and I understand that misinformation is the root of this major misstep in our country's trajectory. But I'm not putting my life where your money is. I am more valuable to me than I am to you. And until the educational system recognizes how poorly it has judged this scenario, and until you in charge of making these choices stand up to the school financial board being egged on by the same party that is now demonizing diversity training, you can bet that I am going to have some problems to voice.
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WORDLESS PAIN
The quiet death of trust in my childhood friendships, due to the cultural norm which excluded images of inquisitive brown folks and confident queer young women, made me very lonely. As a mixed-race child, I existed at an intersection that made no sense to my white environment. Being mixed, too, wasn't on the "good neighborhood" maps. And in that isolation, I was devastatingly confused.
I thought about death a lot. Ask my bestie about fixations on white women writers of poetry that couldn't stop pondering their own end. Their deep isolation was so complete and wordless, and it felt like the closest thing to self expression that I had as a young adult.
Because you're such a secretive fuck, WS, I was bereft of the words that explained my experience... and believe me, there is no deeper pain than wordless pain.
How I didn't end up an escapist in drug addiction or find rest in other extreme experiments with pain management I do not know. I am grateful to be here still, but I'm not boasting.
How
many other sensitive, talented folks suffered at the hands of white supremacy
and DID have access to a kind of pain management that extinguished their
light?
Why is it okay to lose ANYONE?
My fucking force fields are up, bitch.
I'm gonna go lie down for a nap. You wanna pillow?
***************
POSITIVE PENCIL MARKS
When I was younger, I wanted to transcend my skin color. Like it was a hindrance that was holding me back. Like I was only valuable if my spirit was clothed in something acceptable to other folks.
Today, I don't want to leave my body behind as my mind and heart thunder forward in search of positive pencil marks in my life. It's like my life measurement of self esteem growth. It's a big accomplishment for me to claim MY BODY as part of my value, and not mean that in the context of the white gaze.
I was chatting with a friend about my 20 something year old self. My friend posited that their twenty year old self wouldn't recognize their 40 year old self. I replied that for me, it goes further than recognition.... my 20 year old self would have likely despised my 40 year old self.
I'm everything she was terrified I'd be. Everything she was taught was strategically unsuccessful, what constituted a Loser: that's what I am today.
I AM everything I hated from that time, because I am everything that I feared I could not overcome as a young adult.
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HURDLES OF SELF-LOATHING
However, I want you to know, old friend, that I've gotten over A LOT of those hurdles of
self-loathing that you offered me. Formerly, I viewed this list as society's list of mile markers for my success. Now I know it's just another system of control for someone else's benefit, so you know, fuck that.
- You told me to hate poverty, but I've been in the near poverty economic category for a majority of my life. It's a weight I've learned to carry. Who's Strong?
- You told me to fear "foreigners," but despite your education, I've grown to embrace folks because they ARE like me. Just because I grew up in your voting district doesn't me I continue to drink your Kool-Aid, WS. With other POC folks, I get to share our hard-won values and expectations for creating equality in spaces where there is none. I am humbled to understand how my journey has been incomplete without acknowledging the first peoples on this soil. I am humbled to be educated by folks of color on how we are assaulted by the same forces in so many ways. I am horrified to see how your fake rules are killing innocent people.
I have had so much privilege. And also, I've been chased by white men from swimming holes. So I've seen a wide spectrum of realities coexisting in my brown life. Black and brown women in my life has again and again proven to me that I'm too white on the inside to always know the smell of sobriety from White Supremacy, but I have friends, mentors, and teachers who do, and I listen to them.
- You told me to fear getting older, but
I feel better and stronger now than ever before. Age gives me clarity and clarity helps me make use of my own specific gifts to
offer to my community.
- You told me to hate my victimhood in being brown, woman and queer. But
I can't help but feel empowered from the simple act of saying no to you, WS. Saying NO to being
a victim has changed my accountability, and now I know it's my job and will be, always. Anyone I respect realizes that they are not victims for being born perfectly who they are. What you choose to believe, WS, is your own problem.
- You wanted me to fear being fat, but I
have reckoned with what my body needs, and what society wants from my body
in no way serves my physical well being... so FUCK THAT NOISE. I accept me exactly as I am.
- You wanted me to be wary of queer folks and trans folks and non binary identified people... Well I fucked it up again, WS, I married a glorious gender fluid person and he helped me see how stunningly our queernesses fit into the perfect shape for us.
- You wanted me to need the approval of
a white man. But I disconnected myself from the expectations I felt from
white men to try something different... and I have started refusing them entrance to my life unless they
earn attention from me. And I'll tell you what, I'm not sorry about it.
- This particular lie of the patriarchy's superior worth was also associated with the male teachers, supervisors and bosses I've had that liked to believe I was meant to work harder because for some reason I was less effective than themselves.
Work harder? For less recognition? Workaholism for a system that hates me even though I sacrifice my dignity, my passion, my gifts? I'm sorry. No to all of it.
I AM MY BODY
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IT IS LOVE
In order to move through my own racial trauma, to move through the damaging affects of misogyny and queerphobia, my deep othering, I have had to go through many cycles of confusion, research, discovery, loss of self, loss of faith, anger, and then eventually, self acceptance and love. I have applied more bandages and stayed in to watch the flowers grow from the window more days than I care to count. I am astounded by my resilience.
But one of the most hurtful myths about folks doing this impossible work of metabolizing the injustice and hurt done to Black, Indigenous and other people of color in this America, is the myth that we act out of hate.
Hate is what is being enacted upon us, but we do not fight back with it. And that is why white America is scared.
Anger. Anger is frightening for most people. And white America is no different.
But ANGER IS NOT HATE.
Believe me: no one doing this work of remembering and reexamining the hurts done by white supremacism and oppressive systems over a lifetime has only hate in their heart.
They have had to learn to love themselves in spite of what they were taught. They have learned through struggle how to listen to the best in themselves in order to produce the grace and generosity that is necessary to share these truths.
Did I really write these three very long blog posts in order to vent my incredibly robust hate? No, the verbosity comes from the blooming love and hope that I keep planting in my soul by living each day honest with myself. The crop I have reaped from years of lies was a small, weak harvest. I need to consume truth to make myself strong.
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BE IN RELATIONSHIP WITH ME
How honest are you being with yourself, white theatre? I can call you in and call you out! I do these both as strategies to help you see yourself, and it's not out of hate. I do it out of love.
Are you treading water rather than swimming our battered bodies out of the dangerous sea out of love, White Theatre? Are you holding on to your positions of power and calling all of the shots out of love for me, White Theatre? Are you asking teachers to go back to classrooms and risk their health and their lives out of love White Higher Education?
I want to once more reference the brilliant Nicole Brewer who spoke to a group of more than 350 people in an anti-racist theatre workshop when she said You want to know how to audit your institution for whether or not it is achieving it's Anti-racist goals? Look at who is showing up. Are there native people in your presence there, making their work or appreciating your work, are they enjoying themselves? Are there Black people making their work and are Black folks showing up at your institution feeling seen, part of your community? If the answer is yes, then there's your audit. But if not you have to keep doing anti-racist work.
Stop trying to tick boxes and make our work of community-building a transactional experience. Try being in relationship with Black, Indigenous, and people of color. When I call you in, know that this is love. When I call you out, know that this too is love. Be in relationship with me. Unless you do that, your false commitment to anti-racism is more self-deception.
If we are in relationship, honestly, together, then I can be my best self.
Why would you want less from me, unless you were threatened by my best self, by the truth I carry?
Stop trying to hide the truth, WS! I think someone needs a time out and stat!
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NEVER TAUGHT TO GIVE AN APOLOGY
One of the most significant discoveries I have made as I have swum the waters of white theatre making is the power of a real apology. A real apology is mending for torn relationships. It's how we grow into deeper relationship with others and with ourselves, and it's how we pass on the real and resonant truth that we all know in our bones.
You know truth when you hear it. You know truth when you feel it. Your BODY KNOWS TRUTH.
But a lot of people have lost touch with what the truth feels like. There is dissonance in their nervous system. It's what allows them to take jobs that misuse and abuse them. It's what creates rage against victims. If we all knew how to listen to the truth-telling vibrations of the body, we might lean into the simple reality that we ALL FEEL BETTER WHEN THE TRUTH IS TOLD.
There are a lot of parents out there that do not teach their children to listen to their own truth-seeking bodies. If harm is done by a child to another child, very rarely does a simple "Sorry" do the job of repairing the relationship, thus prolonging the previous power dymanic problems for another time.
There are better ways to say you are sorry, and in order to achieve repair in a relationship, you must be willing to acknowledge your own responsibility to know truth and that it's not outside of the reality that other people share ...
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A BETTER WORLD FOR ME
So, WS, I've chucked all that shit that you gave me, and I am SO FUCKING HAPPY ABOUT IT.
Being weighted down with your bullshit was like using huge uncomfortable furniture that was gifted to you in someone's will and shipped to your door without consent.
You took up all the space in my life, space that I needed.
I'm going to continue to celebrate myself, and do so in this brown queer femme body. I didn't know how to bring all of me along when I was younger.
Today though, I refuse to leave any part of my white supremacy betraying-ass behind. She's big and she's beautiful and I'm damn sure not going to waste one day more on making myself smaller for your benefit.
Thank you, WS, for giving me your God, your fears, your hates and your prejudices.
I'm done with them. You can keep them.
Or better yet, DON'T.
I promise to build a better world for me to live in than the one I was given.
-Tara
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