CONFESSIONS OF A FORMER WHITE PERSON, Part 2. Lessons In Naming: Rejection and Boundaries are Integral
Dear WS,
Here are REAL lessons from a lifetime of experience with White Supremacy.
I have been writing fervently about my life as a brown girl raised by a white family in a white-centered culture and professional environment. I am naming all the ways that White Supremacy (sometimes referred to in my writing as WS, and sometimes addressed in place of the audience who is also steeped in white supremacy, so why not?) has taught me to be in the world, the ways that I have realized were never for my benefit, but for it's own.
Through a cunning use of lesson reversal, I am naming not only the ill that we need to defeat, but also the practices and mindfulness that must be cultivated to defeat WS in your anti-racist life.
Though I am not addressing White Theatre directly here, know that each and every lesson has proven itself to me time and again in our American theatre industry. Take note.
These lessons, dear reader, are my gift to you.
Love,
Tara
*****
Lessons in Naming:
1. Please be that Fucking Gorgeous Trash
7. Colonialism in a Nutshell/ Oppressive Systems are Interrelated: A Fill in the blank Absence of Truth Narrative about invisible control
8. Question without Words
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REJECTION AND BOUNDARIES ARE INTEGRAL
What I was taught: ‘ACCEPTANCE’ IS HOW TO SURVIVE IN THE WHITE WORLD
What I have learned: REJECTION AND BOUNDARIES ARE INTEGRAL
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ACCEPTANCE
As a white inside but brown on the outside kid, I learned to make you my best friend, white supremacy.
Instead of lessons that black and brown children learn from their parents about persevering and watching closely for signs of danger and what to move away from, I was taught white lessons of accepting whatever I was given, to be grateful (read as terrified until) when I was chosen, to always accept, and to be happy with scenarios where I could have enjoyed myself more had I protected my boundaries.
That store bought plastic wrapped white bread we eat makes me feel awful, but I should be glad to have something to eat.
Dissatisfaction with your interaction with a family member? Ignore it, (rather than address it,) God will make it work out better next time.
You always encouraged me to be grateful without knowing why I was given what I got. (BTW, I can't THINK of a more succinct way of explaining how abuse is perpetrated again and again.)
You always insisted I remain disconnected from the “why?” of most of the questions I had. It's just the way it was.
It wasn't clear to me until I was older that, even without abuse or harsh punishment, this absence of knowledge and a force-fed ignorance of certain 'whys' was, in itself, a play of control.
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CONTROL
Control is not a bad thing in and of itself. I am tasked with control of myself, my living environment, my family when we're out and about, all sorts of control falls into my privileged hands again and again.
But the level of ignorance that children have about the real world around them... this is a control that needs to be examined carefully, to avoid flat out lying to them. To prepare them. To encourage healing the dissonance between what they hear and what they see. Believe me, we catch on VERY QUICKLY to the lack of congruity.
As Dr Joy explains, that dissonance of action is actually a form of intense training for future dissonance in the lives of people who have been trained that they must keep control at all costs. You remember seeing pictures of lynch mobs giddily gathered around some poor black man they just caught and hatefully separated from his life, right? Notice the children who are recognizing the dissonance in the photo, while the indoctrinated adults stand around smiling and posing! The kids are trying to resolve the love and care that they are shown with the savage inhumanity being displayed.
The result of this training is a loss of empathy for those you are tasked with controlling.
This is no different from the many acts of aggression and empathy-draining that are considered training for young boys who want to be initiated into the kingdom of "manhood". What else is the phrase, "teach you to act like a man" meant to convey except job training for a position of power?
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CONFORMITY IS CONNECTION
Most subversively, WS, you reminded me that of my act of conforming to your will was the same as staying connected to other people... There was no difference of opinion that was actually acceptable. Amongst your followers, TO REJECT THEIR TRUTH WAS TO REJECT THEM.
I think about that statement now, and how I feel that my Republican friends, family and acquaintances have failed me because they are rejecting my truth surrounding the policies and rhetoric of the current POTUS. Is it the same thing, am I rejecting them by rejecting their truth?
Well, lets try on a comparison: when I reject white bread at the dinner table because it makes me feel nauseated, is the consequence (on the maker of the meal) a rejection of my host? No, it's not.
On the other hand, my truth, that which is being rejected by Republican friends, family and acquaintances in their continued association with the Republican party, is that I want to keep the right to live without fear of retaliation from law enforcement for enacting my legal rights. I want my rights to matter. And in speaking up, in not conforming to the way things are now, I am not ejecting these loved ones from my heart.
Conformity is not connection.
However, my conformist Republican counterparts would advocate that I should toe the line and quietly vote how I wish, not exposing my non-conformity. Be private about your disagreement for Chrisssakes!
The vote they are casting basically proclaims, as their president does, that it is fair game to shoot me dead in the street for protesting the brutality from all sectors of the federal and state authorities. Conform or be rejected.
By not conforming, by risking rejection, even when we are standing up to protect innocent lives, it seems that WS interprets this as a rejection of connection, that we do not want to be connected.
It's not that I do not want to be connected. It's that there is a difference between being connected and being controlled. Recognizing the difference between the two is key.
Acceptance of control is how to survive in the white world.
So my advice is don't accept the bread.
Say no.
*****
MAKE BOUNDARIES
Make boundaries that make you feel safe, valued, and that preserve your love for yourself and what you do in this world IN SPITE OF the push you will feel to conform, the sheltering from the truth that will occur, the concessions you will be asked to make.
If it has to do with your well being, don't let anyone gaslight you into believing that your connection to them is more important than self preservation at any level. If they don't support your well being in a time of conflict, it's likely that they are in support of the patriarchal/ white supremacist/ hetero-normative, whether or not they know it.
TRY SAYING NO
Here's the thing: You won't know that these systems are netting you in from becoming the person you need to be unless you test it. The only way to know that you are being oppressed is by exercising freedom to choose differently.
So try it.
For example, if you are someone who often wears make up to show you are professional:
Try showing up in important images of yourself without makeup and see what happens.
Do you still enjoy your self image? If not, why? Have you confronted any vestiges of internalized ageism that might be lurking about? Are you still "you" without a deeply gendered representation or are you, a different person?
And what of the makeup-version of yourself? Is that persona important and WHY?
Do you feel that wearing makeup in this way, with this intention, gives you an edge on other people? How deeply does that competition with other (mostly) women-identifying people reach?
This is not a challenge for folks who have already hurdled themselves over the wall of gender expression and chosen differently than their society-biased representation. Yall already know what this is about.
But for those of us who have always used makeup as a tool in our toolbox to push past the misogyny of our workplaces, I ask you to reconsider your tactics for the sake of identifying where white supremacy lives in this choice.
Knowing WHY we do things allows us the gift of choosing differently.
I find that I am treated as more attractive and more professional if I wear makeup. Respect. And as a brown woman, you better believe I have had history of hustle in regards to garnering respect. I've played all the parts in order to acquire the respect I wanted from others.
Is this beauty standard a signal we've all internalized? Wearing makeup, is it a show of willingness to do what society wants from you?
Are you treated the same by known and unknown folks, and if you are not, can you love yourself just as fiercely as you did when you were trying to please others?
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YOU ARE NOT FREE
Look, I believe in you, even as we are completely filled with white supremacy rhetoric in every fiber of our beings... I want you to have the freedom to put on some bad-ass eyes.
REFUSE
While on vacay with my family, following social distancing rules, eating outside and away from an establishment or in our truck, doing what we could to get away from our home, we stumbled on ecological manifestation of the rule of acceptance, in the form of plastic.
Plastic represents an ecological disaster in process that we all WANT to navigate more responsibly, and it's even more difficult than ever before to avoid now that we have to use single serve containers even more aggressively in all carry out scenarios due to Covid 19.
And contrary to so much popular belief, recycling is NOT going to save our souls because a majority of plastic containers out there are not recyclable. And folks are NOT reusing them. "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" was a marvelous starting mantra to begin our cultural consciousness... but decades after the branding was done on this mantra, even though it is known globally, reduce, reuse and recycle is not enough.
Turns out there is another "R" word that we didn't inclue that is requisite in a world that can't control it's use of single-use plastic... and that word is REFUSE.
Getting out and about during quarantine was delightful for our family until we realized how DAMN MUCH plastic wear/bags/containers we were using. It was disgraceful.
But wait- we were going to do our best, we were going to recycle where we could, we were going to try to only eat out when we were needing meals, we were only using the utensils we needed for the meal, and if something was reusable, all the better!
Weren't we doing enough?
The answer is no.
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THINK AHEAD OF THE SYSTEM
We learned, fairly slowly I'm sad to say, that in order to live up to our own morals about plastic use, we had to learn to REFUSE plastic eating utensils again and again. We had to tactically switch plastic lemonade cups from the fountain soda machine to paper coffee cups and not use lids or straws. We had to THINK AHEAD OF THE SYSTEM and know WHEN TO SAY NO.
This is very much like white supremacy culture. Acceptance means doing the best you can within the system that is established. REFUSING means making your own way in order to avoid committing cultural habits, like massive amounts of single serve plastic items.
Learning when and how to say and navigate NO is not something our culture prepared us to do, and thus, here we are, still producing obscene amounts of single serve plastic that is destroying our planet's water habitats.
You must know that you're making a choice before you can choose differently.
By setting up our own moral boundaries around issues that we might not have considered to even be choices previously, we reclaim parts of ourselves that capitalism, white supremacy and patriarchy have tried to sever from us.
(To be continued...)
CONFESSIONS OF A FORMER WHITE PERSON: Part 2, Naming
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