Audre Lorde said “the master’s tools will never dismantle the masters house.” As a white person I often experience shame about being white. Race shame serves no one. When I worked at the LGBT Community Center, we spent a lot of time teaching young people the difference between shame and guilt. Shame, we explained, means feeling bad about who you ARE. Guilt means feeling bad about something you’ve DONE. I don’t have to be ashamed of being white but I am guilty. Guilty of benefitting from white privilege. Guilty of choosing my battles instead of picking every battle. Guilty of freezing up and changing the subject to decrease the tension with racist friends and family. Guilty of wanting to apologize to every black person I see after the latest police shooting as if all black people feel the same way. Guilty of going on with daily life when we are living in a state of emergency and our white souls are in danger of warp and sickness. Guilty of letting perfectionism stop me from speaking the truth even if it is not going to come out eloquent, passionate and perfect.
The perfection paralysis has to end. I have been afraid. Afraid to step into partnership with black people because I never grew up with a single black friend or acquaintance. The carefulness and censoring in order not to offend in liberal settings. Sharing my guilt is terrifying. But not as terrifying as having a gun pointed at me through the window of a car with my baby in the backseat. Or watching while they shoot my love or my child or my father.
Trigger warning: My grandfather had a friend named Wiggy. I remember two things about him: 1) he had a black dog named Nigger and 2) when he developed dementia and Alzheimer’s there were stories about how they would find him cowering under the bed trying to hide saying “the black man is coming to get me. The boogie man is coming to get me.”
That is what racism can do to your soul. The illness taking root. But racism is a system not an individual. So we look at society and find it cowering beside the bed with a dog named nigger. Afraid of the retribution and rage that is our due. When the problem is the system, individuals don’t matter. I could end up being held accountable for this system. I am white and therefore a symbol whether I want to be or not. The same way any black person can be stopped by the police and is now a symbol not a person. I don’t get to distance myself from racism and say but I’m not like them. Those other whites – Wiggy. But god how I want to. I want to prove beyond a doubt that I am not him and I want to be seen and approved of by black people to confirm that I am not him. What is this need for approval? Is it a seeking of forgiveness? Is it a desire for confession and absolution? Say 10 hail marys and be absolved of your whiteness, your privilege. Your safety. This is only one way – no there are many ways – to absolve yourself of your safety. That is to live unsafely on behalf of your own soul.