Today's Action: Listen (With Your Chest)
All right, y'all! We've established that, as white people seeking better "tools for love," we need to educate ourselves and each other about privilege and inequality, rather than expecting people of color to teach us.
BUT: It'd be foolish to follow that logic into a bubble where the only voices we hear talking about inequality are our own.
So: here's something from outside the white bubble to read: Stop Telling Me To Fight. I posted it last week as part of the Ridiculous Thanksgiving Homework Package, but it's heavily worth re-posting. If you are like me and automatically recoil from intimations that you're 1) racist and 2) clueless, reading this will make you feel uncomfortable and defensive. If that's the case, Wacky Amazing Jeff and I have some thoughts. (WAJ is not pictured below, but he inspired the image choice.) Read on.
I just—don't know how to caption these photos and never expected to link to the Daily Mail. Life comes at you fast. I recommend a look at the full collection, which is...extraordinary. Source
When In Doubt, Lead With the Chest
In college I took an art-exploration class called Creativity Practicum, every parent's dream for their daughter's expensive liberal-arts education. The sculptor/professor Wacky Amazing Jeff promised to inculcate in us non-artists a sense of deep creative play. Course activities included lots of Russian film viewings, blindfolded tours of a painting studio, and a collaborative plaster-casting of my mouth. (Nope, that last is not worth discussing further, except to note that a plaster cast of one's mouth makes an excellent stocking stuffer for a loved one.) Before one trip to the art museum, WAJ held forth on The Ways to Interact With Art. Every sculpture, he said, should be bodily experienced in three ways: with the hands, with the head, and with the chest. Literally: you should squeeze a sculpture with your fingers; you should lay your cheek against it; and you should hug it against your torso. [NB: Most art museums take a dim view of this approach, but—lovely, right?]
Back to present day. When I read or hear someone's account of their oppression, sadness, and fear—particularly if it indicts me as part of the problem—I almost always respond first with Data (head) or by mentally trying to Fix Everything and Make It OK (hands). ("The achievement gap between Black and white students has actually been closing in recent years..." or "But we're trying in these ways!") These aren't evil responses...but they're not the responses the situation warrants. (Just like, when I tell my husband about a crappy day at work, I do NOT want to hear "But this is one difficult day against 23 nice days!" or "Well, here's what you should do!" NOT HELPFUL.)
Since I want more tools for love, not tools for argumentation and justification, I've made a new commitment: to read people's expressions of frustration at least three times with the chest before moving anywhere near the head and hands.
That is, try to listen with the love and compassion and desire-to-understand that I want to give my husband or a friend when they describe a hard day.
To assume that what they're saying is true in a deep sense—even if I believe I could refute it from my experience or knowledge.
To understand that if white people really did understand the pain of people of color (as I claim to do, when I jump in with Data and Solutions), we, um, wouldn't be in this situation.
This doesn't mean I read everything three times—though perhaps I should—but that if I want to engage with a piece critically, I'd better have read it multiple times with an open heart first.
Give it a shot today, and let us know what you think! Here's the link again: Stop Telling Me To Fight.
OH! And remember to read Racism 101 for Clueless White People, too. It offers tools to help manage the Automatic White Response to Stop Telling Me to Fight and similar.
Just one citation today: Props to my dear Libertarian economist friend Brian for the phrase "tools for love," which I...love.
And one final reminder to lead with the chest: