History Lessons

 Sadly, I don't want to write about personal things here now that I know there are people who will absolutely use them against me, which I used to be somewhat braver about. My bravery responds to danger...or shall we say my body does, and after many risky times in my life I have learned that I have to listen to that body, as the costs grow with every episode. If I want to stick around long enough in this body to see some restoration of rights, I'm going to have to work at it and protect myself.

I'm kind of happy to see how much people are learning to extend their understanding of White Supremacist Culture to include the ways people have been included in its reach, specifically right now white children, and white women. It's easy to see that white women have upheld it more strongly even than many white men...we've benefited from it, at least until we didn't. It took me personally a long, long time to find my work and the ways it had permeated my thinking. I had the privilege of taking my time.

The 15 tenets have been a good tool, as I argued with them and heard me using them in my life to justify my actions. The ones like Worship of the written word, Objectivity, and especially Individualism have taken me forever to see and stop trying to prove wrong. I don't trust help and don't want help and think I can do everything without help, which of course is actually another one, Defensiveness, and Only One Right Way, and truly all of the tenets bleed into each other, because it is a system, a way of being in the world, that is hard to examine when you don't have the time (Sense of Urgency) to pull out of survival and work more deeply than usual on your thinking and your assumptions. So I generally immerse as much as possible in Black History Month since so many resources are being made available during February. I read a lot. I read a lot of substacks, essays and watch a lot of posts on FB, which keeps me from throwing out FB though I want to, often. 

I settled for blocking a whole bunch of people and if you want to "friend" me and those people are in our mutuals, I'm not gonna respond. I sense a motive in there that is not just wanting to get to know me. I'm such an introvert (and do so much self-protection) that reading even disturbing material is easier for me than RL relationships, and right now reading and watching PBS is about all I'm doing. I'm glad I can type, but I can't do any work for a couple more weeks and that is really hard for me. 

I'm a worker. It's an addiction I can admit, but one that keeps me soothed in this era where the veils of "everything is fine" are shredded and we all have a long way to go before we will feel safe again, in so many ways. It is great that WSC is getting exposed, that white people are getting used to the idea that we actually are not benefiting from it, never have, and our main job right now is to quit enabling and promoting it. And do what we can to destroy it.

My parents signed a deed for our house in 1955 that had a covenant in it, and while I felt safe in our neighborhood, I had no knowledge that we were "protected" by that. We had scary people, in my case a dark Italian young man who just terrified me though I don't think he actually ever did anything to me. He threw something at one of my sisters once but I am sure now that we were all just playing with sharp sticks we shouldn't have been and it was an accident. We played lots of Cowboys and Indians back then and he was no doubt one of the people chasing the white women. I remember being tied to a tree and escaping so I also have no doubt that I was some kind of Annie Oakley character. But anyway, it was the 50s and these things were deeply embedded in us with the early days of TV, westerns and shows about Roy Rogers and Dale Evans and all kinds of romantic dramas where all the good guys wore the white hats. Symbols were so clear in those days, even though what stood behind them was still obfuscated.

We knew a lot of Italian people and Catholics but no Jewish people, to my knowledge, and as it turned out my Mom was not all that racist, but my Dad was from Kentucky and he was not hiding his racist leanings. I remember him complaining that he was supporting a Black family with his taxes, at the same time as my Mom hired a Black "Cleaning Lady" who we treated with disrespect without even knowing we were doing it. I'm sad she had to clean up after me, as I was a really messy little scientist who collected bones and feathers and did not care who was offended. After a certain point I got my own room because none of my sisters liked my style. But yeah, we have a photo of my Dad with a soapbox racer he built and it has a KKK symbol painted on it. That was around 1930 maybe, but when my brother pointed it out a few years ago, I was all "No, that must mean he wanted it to look like an ambulance..." Nope. Part of why he exited in 1970 was that he didn't like the way society was changing and taking his daughters with it. We were hippies (my older sister and I) to a degree, and we were in college and my roommate at the time was the daughter of a prominent law family who was defending the Chicago Eight. She was the first Jewish person I got to know and because I was 20, my understanding of everything was minimal, but I at least could tell who was promoting equality and justice and who wasn't. We were in the streets and having lunch with Black Panthers but when I look back at myself, I was so white and innocent and in need of protection I know I embarrassed myself daily with these good people. I did not really get so many things, and took in a lot of damage from my Dad, his culture and his own damage that I'll never really get out from under. Life isn't long enough for that. So I have a bit of a Sense of Urgency going on. But I still try to look at and think about those 15 tenets every day. And by now I have learned that WSC and the KKK also hated Catholics, Italians, and the Jewish people. Everybody but themselves, basically. 

Once in awhile I inadvertently do something right, but it's not significant in this fight we are all in now. Hippies got some things right, but in a superior way, and hippie men were mostly just as sexist as the rest of the culture. Still, to be in my twenties and thirties during many of the liberation movements at the time helped me at least develop some critical thinking skills that are useful every day. 

So every year about this time I watch and rewatch a lot of documentaries and try to learn all of the new things presented from history, which generally have that "oh, what?" feeling attached. I try not to shame myself too much for what I had to learn and still do, and I try to find ways to make reparations within my ability to do so. It's always complicated by my trauma and my imperfect efforts to manage that, and it really can be exhausting. But I am not going to be a white woman who echoes "I'm tired."

I do not know how so many people survived to this day with what this WSC culture did to the world, is doing, and will do. I listen to every word from Henry Louis Gates and read Stacey Patton and our local educator Kokayi Nosakhere, just a few of the many, many people who are articulating things for us as we drag our feet and take our time. I don't always get it, but I keep my damn mouth shut until I do. 

And I call it out when I see it. Marginalization in our microcosm is alive and well. We have a ton of WSC going on in our current little power structure, and you can easily apply many of those 15 tenets to what has been happening. Cultural appropriation is supported, we never make any statements in political crises (except don't bring your politics into our commerce,) and while I tried to speak to the Board about equity a few years back, I was cut off (for taking more than a "moment") and my efforts were then used to oppress people in a perverted use of the concept, to make new rules with no exceptions no matter what that meant for people who needed accommodations. Many of our current policies are based in this reverse equity that, along with gatekeeping and obfuscation, insures that people in power are supported and those without it are driven away. It's covert, as most types of oppression have traditionally been until recently when some bandages are being torn off. Not in our microcosm though, where is it just business as usual. Pretense. 

We used to spend a lot of time crafting solutions to address needs and carefully making inclusive rules that allowed for diverse circumstances. You won't see that happening with this admin. You will comply or else with this power structure. And members are walking away. There is not one intact committee at this point, and no one points out why. Instead of a members' bill of rights we get no access to our fellow members (I no longer get the packet with all the emails, as I am not encouraged to contact any fellow members.) People are encouraged to join committees but if you are captured, your good intentions will find you doing the work of paid staff without the benefits of payment. Actually the benefits now are negative. Toe the company line or you will be pushed out or even attacked. You've tried not to see it.

In a healthy membership organization people are happy to serve, the work is fairly distributed with people's capability in mind, and their contributions are honored. We left that territory in 2023, after erosion for the previous five or so years. Some people experienced that health, so they were unable to see and believe that others were not experiencing it. Same situation now. Until it happens to you, you just can't, or won't see it. And when it happens to you, you are shocked, look around for justice, and realize we didn't think we lost that. We had trust. But trust can be perverted. We had honesty. Now we have lies.

But in this time of great awakening and diligent witnessing and a different type of honesty being demanded in the world, our microcosm is still sadly behind the times and not even participating in the times. This economic crisis is not resulting in the strengthening of our safety net, the one we created together, dedicated our lives to, and thought we made strong and durable enough to handle whatever came along. We just didn't think it would be sabotaged. We just didn't think hard enough about what we needed to do when things got this hard. 

And now the good people have walked away and all the jobs are "too hard." The solution is simple but it's not happening. Everything is great. 

Sorry, sugar coatings are not going to happen anymore. Better get used to it. Standing next to a predator does not make you safe. Eventually they will turn to you.