In my last post, I lifted up the possibility that our path (as settlers from Europe, to belonging here in what’s now known as North America) might be best found in the willingness to stop trying to escape from our status as guests (uninvited though we are).
I always have issues with the one about seeing race. I am in a very diverse family. if race were seen first, I would have to introduce people as my Korean niece, my biracial nephew, my African American son, or my biracial son. Then does my Lebanese nephew by marriage count as yet another race/ethnic group or my Mexican daughter-in-law?
One of our favorite family silly stories is when someone asked my sister what she was going to do when her six-month-old daughter got older and started speaking Korean!!
I spent a full ten years immersed in the black culture, which I must hasten to say, is very different from the street culture. I also worked with children who lived in a street culture. I have also immersed myself in an indigenous culture. I am acutely aware of the struggles mainstream society places on all these groups. I work hard to remove the victims by believing in them and providing opportunities to be heard, seen, and valued within the community they know. I do not help people; I just value them as they are.
Do I have a culture? No. I am simply Susan who has visited a lot of groups and gained a deep understanding of them. I would stand to the side sometimes for years to gain an understanding before venturing forward. I would often hear "You get it."
I have created a culture through my work wherever I go. But it is a culture based on actions towards others that come from a place of love.
Perhaps we are speaking of apples and oranges here, but these are the words that came to me.
Wow. Thank you for this, Tad. "...the idea of getting everyone under one umbrella... as long as they are the ones holding the umbrella. I've seen this become the most brutal form of control and silencing, more insidious because it comes across as love and unity. In the hands of men less astute than him, it can quickly become a sort of spiritual totalitarianism or privilege protected by the deflecting robes of Universal unity.
Amen to unity but the unity doesn't seem to appear all at once. It seems to appear as diversity. Diversity isn't the opposite of unity. It's the expression and embodiment of it."
I look forward to these, thank you. I’ve been holding what it means to behave as a guest, to be invited in. I’ve been playing with something similar in my last few years of building relationship with the more than human/land of this place I didn’t even grow up in. I listened to Stephen Jenkinson and Kimberly’s recent conversation on land and be-longing, I took away invitation to tend to these places we are in to find belonging in service, the seeds of relationship.
I’m here in a place that isn’t even where I was born… how long till it feels like home? *The time it takes to grow an old growth forest!* There is a piece of that truth which anchors me to befriending this grief which may be a constant companion - instead of thinking I need to fix it.
So I’m wondering how these pieces fit into a white culture and collective identity making… and called back into motherhood land… with thanks!
Thanks Tad. This feel like really useful work. I'd like to add a few thoughts. Im writing from England so the perspective might be slightly different, though I believe pretty consonant.
1. Fascism often offers that sense of belonging to a collective, by reinforcing difference, along a vertical axis of superiority/inferiority, rather than a horizontal one. My own sense is that this stems from a sense of lack - there aren't enough resources (food, love, attention) for me and others, so for survival I must come first. Another way to express this lack is as disconnection from place, culture, family, the cycles of life and death, spirit, etc.
2. It's helpful for me to understand Whiteness as containing ideas of blankness, erasure, purity, perfection, emptiness, disconnection, and meaninglessness. Anyone can experience these, although in fact it is white people who (mostly invisibly?) carry these ideas as part of their identity.
3. So in some disagreement (in terms of nuance, perhaps) with the first meme: life is in fact hard because one is white - but ironically, in much less visible ways. Please note, this is not intended to cancel out privilege, imply some sort of equality of suffering, do any erasing, of anything at all, or excuse anyone from responsibility or hard work. This is a complex, yes-and, situation.
One could say that the difficulty in identifying this particular hardship is the karmic balance of all the effects of all the hiding, silencing, dehumanising, invisibling (there's an anti-sibling side to this. Ref cain and abel, v early in this story...) that whiteness has carried out in order to create itself.
Perhaps the hardship can only be really clearly seen once all the work has been done to acknowledge the hardship of others? Again, fascism offers a shortcut here. But not to acknowledge this wound in some way feels exclusionary and counter-productive.
Most people in this culture have no way of tending their own wounds, let alone those of others at the same time. This is one of the effects of feeling disconnected from a collective. Being asked to deal with the messy ambiguities of connection, in a way which has enough care and attention to see both sides, can feel impossible and threatening. 'All lives matter' feels like an instant attempt to defend, deny, erase and equalise - so how might we start to articulate this complexity? (Probably not in a tweet, I'd say).
I think it's really important we start to find good ways to acknowledge these hidden wounds which whiteness also carries.
4. Saying "we are all one and there are no categories" is a subtle way to order and categorise, at the same time as hiding the fact that's what one is doing. This kind of sleight of hand is, as you point out, right at the root of what we're talking about. Magic is power; magic is the power to control what is visible and what is invisible. To make things disappear.
There is a whole lot of trauma that needs to be uncovered, in every person on the planet. And it is different according to the colour of their skin, as well as other factors. Perhaps we could start to say that the culture of whiteness is exactly a culture of trauma, which hides connection in order to deny consequence. Of course, the reality of that is very hard to look at, so it remains invisible. But we need to take responsibility for it, for choices we've made and probably continue to make daily to accept the offer of unconsciousness, of going along with the illusion, of joining the collective in this trance of believing we are only weak little individuals without the power to say no, so we don't have to take responsibility for big things.
Okay, so I've seen this piece before, from your old healing from whiteness days (Found your work from your interview with Tada Hozumi Way back when). And I have done a lot of work on my own and my own investigation. Would you be okay with me offering an alternative perspective?
Amen re: the newness of Whiteness. One of the more recent branches on the tree of Empire but not the only one. And aye... amazing. The same mountain range. So glad you're still out there man <3
Thank you. 🙏
Just a heads up this link is broken:
Understanding Whiteness.
I always have issues with the one about seeing race. I am in a very diverse family. if race were seen first, I would have to introduce people as my Korean niece, my biracial nephew, my African American son, or my biracial son. Then does my Lebanese nephew by marriage count as yet another race/ethnic group or my Mexican daughter-in-law?
One of our favorite family silly stories is when someone asked my sister what she was going to do when her six-month-old daughter got older and started speaking Korean!!
I spent a full ten years immersed in the black culture, which I must hasten to say, is very different from the street culture. I also worked with children who lived in a street culture. I have also immersed myself in an indigenous culture. I am acutely aware of the struggles mainstream society places on all these groups. I work hard to remove the victims by believing in them and providing opportunities to be heard, seen, and valued within the community they know. I do not help people; I just value them as they are.
Do I have a culture? No. I am simply Susan who has visited a lot of groups and gained a deep understanding of them. I would stand to the side sometimes for years to gain an understanding before venturing forward. I would often hear "You get it."
I have created a culture through my work wherever I go. But it is a culture based on actions towards others that come from a place of love.
Perhaps we are speaking of apples and oranges here, but these are the words that came to me.
Wow. Thank you for this, Tad. "...the idea of getting everyone under one umbrella... as long as they are the ones holding the umbrella. I've seen this become the most brutal form of control and silencing, more insidious because it comes across as love and unity. In the hands of men less astute than him, it can quickly become a sort of spiritual totalitarianism or privilege protected by the deflecting robes of Universal unity.
Amen to unity but the unity doesn't seem to appear all at once. It seems to appear as diversity. Diversity isn't the opposite of unity. It's the expression and embodiment of it."
I look forward to these, thank you. I’ve been holding what it means to behave as a guest, to be invited in. I’ve been playing with something similar in my last few years of building relationship with the more than human/land of this place I didn’t even grow up in. I listened to Stephen Jenkinson and Kimberly’s recent conversation on land and be-longing, I took away invitation to tend to these places we are in to find belonging in service, the seeds of relationship.
I’m here in a place that isn’t even where I was born… how long till it feels like home? *The time it takes to grow an old growth forest!* There is a piece of that truth which anchors me to befriending this grief which may be a constant companion - instead of thinking I need to fix it.
So I’m wondering how these pieces fit into a white culture and collective identity making… and called back into motherhood land… with thanks!
Aye. I think it's a good way to think of it.
Thanks Tad. This feel like really useful work. I'd like to add a few thoughts. Im writing from England so the perspective might be slightly different, though I believe pretty consonant.
1. Fascism often offers that sense of belonging to a collective, by reinforcing difference, along a vertical axis of superiority/inferiority, rather than a horizontal one. My own sense is that this stems from a sense of lack - there aren't enough resources (food, love, attention) for me and others, so for survival I must come first. Another way to express this lack is as disconnection from place, culture, family, the cycles of life and death, spirit, etc.
2. It's helpful for me to understand Whiteness as containing ideas of blankness, erasure, purity, perfection, emptiness, disconnection, and meaninglessness. Anyone can experience these, although in fact it is white people who (mostly invisibly?) carry these ideas as part of their identity.
3. So in some disagreement (in terms of nuance, perhaps) with the first meme: life is in fact hard because one is white - but ironically, in much less visible ways. Please note, this is not intended to cancel out privilege, imply some sort of equality of suffering, do any erasing, of anything at all, or excuse anyone from responsibility or hard work. This is a complex, yes-and, situation.
One could say that the difficulty in identifying this particular hardship is the karmic balance of all the effects of all the hiding, silencing, dehumanising, invisibling (there's an anti-sibling side to this. Ref cain and abel, v early in this story...) that whiteness has carried out in order to create itself.
Perhaps the hardship can only be really clearly seen once all the work has been done to acknowledge the hardship of others? Again, fascism offers a shortcut here. But not to acknowledge this wound in some way feels exclusionary and counter-productive.
Most people in this culture have no way of tending their own wounds, let alone those of others at the same time. This is one of the effects of feeling disconnected from a collective. Being asked to deal with the messy ambiguities of connection, in a way which has enough care and attention to see both sides, can feel impossible and threatening. 'All lives matter' feels like an instant attempt to defend, deny, erase and equalise - so how might we start to articulate this complexity? (Probably not in a tweet, I'd say).
I think it's really important we start to find good ways to acknowledge these hidden wounds which whiteness also carries.
4. Saying "we are all one and there are no categories" is a subtle way to order and categorise, at the same time as hiding the fact that's what one is doing. This kind of sleight of hand is, as you point out, right at the root of what we're talking about. Magic is power; magic is the power to control what is visible and what is invisible. To make things disappear.
There is a whole lot of trauma that needs to be uncovered, in every person on the planet. And it is different according to the colour of their skin, as well as other factors. Perhaps we could start to say that the culture of whiteness is exactly a culture of trauma, which hides connection in order to deny consequence. Of course, the reality of that is very hard to look at, so it remains invisible. But we need to take responsibility for it, for choices we've made and probably continue to make daily to accept the offer of unconsciousness, of going along with the illusion, of joining the collective in this trance of believing we are only weak little individuals without the power to say no, so we don't have to take responsibility for big things.
Parsifal, I love what you're saying.
1) Amen.
2) Yes.
3) Amen - https://healingfromwhiteness.blogspot.com/2015/09/privilege-poverty-on-being-white-in.html
4) "which hides connection in order to deny consequence" - incredibly well put. brilliant.
Thanks you for your good words.
Thanks Tad. Keep up the good work, it's appreciated
Okay, so I've seen this piece before, from your old healing from whiteness days (Found your work from your interview with Tada Hozumi Way back when). And I have done a lot of work on my own and my own investigation. Would you be okay with me offering an alternative perspective?
of course, please share.
Taking me a little longer than expected to write it up. Just giving you a heads up that I haven't forgotten.
Amen re: the newness of Whiteness. One of the more recent branches on the tree of Empire but not the only one. And aye... amazing. The same mountain range. So glad you're still out there man <3