I know speaking up against racism is uncomfortable.
We, as white people, have been conditioned to believe it's "impolite" to have these talks out in the open. We have been told it's better than it was, so what's the big deal? We have been socialized to believe that if we speak up we will become the brunt of hate ourselves. We have been told that we, as women, are marginalized too, and therefore we're not capable of being oppressors. We have been told it's better to keep quiet and stay comfortable than to standup to our family, our friends, our communities. What I have come to find though, is that staying comfortably silent is far more painful than rejection from those that wish I would shut up and get in line. The pain of knowing people are dying, people are being treated as less than human, hurts way more than any angry responses I receive. I cannot spend my time on this Earth ignoring the plight of my fellow humans, my fellow citizens, my friends, and my neighbors. Furthermore, any discomfort I experience when speaking out pales in comparison to what it is like to live on the other side of this system. The discomfort, pain, and fear of living as a brown or black person in this country is so severe, and so heightened, that it is as if we live in two disparate worlds that share the same space. So far, the majority of people I've seen speak up on behalf of Ahmaud have been black. And this is why we still live with a system of racism. Until white people hold other white people accountable, nothing will change. We should not hold the power in tearing this system down. But we do. And this is when so many want to say, "But I didn't do this. People 400 hundred years ago did. How can you blame me???" I'm not blaming you. I'm asking you to leave this world better than you found it. If you went to a park and saw trash on the ground, would you pick it up, or would you say, "Well someone did that before me so I shouldn't be asked to pick it up." It doesn't matter who made the mess. What matters is who has the integrity to leave this world better than they found it. As I said when I began this, it's uncomfortable to speak up against racism. But you know what's even more uncomfortable? Living in fear because your skin color threatens white people. Or worse, losing your LIFE because you can be killed without reason. In writing posts like these, I realize I will turn many off to the work I do. People will come here, see posts like this, and want nothing to do with my meditations and my work. I'm sorry it has to be that way. But I cannot in good faith create work intended to heal while turning my back on the healing we need as a country.
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As the social consciousness of this country evolved, the concept of being racist went from being something that was normal, even good, to being something that was socially taboo. After the Civil Rights Movement, we made a collective agreement that to be a racist was to be a bad person. Racists were the people on TV in 1963 blasting black protesters with fire hoses. They were the people who used the n word and enacted emotional and physical violence. They were the lynchers, the KKK, and in modern times, they're the men who marched and chanted at Charlotesville. We essentially created a binary where RACIST = BAD and NOT RACIST = GOOD. Only bad people can be racist. To be a good person, you cannot and must not be racist. However, in a country where we internalize beliefs from our neighborhoods, the media, music, movies, tv shows, and our schools from before we can even remember, this binary forces us to pretend we've received no messaging about race. It asks us not to question any subconscious beliefs we've internalized about superiority, power, the whiteness of the government, the whiteness of CEOs, and the blackness of the prison system. All we must know is that racism is bad and that we don't support it. Questioning our subconscious and implicit biases then puts us in a moral dilemma - if we admit that we internalized some bias, such as that black men are more prone to crime, does that mean we're racist and bad people? In order to escape this dilemma, we have thus far closed our eyes to it, preventing any growth or restructuring to the consciousness we've developed. This binary, which was meant to be helpful and condemn racism, has become an iron grid locking us all in place. The reason we, as white people, can so easily look the other way on this is we are on the top side of the iron grid. The brown and black communities, however, are on the bottom side of it, and being crushed by its weight. This binary is blocking all progress and action steps towards equality. Because white people dread and bristle at any implication of being called a racist, when a person of color mentions we have done or said something hurtful, we feel attacked. We don't hear what they're saying about why a certain phrase or behavior is rooted in stereotyping or ignorance. We don't see the hurt we've caused. We don't hear the frustration as they try to open our eyes. All we hear is, "You are racist," which in our binary systems means, "You are a bad person." As Robin Diangelo, the author of White Fragility says, "Within this paradigm, to suggest I am racist is to deliver a deep moral blow - a kind of character assassination. Having received this blow, I must defend my character, and that is where all my energy will go - to deflecting the charge, rather than reflecting on my behavior. In this way, the good/bad binary makes it nearly impossible to talk to white people about racism, what it is, how it shapes all of us, and the inevitable ways that we are conditioned to participate in it." In order to tear this iron grid down, we, as white people, must realize that racism is not on a binary. It's not an either/or. It's a complicated, messy, network of threads that runs through the entire fabric of our society. Good people have biases. Good people are effected by the relentless, dominant, societal messaging that is inescapable. Good people are caught up in the social conditioning of racism as much as anyone else. In order to tear down systemic racism, we must confront the fact that we can strive to be good people while also working on our biases. In an ideal world, the human mind would not form biases. But it does. And pretending it doesn't does not make us color blind. It makes us color silent (a term coined by Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum). Pretending not to see race and racism, and refusing to reflect on our own social consciousness, does not make us an ally to people of color. It just makes us silent. In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. Side note: Addressing the racist binary does not address the full complexities of bias and prejudice. Homophobia and Islamophobia do not fall into a binary - there are many people who feel morally superior for supporting them. Thus, it's important we continue to discuss all forms of hate and oppression on an ongoing basis. These conversations are still necessary and integral to change.
In spirituality, healing has so far focused on the individual. It is almost always written from the perspective of healing our own traumas, fears, and blocks to our greater self. Rarely is spirituality seen as something that should be used to bring us together. Although we know there are wounds and divides happening all around us, we have yet to turn our attention to healing as a group concept. At the same time, we know that an essential part of healing is overcoming a concept of separation. In healing, we return to wholeness with our Higher Self, the Universe, our Higher Power, and with the parts of our selves that we shut out and blocked. Despite this awareness that separation is a source of pain, we never ask ourselves how we can heal separation on a larger scale. We have yet to ask how separation in our communities can be healed. We have yet to ask why overcoming the divisions that cause us to fear and judge each other is so important. And we have yet to ask how, by healing our social and communal wounds, we will find the true meaning of healing. Until we see healing as a thing for the collective, rather than a thing for the individual, we will never truly heal. This concept of coming together and connecting is something I have only recently begun to explore myself. As I open myself up to it, I find my consciousness taking on a new form. I must unlearn the singular perspective I was raised with and begin to learn a new, more comprehensive way of being. One thing that has profoundly helped me with this is the documentary The Color of Fear. It was recommended to me by a friend, and I now know why she felt it was important I see it. Although done in 1994, it's as relevant today as ever. What this documentary does, is it shows the power of healing when we bring different types of people together and get them talking. So often, we discredit listening to another person as an essential human experience. We think that people who are experiencing social injustices need so much more. And because we know there is social injustice happening all around us, we feel daunted, overwhelmed, depressed and eventually powerless. We do nothing, because we feel nothing can be done. However, no one person is being asked to heal all that's happening right now. In fact, believing we can or should is often an action of the ego. We may even discredit listening because it requires us to step back, to release the need to make ourselves the hero of someone else's story. Instead, listening asks us to empower the other person so they can heal themselves. Listening asks us to hear and understand that the experiences we have are not the experiences other people are having. And for white people, like myself, listening asks us to stop making oppression a problem for everyone else. We, who stand in a position of privilege, must become active participants in change. And the first action step we can take is listening. By listening, we shine a light on all the corners where racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and all other forms of prejudice hide. We learn, through people's own words, what they need. We stop projecting onto them what we think they need or what we think we would need if we were them. For more on this, I cannot recommend The Color of Fear enough. To try and express what happens in this documentary in a blog post would do a disservice to it. Go check it out, and afterwards, come back and share your thoughts with me. Exploring division, social injustice and oppression is an ongoing thing for me. If you would like to recommend a book, podcast, or movie, leave it in the comments. I promise I will check it out! Today, I was invited by my friend Tasha Wilson to her house for coffee and a dialogue about race and the often ignored racism in modern America. So many of us express the need to have conversations that make us uncomfortable but ultimately help us to grow as people and a society. However, few of us take the steps to do this, and I learned so much just from Tasha's grace and willingness to open this door. I first met Tasha through a 48 hour film challenge last year. Although we hadn't seen each other since, we've stayed Facebook friends. Tasha has occasionally shared things on Facebook about what it's like to be a black woman in today's society. Recently, she posted something about the current Miss Universe, who is South African. Tasha asked how many people truly understand how the world views a dark skinned woman. She said she often gets the back-handed comment that some feel is complementary: "Tasha, you're so pretty. . . . for a dark skinned woman." I responded to the post that I myself know little of what her life and her experiences have been like, and that many people, like myself, were raised unaware of the differences between white existence and black existence. Tasha responded with "when you say that many white people don't believe a difference exists, I feel you must re-examine that statement and possibly break it down on a deeper level." She invited my over for coffee to hear more of what she meant, and I was amazed at how gracefully she did this. After we agreed to meet the next day, she called me to make sure I knew she wasn't mad at what I'd written. When Tasha called, I could already see a glimpse of the different ways we've learned to navigate society. The fact that she felt she had to put my comfort first said so much to me about how different our experiences are. I asked myself why I hadn't called her first, and am still reflecting on why I hadn't considered her needs in the same way. We talked a lot about this, and about how I have lived a life surrounded by people who look like me. I have never made an effort to have a diverse group of friends, and as Tasha shared, this is a luxury in itself. For many people, having friends who don't look like you isn't a choice. I have always had the ease of surrounding myself with people who look like me, and on top of that, never even considered that this was a privilege. When I go to parties, job interviews, stores, anywhere really, I have the comfort of blending in. Of course there have been Latina friends and Asian friends, but when it comes to black friends, my circle has remained mostly closed. And on top of this, I have never been friends, let alone close friends, with a black woman. If you'd asked me why, I would've said it wasn't intentional. I would have said it just happened that way. I wouldn't have asked myself the deeper question of what I was doing to cause this. As I am now learning, this is because I have done nothing to understand what it means to be black in this world, this country, or even this city I call home. I never asked myself why black women felt left out of the women's march. I never asked myself why I railed against the patriarchy but not white privilege. The impetus to educate myself and understand where I was failing was on me, and I ignored it. Although I threw around phrases like institutional racism, I never tried to understand what that really means. I called myself aware and progressive, but I wasn't. I was only aware of enough to give myself a sense of moral superiority to those that I considered racist. Essentially, I did just enough to make myself feel better without actually doing anything at all. I would not have even considered how selfish, closed minded, and hurtful this is if Tasha hadn't invited me over to have a deeper look at my views. As I was heading over to Tasha's house, I knew this was going to expose many levels of ignorance I hold. I know this is a reason many people avoid these kinds of conversations. We don't want to feel stupid. We don't want to have our social views picked apart and exposed. But this all comes back to Tasha calling me to make sure I was comfortable - for many Americans, their comfort is never a consideration, and people like myself never stop to ask how we're contributing to an inbuilt system that prioritizes white people. As Tasha and I shared coffee (and the best french toast ever), we talked about how she had to talk to her son about what to do when he gets pulled over. She had to make sure he understood that much of society views him as a threat, just for being a black man. She had to have discussions not about his future, college, and his dreams, but how to stay alive in a racist system. We talked about her family, and how her grandparents grew up in Alabama at a time when education wasn't even an option for them. We talked about mental health, and how few black psychologists there are. On a deeper level, we discussed how this stems from the African American community being banned from mental asylums through most of history. At some point, you've seen a TV show or movie that shows sanitariums from the the 1960's and before. Did you ever notice there were only white people there? Further still, once black men and women were admitted they were abused in such a way that it fostered a distrust of the mental health system itself. Until we talk openly about these things, we cannot heal the root of the pain we have caused and are still causing through our desire to look the other way. We also talked about the fact that many people think everything is fine, and there is no need to have these kinds of discussions. For many people, racism is a thing of the past. For anyone who believes this, I would just have them listen to a threatening phone call Tasha received. A man, believing she had made incendiary political remarks (she hadn't - she's not a political person and never speaks about politics) called her in a rage. Without even realizing he'd called the wrong person, he left a hateful, homophobic, racist, and threatening message (Tasha is not gay - but he still threw in that hate anyways). I was scared just listening to it, and was chilled by how easily he threw around the n word and his desire to physical hurt her. There is so much more I would want to share about how Tasha opened my mind and heart today. Her unbelievably wise daughter Aciemarie was there also, and she said some powerful things that I will continue to reflect on. Until someone opens their heart to you, you can't know what you don't know. It takes so much grace and patience to share your experiences with a person who has not walked in your shoes. It takes an incredible amount of trust and a belief that people, when you get them to listen, are understanding and good in their core. As much as I wish racism was a thing of the past, it's not, and the way to change that is to connect with each other. To have the conversations that make us uncomfortable. To put ourselves in situations that breakdown our views so that we can open up to new ones. And for people like myself, to ask how we're contributing, either through apathy or ignorance, to a system that is far from equal. Thank you, Tasha, for showing me the true meaning of love and courage. You are an amazing human on every level, and you taught me something today that will reverberate for the rest of my life. In the spiritual realm, there is a real lack of diverse representation. The most popular spiritual teachers are similar to me - straight, white, middle-upper class. Therefore, the majority of advice is given from a perspective that a large portion of the population doesn't identify with. If you have a spiritual blog, website, YouTube channel, or anything else and you offer a diverse voice please email me at melissafield01@gmail.com. I will feature you on here and help you to reach more people. This includes but is not limited to women of color, immigrants, Native Americans, transgender people, drag queens, drag kings, people with physical/mental disabilities, and non-Western religions. Also, if you do not have a web presence but you teach in some way (yoga, meditation, group gatherings) you are also welcome! By sharing who you are and what you do you will encourage others to do the same. If you're reading this and wondering if you should reach out, please do so! I will send you a few questions to get an idea of who you are and what you do, and will then feature you in a blog post. This is an open-ended invitation. Thank you! |