Where do we belong?
A Post-election guide for white people on the left (and beyond) — Part IV
November 22, 2020
One of the most important things we can learn as well-meaning white people is to learn to stay in our lane. So often white saviors run into the spaces of people of color because we believe in the importance of this social justice work, but we don’t know how much our behavior is imitating the existing structures of oppression. So, our intentions are on board, but our actions are harmful. We barge into protests, actions, community spaces and try to take over, we talk too loudly, we don’t listen, we don’t follow the lead of the people of color who have been doing this work for a long, long time.
This is partly because we have been socialized not to listen, and not to notice. So when we discover that this is horribly wrong, we default to assuming that everyone else has also recently discovered this. But our lateness to this realization is both necessary (better late than never) and obnoxious to the people who have been attempting to get the attention of the larger public and working to fix the inequity for decades.
I first started writing these paragraphs using “they” pronouns, but I had to go back and edit it to “we.” Because I’m included in this. I have done these things. Wherever you are on your anti-racism journey, you are still susceptible to making mistakes like these. If you are new to the shocking oppression our society enacts upon Indigenous, black, and marginalized folx, it means you are late. I am late. But this is not a guilt trip for not having engaged already. There is a powerful constellation of institutions, laws, and norms built around silencing the concerns of people of color in order to maintain the peaceful feelings of white people, and your lack of insight is not a character flaw or a moral failing, it is a mark of the success of those systems.
The fact that you are here now, and you want to do the work is a mark of your character, ethics, and morality. BUT you also need to be intensely aware that your desire to do something does not erase the way in which our culture has raised you to do harm. A major portion of the work you have to do — I have to do, we all have to do — is a commitment to de-programming our racist, colonialist, patriarchal minds. This is a practice of self-liberation that is necessary in order to join the struggle for the liberation of all. We are gonna get to that.
For now, I want you to cherish the sense of overwhelm and urgency you feel, because that feeling is telling you the truth. The situation is dire. The need for response is urgent. And the fact that these struggles are long-enduring does not dilute their urgency.
However, as we turn our attention to meeting our own needs for community and belonging, we must understand that these communities of action are not our own. Spaces belonging to people of color are not ours to invade. And it is often our misplaced need to belong combined with our desire to do good, that leads to the harmful behavior of colonizing non-white spaces.
So the question then becomes: if we want to work toward a more just and sustainable future, but we don’t belong in non-white spaces, where do we belong?
This is not a question I can answer for you. But I can say that it is a particularly hard question to answer. Because there is no such thing as a “white culture.” Or a “white community.” For most of us our ancestors sacrificed the particularities of their cultures in order to be assimilated into the dominant power group (for survival reasons — don’t be too hard on your ancestors for that). That is not to negate any of the other sacrifices they made to create a life for themselves and for your family.
But it is important that we acknowledge that the idea of the “West” is only shored up by an equally preposterous, monolithic, and oversimplified “East” (see Edward Said on Orientalism if that concept is new to you). But it also oversimplified Europe and its multitude of cultures in order to prop up an ideology of European supremacy under the banner of race. This justified colonization as morally correct, because whites (Europeans) were “bringing civilization” to “savage” (i.e. non-white) parts of the globe and “modernizing them” (i.e. pillaging their resources to enrich themselves while imposing European systems of oppression).
Side note — this is essentially what we re-produce when we enter non-white spaces today to add our presence and “save” them. When we don’t listen and respect their own leadership, and assume that our ideas are either new or better, we are only demonstrating our racist-colonialist bias that tells us these folks are not as civilized as we are and they need our leadership.
The question of where do we belong can be particularly difficult to answer for white folx, especially if we have lost a sense of connection to place or culture from which we are descended. All that is left is the mythic identity of whiteness, which is literally defined as “not-that.”
So how do we then begin to fulfill our need for love and belonging?
We cultivate our communities. Ours. We don’t invade others’. I think there are two major components to this cultivation: there is the work of INCLUDING — finding our people and being purposeful about our relationships with them — and there is the work of EXCLUDING — identifying where healthy boundaries need to be drawn and creating them.
For the remainder of this installment I will focus on INCLUDING. Because it is by far the easiest to manage.
First, figure out who your core people are. Your family — chosen if your family of origin is not your people. With whom do you share your daily life, all the mundanities and minor joys and irritations? Are there ways you can be more purposeful, more healthy, more supportive of one another in those relationships?
Second, figure out who your tribe is. Who belongs in your broader network of support? With whom do you identify? What groups are staples in the rhythms of your life? A club? A scene? A church? A knitting circle? A neighborhood? A disparate band of academics flung to the farthest reaches of the continent and beyond all linked by esoteric interest in the Middle Ages? (No? Is that just me?) Cultivate ways to be more present in your tribe.
Third, identify your culture. Participating in a culture lends a temporal aspect to belonging. It isn’t just who or where do you belong to right now, today, in this world, but how do you participate in the rituals of those who came before you and extend yourself into the future for those who come after?
There are many ways to do this, but it’s incredibly important that we don’t displace our need for a culture by appropriating non-white cultures who do a better job of connecting past, present, and future. I think it’s also important that we undo the white, individualist emphasis on “legacy” as culture. So few people seeking to leave a legacy have left a good one, and the best legacies are left by people who do good for their communities without striving for that kind of recognition. So, leave the legacy behind.
Do you share a faith practice with your ancestors? Can you connect to a culture through that avenue? Can you trace where your ancestors came from and connect to a mother culture? Can you connect to a culture of a place to which you belong? Can you connect to a larger culture to which your tribe belongs (a great example of this is queer culture)?
Culture is as much about ritual as it is about belonging. Are there rituals or traditions that you can draw upon from your family or that you can institute anew and repeat annually to create your own culture? There are many ways to identify with a culture, but the important thing is not only to identify with it, but to incorporate it into your practice of daily life.
That’s it. That’s the homework this week:
- Find your people.
- Cultivate those relationships purposefully.
- Plug in to (or rally) your tribe.
- Tap in to the rituals of your culture.
The work we have to do to right the wrongs of this world requires us to be whole. It requires us to be capacious and filled with love. Able to extend grace to ourselves and to people not like ourselves. It requires humanization of folx that are harder to identify and/or empathize with. We cannot do this work of extending love, grace, and empathy into our wider community if we are not practicing love and belonging with our own people. Get your hearts right, and fill your cup.
