The Fire I'm Refusing to Ignore

I started this post yesterday but couldn't finish it.  I woke up this morning to the news of the Dallas shootings and my heart is heavier still.  I don't really know if I have any words of wisdom or if I'm just another white girl who is more clueless than not.  But my reasons for not posting this had more to do with my own self-preservation and fear of judgement which felt small and selfish.  I can't pretend there isn't a fire anymore.  

I’m heavy hearted this morning, unable to shake the feeling that something is wrong.  My Facebook feed is filled with #AltonSterling and #PhilandoCastile and pleas for our country to wake up and see that for some the world is on fire and the people with water are denying the flames’ existence.  Because they can.  Because they live in safe, fireproof houses and they don’t even realize that those fireproof houses allow them to chose blindness and that is privilege.  I can’t stop thinking about Alton Sterling’s fifteen year old son.  I was going to post something dumb about the books I’m reading but it all feels trite right now.

I don’t like feeling like this, heavy hearted with the burdens of others.  I don’t enjoy lamenting and feeling angry at God for not doing something already.  And I suppose you could say that I bring this on myself.  In an attempt to see and hear I’ve started following more people of color, those in the LGBTQ community and civil rights activists on social media.  Which of course fills my feed with more hashtags documenting the names of men and women whose lives were taken unjustly.  I’m forcing myself to look at the problems and that in turn makes my heart break.  

I could stop looking.  I could easily unfollow all those voices on social media, take Facebook and Instagram off my phone all together and never open another news outlet site again.  I could easily pretend like those injustices don’t exist.  Because of my white privilege I have the choice to look the other way.  But I can’t un-know what I know.  My eyes were opened when I was fifteen and I read “To Kill a Mocking Bird” and “Black Boy.”  They were opened again when I was 19 and I took my first African American Studies class.  And again when I was 21 and took the Social Justice track at Intervarsity’s summer camp.  I can’t un-see what I saw when I taught at George Westinghouse high school in Brooklyn, New York, a stone’s throw away from the projects that raised Jay Z.  I could feign ignorance, but the truth is I know.  I’ve seen the injustice and one day I think I will be accountable to God for what I did with that knowledge.

So I keep looking.  I keep reading.  I keep feeling heavy and helpless because it feels like the least I can do.  To not look away.  To see it and bear just a fraction of the burden my black brothers and sisters bear.  

And maybe that’s the hard part for me.  It feels like the absolute least I can do, but I don’t know what else to do.  I’ve been reliving this cycle for years now, since the Trayvon Martin shooting.  I feel the burden and the grief, I lament and post articles and like posts on Facebook until the media coverage dies down and the death becomes a little more removed.  And then I can forget (I have the luxury of forgetting) for a little while until the next shooting, the next unarmed or unaggressive black man or boy dies and the cycle repeats.  It feels so… worthless and unhelpful.

I heard on the Liturgists podcast (episode 30: Prophet or Ass, around the 18 minute mark) that in order to bring about real social change two kinds of people are needed.  We need the prophets, the ones who are outside of the power structure and who decry injustice loudly and clearly.  For the others outside the power structure these prophets are affirming and life giving.  They are leading the cause, giving a voice, pointing to the injustice and spreading the message needed for change.  Martin Luther King Jr. would be an example of such a prophet.  Those most empathetic within a power structure are also affected by the prophet’s message.  What happens though is that as human beings it is essential to our cognition to identify as a good person and so we subconsciously filter any information that undermines our self identification as a good person.  When a prophet brings forth evidence that our way of life oppresses another group of people we get defensive and we tune out because it challenges our identity as good.  For most within power structure we are unable to hear the message of the prophet.  Mentally we shut down.  And so a second group is necessary.  I like to think of them as allies.  An ally is someone within the power structure that can present the message of the prophet in a way that clearly and specifically calls out oppressive behavior while still speaking in a language that affirms the goodness of the identity of those within the oppressing groups.  An ally can take the prophet’s message back to the others and gently educate and inform.  Allies can have lower stakes conversations about the structure of white supremacy and its damage with those who have benefited (whether they realize it or not) from that structure.  They can call it out in a way that acknowledges that most of these actions are unthinking and affirm the basic goodness of those inside the oppressing group.  Both groups are needed to bring about social change on a large scale.   

I’m beginning to understand my role as an ally.  I need to speak up, to have hard conversations, to call out oppressive behavior.  And I need to do it in a way that still affirms our basic decency.  Without this approach it is scientifically proven that cognitively those in power will shut down, tune out, and forget. 

So I’m trying that today.  I’m refusing to look away and I’m being brave and kind with those around me.  In person I want to keep quiet because it’s hard to have difficult conversations face to face and point out someone’s conscious or subconscious bias.  Online I want to be cutting and snarky because I’m angry at myself for being so quiet and impatient with those that I think just don’t understand.  It’s easy to be bold and harsh online when you don’t have to see the effect of your words.  I’m raising my voice AND I’m doing it in love.  Because my role in bringing about social change is to be an ally, and this is the best way I know how.

For what it’s worth, this podcast is an excellent listen.  It’s another one from The Liturgists, called Black and White: Racism in America.  I think it’s a great entry point for those of us within the power structure to begin to open our eyes and learn.