Reflections From The Collective

A couple of weeks ago, I facilitated a community conversation and workshop in a city that is near and dear to my heart: Oakland, CA. Oakland is home for me. It holds my community of support; it has my absolute favorite coffee shop: and it holds several close friends that I now call "family." My strategy for entering and working towards racial justice and abolishing white supremacy has always been a think globally, act locally approach. I consider it my love offering to my community to dedicate my time, energy, sweat, and tears to cultivating racial justice right here at home: in the Dimond District in Oakland, CA.

All of the participants for the workshop (what I lovingly refer to as "the collective") identify as white cis women, and what follows is a brief reflection of observations, thoughts, and realizations that arose for the collective as I guided them through conversations, journaling, and group exercises in the workshop topics of disarm, divest, and dismantle.

Disarm:

• Normalized segregation lead to lack of awareness in the sense that you don't even know that you're missing something. This creates an inability to articulate, let alone understand relationships and culture.

• As a unit, the white community has lost a lot of time in putting in consistent and impactful work towards racial justice. Time now needs to be spent on being re-educated. Moving away from how we've been conditioned into upholding white supremacy.
• The system is designed to make racism the problem of the "bad" white people, spurns "helper" syndrome.
• Class (and other "isms") exacerbate separation.
• Toxic, baseless and corrosive pervasive FEAR.

• Lack of language and lack of community within the white community. There was no permission to talk about race. Not having a space to speak out loud and ask questions means not being able to heal or form community -- prevents self care. And without self care, we can't fully engage in the work we needs to be done by white people for racial justice.

Divest:

• Balancing the risk and benefit in dismantling white supremacy within the institutions we work/live in.
• Those who challenge systems often don't (can't) remain or exist within those systems.
• Feelings of deep and powerful hunger for truth telling -- radical honesty. 
• Social GASLIGHTING needs to be undone. Honesty -- speaking truth to power is needed to check us on the reality and truth to the feelings of disconnection we have been feeling all along, even after being told that what we are feeling wrong.
• white supremacy is more insidious -- it is not just the KKK...it's so much deeper than that.
• ​Grief: we are fighting the same fucked up battles as 50+ years ago. When you remember, you grieve. Grief is a necessary part of the process for white people to fully step into their role for abolishing white supremacy. A role that no other community can fulfill. In going through the process, we set up new generations for the come up. We are sowing seeds.

Dismantle:

• ​Not knowing whom to contact or how to disrupt when issues show up in institutions.
• Yes -- be willing to make mistakes AND learn from them.
• Being willing to question self, take time, pause, and reflect on impulses and behaviors is an absolute MUST. We have to be willing to recognize our own hangups and share out loud what's on your mind.
• Be clear: the underlying the issue with white supremacy and oppression is POWER. It is not about race alone.
• Focus on specific behaviors, not a person/not their character. Connect to how our behaviors impact us as white people. 
• Tools of white supremacy are able to be picked up and used by anyone. However, when used particularly by white people, the breadth and depth of the harm is incomparable.

​

---

Reflections from the collective is a mirror the exposes parts of all of us.  Particularly for the white community, what emerged in this workshop for the collective are indeed the very churnings, thoughts, feelings, and knowings that so many other white people must be carrying inside and grappling with themselves.  A wise teacher I admire immensely often shares:

"when we give ourselves permission to feel and hold all of who we are, all of our identities -- when we give ourselves permission to NOT leave any parts of us behind, we give others permission to do the same for themselves."  

In that statement is both a simple and urgent invitation for you. I invite you to engage in spaces and conversations that will extend to you the permission to discover, embrace, and bring all of who you are into the work of racial justice. If like me, you are wondering what would emerge for you and your community on the topics of disarming, divesting and dismantling toxic systems for racial justice, let's connect, chat, and conspire to offer this workshop in your neck of the woods.

The truth is that we need you and your community in the pursuit for racial justice, but we are going to need your whole true selves to make any sustainable gains in our audacious movement. Join us. Completely.