Reluctance is a Doorway to Change

by | Sep 24, 2020 | Social & Cultural Commentary | 0 comments

Eighteen years ago, I sat around a table at Dolan’s Seafood restaurant in Boulder, Colorado and learned for the first time that I had White privilege. It was an enlightening and difficult moment, and it changed the trajectory of my life.

My first reaction was reluctance. I raised my hand and revealed my reluctance to accept what Shari, the Black woman leading the diversity training I was in, was saying. I got defensive and said, “But, that’s not me…I don’t feel privileged…I grew up on food stamps with a single mom…I’m a woman living in a male dominated world…I’m not prejudice…I’m friends with people of color…I’m not racist.”

I was reluctant to accept that racism is not simply discrimination, being prejudice, or believing that other people are inferior because of their race and skin color. I was reluctant to accept that racism is prejudice PLUS power—that it’s a system of power based on prejudice, policies, and practices built into our educational, economic, and social structures that value White people over People of Color and are designed to maintain White superiority.

I was reluctant to accept that I had unearned social advantages regardless of how I think, feel, or act simply because I was born White.

I was reluctant to accept that I benefit directly from racism and the foundation of White superiority that shapes every experience and institution in the United States.

I’d never been taught to look at how I benefit from racism, I had only been taught (barely) to look at the victims of racism. I was reluctant to turn that lens on myself and other White people.

I was reluctant to speak or act in fear of getting it wrong. I was reluctant to be uncomfortable and feel the sense of guilt and shame that arose, and I did not want to be lumped in with those other “White” people that are indeed racist.

But my reluctance slowly became something else. It turned into a willingness to look, learn, listen and understand what I had never seen before. It became a source for change.

I started to see and accept that I could look around me and see on television, in books, movies, valued positions of power, people that looked like me. I started to see that I’d never been considered a sole representative of the White race, nor had anyone ever assumed that English wasn’t my first language just by looking at me. I started noticing how clerks in stores helped me first and security never followed me around presuming that I was there to steal.

I went on to do more training, and connected with other White people to process the various emotions and discomfort that came with it, and I eventually became a diversity training facilitator and a faculty member teaching required freshman seminars on social justice and systems of oppression at Naropa University. I also wrote my Master’s thesis on the invisible whiteness of being that pervades the creative and literary imagination and how that assumes and perpetuates White superiority.

I’m sharing this because once again, I feel my own reluctance. Even with eighteen years of social justice training and work, I still feel like a beginner. I still feel like I don’t quite know what to do or say as a White woman living in the United States at this time.

I’m continuing to sit in the discomfort of this, as I know many other White people are. I’m sitting in the discomfort of knowing that I’ve had the privilege of stepping away from this work when I moved to California years ago and was no longer regularly and actively teaching and training myself and others. I’m sitting in the pain of knowing I need and want to do more, and not knowing exactly what that is now.

What I do know is that I’ll never fully understand what it’s like to be Black (or Indigenous or a Person of Color) in this country, but I unequivocally take a stand with them. 

I invite all White folks in my community and circles of influence to take that stand with me. I invite you to bring your reluctance, in all its forms, with you too.

Reluctance is an entry point, a doorway into something else, a doorway to real change.  Speaking it, acknowledging it, bringing it with you and not letting it stop you from finding ways to take a stand and be part of this monumental movement is critical.

To be clear: reluctance is not the same as refusal. Reluctance is feeling discomfort and not running away from it. Reluctance is not knowing what to do or how to make change, but being willing to do it anyway.

Refusal is not being willing.

Refusal is not being willing to acknowledge that there is a problem with how things are. Refusal is not being willing to look and listen and see and hear what you haven’t before. Refusal is not being willing to have the conversation or shutting the conversation down when it happens around you or gets too hard or too uncomfortable. Refusal is not being willing to take a risk and do something, however big or small, to change our racist structures inside and out.

I’ve gathered and created a number of resources over the years for beginning and engaging in the work of unraveling racism, which I firmly believe starts with White people understanding systemic racism and White privilege and tending to all the feelings that come up around it, and doing that with other White people and not relying on People of Color to tell you what to do.

I know from personal experience, and from stories shared by People of Color, that working through reluctance, fear, guilt, shame, vulnerability, discomfort and denial, and educating yourself as a White person is critical to being an effective ally and a source for true change.

This is ongoing work. Through my process over the years it’s helped me become more effective, and more importantly, it’s helped me see how racism has shut me down emotionally as a White person. It’s severed my head from my heart and disconnected me from real connection and emotional intimacy with myself and others.

In her book, Born to Belong, Mab Segrest writes, “Necessary to the slave system was the masters blocked sensation of it’s pain…The metaphysics of genocide is that people don’t need to respond to what they can pretend they do not know, and they do not know what they cannot feel.”

Reluctance is a feeling. Allow it to move you deeper into feeling rather than away from it. The more you feel, the more you understand, and the more willing you become to act and be a source of change.

Below are some resources I would like to share with you if you are White.

Included is a video of a talk I gave at a gathering of entrepreneurs, coaches and retreat leaders to bring forward the importance of understanding White privilege within the context of coaching and leadership and how that plays out on an individual and collective level. (It barely touched the tip of the ice-berg, but was a start to opening the conversation, and it speaks to what I want to share with other White people right now).

Also included is a packet you can download called “Unraveling Racism Starter Kit” that I created for the members of that audience. It will guide you into a deeper exploration and integration through the process of writing. I’ve also included some book recommendations.

I invite all White folks to watch the video, download the starter kit, read, listen and learn and let it open you to all the feelings embedded in your reluctance and into a deeper understanding of our systems and yourself. I invite you to make a commitment to this life-long work. 

I’ve made mistakes and continue to do so, and so will you. The work is to be willing to show up and to take risks anyway. This is lifetime work. This is generational work.

I hope you’ll join me.

Book Recommendations

Click here to order from black owned book shops!

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