On the "woke wave" and how I don't have the inside track on the right way to do things
In this time of civic unrest and protest against the state-sanctioned violence that has brutally impacted Black folks for centuries, there has been a huge “woke wave” (as a white friend of mine said) of white folks just waking up to an understanding of systemic racism in the US and across the world.
And as so often happens, and I see in my work, there is a sudden urgency to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
This is not the first woke wave, and it won’t be the last. I came in on a few woke waves myself after all, after Trayvon Martin, then Eric Garner, then Philando Castile. Even though as a non-Black person of color, I have experienced harm from white supremacy my entire life, I didn’t always have the awareness, the understanding, the knowledge or language to articulate it or to know how to take action on it.
It’s a process for sure, and it is not a quick one. It is not solved in day of action or by blacking out our social media feeds or attending one webinar. It is life long sustained work and practice.
So yes, yes there is an urgency in anti-racism work, and in dismantling white supremacy and other systems of oppression, in that we are about 400 or so years too late In addressing it.
And:
Your failure to address white supremacy in a timely fashion does not constitute an emergency on my part.
I am reminding myself of this as the white voices of anxiety and panic chime in louder and louder to declare that yes, Black lives matter, and yes we’re committed to anti-racism work and yes, we stand with protestors.
When the company I last bought bedsheets from sent out a solemn email last Friday, I had to laugh.
And it’s not because it’s funny.
It’s not because it’s wrong to make a statement.
It’s just... what is even happening?!
Who would have thought everyone would suddenly care?
And who is going to recede with the wave and who will stay?
As a Black woman at one of my client organizations said about all of the people who have been asking her if she is ok:
I’m so used to injustice and the pain of racism that I was wondering, “Why are you reaching out now? This isn’t new! This is our lives.”
The injustices that people are waking up to are not new. They are centuries old, baked into the founding of this country. How many more George Floyds and Breonna Taylors and Tony McDades do we need in order to pay attention and create change?
And yet, this is also one of the purposes of protests - to bring more people into awareness and action.
As my DEI consulting firm has received an influx of interest and inquiries about our work, I am working hard not to center on and cater to a white-centered sense of urgency (sense of urgency being one of the characteristics of white supremacy culture after all).
What can we who are not riding the wave for the first time do so we don’t get flooded or drowned?
What are our needs?
As the same Black woman said when I asked her what she needed:
"I wish I could tell you what I needed, but I honestly don’t know and I’m realizing it’s b/c no one has ever asked (with regards to racism)."
Here are some of the things that are helping me, recognizing that I am not the most privileged or the most impacted by systemic racism in this country:
I'm doing my best to hold true to my daily routine of meditation and morning pages (journaling) in order to get grounded in my own head and voice after feeling like so many outside voices and especially white voices are flooding in.
I’m reminding myself to hold steady to my mission and values, and to "act not react".
I am paying close attention to the spaces I'm in - who is present? Who is speaking? Who is centered? I'm making choices accordingly. I need to name that the mounting "anti-racist hysteria" from some white folks frankly feels disingenuous, self-serving, and driven by fear and shame and not wanting to be called out. I cannot afford to be distracted or derailed by this.
I am instead reminding myself to stay in my lane where I can be most effective. For me, this is not in direct response to the frontlines of protests, organizing and advocacy - and nor are the folks approaching me for help, so therefore it is important but not necessarily urgent. I can do my best work with people and organizations that are measured, thoughtful, level-headed, and intentional in their desire for and commitment to deep transformative change.
I made a quick rubric to remind myself of the projects I want to keep myself and my team focused on:
Projects where we can support leaders and staff of color, especially Black folks, and the communities of color they serve - this is what most energizes me.
Projects that support change within the architecture and design community (my professional background and where I spent much of my career).
Projects within other communities that I have been or am currently part of.
I am temporarily limiting my time on social media. My feed is usually Black and other POC centered, but it’s been feeling very filled with shouty white people the past few days, which I need a break from to preserve my bandwidth and capacity so I can do my best work for my clients and have something of myself left for my family.
I am so socialized to cater to whiteness that I need to actively and intentionally shift the focus back to myself - to speak for my own healing while centering on the most impacted
One of the most important things I have to remind myself of, always but especially at times like this is:
I don't have the inside track on the right way to do things.
And oh how we're socialized to think that we do, or that we should, or that we should give the impression that we do.
But the fact is that I don't. I don't believe that any of us do. In fact, there is no one right way to do things. This doesn't mean that there aren't incredible people to learn from, experiences to draw from, and leaders that we can turn to.
But one of the things systems of oppression don't want us to know or remember are: that we all have a voice, that we all have the ability to practice discernment with regards to the voices we listen to, that we all can make choices, that we all have agency, and that none of us are more inherently right than anyone else.
I can center on myself without centering myself. I can create space for others by creating space for myself.
What can you do to create the boundaries you need in order do the long term work of dismantling oppression and co-creating inclusion?
For my personal reflections on confronting the truth about white supremacy, sign up for 30 Days of Courage, a series of 30 daily emails followed by weekly reflections.
Banner photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash. Also published on LinkedIn.