I Need to Write More

I really loved doing the Medium pieces I wrote in the first half of this year. They helped me think. They structured the narrative threads of this year for me in a way that I could wrestle with and, looking back, serve as a way to understand what has happened to us.

In March, I said if you’re terrified of Trump, vote for Bernie. Either the pundits were right and a Bernie vote at that point was nothing more than a protest vote to push president Clinton left, or the pundits were wrong — as they so often are — and we should realize that we can take nothing for granted and we should vote with our heart, because anything could happen.

I was very comfortable with Clinton. I am not a radical. I have radical friends who I agree with about many, many things. The only place I see us diverge is strategy. Tactics. Rhetoric. At least, I think that’s the case.

I don’t think they all do, though. I stopped writing because I stopped feeling like my strong opinions were the same strong opinions of all of my peers. Or of anyone, sometimes. No more. Whatever it is I am thinking, I need to write it down. I have too many thoughts. I can’t keep them all straight. I need to pull them apart and see how they work. And yet, I fully understand that the voices of straight white men are being heard all over the country this week, loud and clear, and I understand that I need to give space to people of color and any marginalized groups who are threatened by our next president.

And that is the contradiction as I currently experience it. I learned over many years, thanks to conversations with some incredibly patient friends, that my understanding of this world was shaped by the way the world saw me. That the extent of my privilege was so pervasive I could not detect it without being pulled violently out of the fishbowl. For a long time I saw my place as being to shut up, and give space to those with fewer platforms to be heard from. Eventually though, a new message became a clear recurring theme in my friends’ most social-justice-y social media posts: white dudes need to start talking and explaining this stuff to other white people. POC are sick of it. LGBTQ people are sick of it. Women are sick of it. They are tired of explaining and they are tired of being so angry, for so many good reasons.

At first glance, this is an exciting proposition to me. I can do good by bridging the divide between those who taught me and the white people who still don’t get it! The more we make these words and values mainstream, the more power they will have! But inevitably I hit a wall: I will never understand the lived experiences of those people who differ from me. Not enough to speak for them. So why should I?

And beyond that, there is unfortunately not some magic thing that happens when “woke” white people sing the song of privilege to the white people that don’t get it yet. The color of our skin alone is not enough to bridge that divide. I once hoped it might be, or might be close to enough. But I have tried and failed so many times now that I know something else must be added to this dialogue.

I have to speak for me. For how I got to where I am. The tiny, baby steps along the way that moved me from a #notallmen white dude to something approximating what I hope might be an ally. Those steps were messy. But they were essential to how I got to where I am today.

The way I feel now is too static. I fear putting my words out into the world because I know it will never be enough, I will never be “right,” I will never accomplish much of anything by just typing on a screen, I cannot avoid micro-aggressions in any true assessment of how I feel, how I got here, how other white liberals might feel, and yes, how the other side might have ended up all they way over there. How they can both be there and not also be monsters.

I need to say things that are wrong. I need that if I’m going to get to being right. I need to write down all the swirling contradictions in my head instead of just flexing my devil’s advocacy all day long with the people I love. I need to grapple with what happened to this country in 2016, and I need to be able to speculate without fear of offense.

When I write on Facebook I am always prepared to be called out. For every status. I have quickly deleted statuses that I suddenly considered microaggressions. But I am not prepared to lose friends over this shit. And I don’t want to make anyone see this that doesn’t want to. And I don’t want to pore over every piece making it read perfectly and offend nobody. I just want to write.

So I’m going to keep Medium going, and not sharing what I’m writing on social media. If you’ve followed me already you’ll see that I wrote this, and that’s enough. If you want to share anything going forward, please do. I hope I get to have conversations with people about what I’m thinking. And maybe we can figure some things out together.