What Comes After the Tipping Point?
In the #BLM Revolution, It’s Time for White People To Do Our Own Emotional Labour
Two weeks ago, the collective outrage of Black Americans reached the tipping point and the world is paying attention.
Many of us are now paying attention to a problem we (people with White Privilege) had been ignoring or merely giving a cursory nod to by way of acknowledgment.
I’m guilty of having been aware that racism exists. But in the past, I attributed it to the misguided, misinformed attitudes of individual people. I didn’t educate myself as to how deeply ingrained in our economic systems the subjugation and servitude of Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour is; how institutional and systematic racism is.
I’m guilty of having been mildly conscious as to how tightly woven into the fabric of American and Canadian history racism truly is. We aren’t born racist. We’ve been taught to be racist. Systematically. Insidiously. Often outside of our conscious awareness by people who themselves are were taught to be racist and are unconscious to their own racist beliefs.
I’ve been studying and researching race-based oppression since I was a child. Being of German heritage and born within 20 years of the end of WWII, the heavy legacy of Nazi Germany was very much part of my consciousness. (I’ve been called that “n-word” and it was loaded with accusation and shame. I can’t even imagine being called that on the daily, week after week, year after year, beaten down two dropped syllables at a time, relentless like water torture.)
I researched the Holocaust while still in elementary school, reading Anne Frank’s diary and Corrie Ten Boom’s work, among others. I shared these stories with my children as they grew. In junior high, I researched the disgraceful, demoralizing, and dehumanizing treatment of Indigenous people by Colonial Europeans. I spoke about that, too, over the years but I didn’t do much. And for that I’m sorry.
At my Toronto high school, I quickly learned that there was one entrance to the school that all the White kids avoided because that one “belonged” the Black kids. I think on that now, flip the script, and realize that was the one we White kids let the Black kids have with any hope of their own safety. And I feel new waves of shame and sorrow washing over me with that awareness.
Then I graduated and got busy. Career. Relationships. Marriage. Children. Completely absorbed in building my life and healing my “stuff”. Oblivious to the idea that White Privilege even existed, let alone that it merely meant that while I may have had hardship in my life, none of the hardship I experienced was attributable to the colour of my skin.
Fast forward to now.
What I’ve learned over the last 10 days has been eye-opening. What I’ve learned over the last 10 days sickens and enrages me. And I can no longer be silently complicit from the comfort of my own ignorance.
Systemic racism is real. The resources out there are significant and the truth becomes crystal clear to anyone who’s willing to invest the emotional labour to educate themselves. It’s uncomfortable. It’s painful. It’s triggering. And it’s absolutely necessary if we want to have a hope of doing better and supporting the healing of the deep wounds Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour people have been carrying and have had added to for centuries.
So how do we move forward?
Awkwardly at first, to be sure, but we cannot be tentative about this! We must lean into the discomfort, listen, and learn. We must begin the lengthy process of making amends. We must be willing to have the difficult conversations, get it wrong, receive correction gracefully and gratefully, apologize, and keep moving forward.
I’m personally and professionally committed to doing better, committed to sharing what I’m learning as I go, and engaging with you in these critical conversations with compassion, empathy, an open mind, and an open heart.
We can do better. We must do better. We will do better on this journey as we continue the conversation and share our unlearning, our challenges, and our stories as we heal.
