group therapy kicked my ass today.
I know that this isn’t a multicultural class and that most of this is better suited for a multicultural class. This reaction is basically an amendment to my previous reaction paper and I am writing this as it relates to my ability and desire to connect to clients, to better understand the circumstances of their lives. I am also writing this because I am trying to explore my reaction to The Color of Fear.
I am white, middle class, I have two parents, I have a support system of friends, I was educated in a private former military school, I was taught by white men with PhDs, my first cultural experience was attending a public university. I have just proved the point that I am a child of white privilege. This somehow feels like a revelation, like a new experience. I feel ignorant and ashamed because of that revelation.
How many times have I said, "Why can't we all be human;" how many times have I been hungry to ignore the issue of racism? Maybe it's because the topic feels foreign to me, painful to me, maybe I'm afraid of my own bigotry, maybe I'm afraid of making excuses for or justifying my whiteness. Maybe it's all of these things. I don't consciously mean, "Why can't we all be human; why can't we all live according to white values?" Maybe I'm asking the wrong fucking question at the end of the day. Maybe I should just be asking, "Why aren’t we all whole?"
When I did social work I think I wanted to push my clients to rise above mediocrity so badly that I was unintentionally attributing mediocrity to values and emotions and rituals and habits that were foreign to my own. Maybe mediocrity means something totally different to my clients living in the projects. I really wish I knew. I wish I could go back and talk to this one mother on my caseload. I wish I could listen to her story. I know that she didn't wake up one day, decide to have 8 kids, lose them all, move from home to home to home. Or maybe she did. And maybe that should be okay. But I suspect, no...I know....that she is hurting because of something(s). It’s a fucking pity that I was so busy appeasing the court, writing my JR’s, striving for legal sufficiency, smoothing out the red tape into perfectly straight lines that I didn’t have time to hear her story. The system is set up to rob you of time. The system makes it so that important stories go unheard and misunderstood. Funny the system is starkly white. I’ve known this from the beginning. It isn’t new information. Its just information I glossed over because I accept it as status quo, because it’s easy to. Because I’m white. Because I told myself I would fight the battle one day and that now wasn't the time because I wasn't ready. I didn't have enough letters behind my name or I wasn't articulate enough or I just didnt know where to start. I liked what you said today, "Sometimes you have to ditch bullets today to be able to fight the war tomorrow." Maybe that's what I was doing-ditching bullets. It still feels like shit.
I don’t know what it feels like to feel trapped, to feel like life is futile, to not have resources or support, to not have access to quality education. I am an asshole for thinking these things can be easily fixed or ignored, that the slate could be wiped clean and that we can all start over as equals. I really am an asshole for thinking that way. It makes me feel like I truly never heard a fucking word my clients and my kids were ever trying to say. I saw the evidence of inequality. I’ve read through legal documents and I’ve felt frustrated and pissed off because I knew that my clients didn’t understand legal jargon. Most of them could barely even read at all. I felt pissed off and frustrated that their court appointed attorneys never took the time to explain anything to them or to hear their stories, save for what could win their case in court. I wish I could change that. I watched my kids wear the same pair of socks for 3 months, I listened to a 16 year old tell me the ways she learned to stretch a bar of soap or a bottle of shampoo to last as long as possible, and I took all of these things to be conditions or elements of circumstances and I never went beyond the issue to consider these are circumstances that are controlled mostly by privileged white (men) people who have (nine times out of ten) never experienced any of these things. I went into court every week and when Judge Gooding would ask me if there’s anything this child needs, I could have said, “Yeah, a fucking voice, a goddamn chance.”
I don’t know that it’s possible for me to ever be completely aware of other cultures. I wonder if the first steps are to just be with someone else. I feel like I could trust the process. I feel like I could sit down and feel something intense and learn about myself and someone else through their struggle. What I really mean to say is that I feel lucky to be in a situation where I will constantly be learning and I will be constantly challenged to HEAR things that might initially be painful and uncomfortable to me. I really want to know everything. Moreover, I really want to understand everything. I want to feel it in my bones. I want to cry because of it. I want to change because of it. I want to be able to connect.
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2 comments:
I throughly recommend Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack if you haven't seen it before. Others have used it as a template for identifying male, straight, able, Christian, cisgendered/non-Trans etc. privilege as well. I've also never read a word of Tim Wise that didn't hit like hit like rough therapy.
I'm not going to jabber on about things you appear to understand at least as well as I do, but I feel compelled to take a moment to celebrate the absence of a Social Darwinist pitbull that lived inside a young lady I once knew.
And I'm not trying to be a literal-minded butt-clencher and perhaps I should be the last person to remind anyone, but I have to say it's probably more productive to think of yourself as a sometimes bumbling human work in progress than as an asshole.
its sortof funny that i just read this as i had a similar conversation with someone last night about some of the issues you just addressed. those issues being both personal and societal. i wouldnt say you are an asshole because you arent the only one who feels that way. however, there is a significant lack of people with compassion. a lack of people who know how the system works on not only a state level but a federal level and how it just so happens that most people involved are cut off before they do indeed get to have a voice be it their own or their representation. thats ignorance and naivety and pure neglect on their part. its a disgusting cycle that very few are willing to fight for and i would assume that most are even too scared.
there are many more things that can be said in this department but overall what you wrote was probably one of the most insightful and expressive things ive heard in a while (especially from you). and i understand completely. sometimes its harder to care than ignore.
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