Nia Wilson #sayhername

Artist: Ruben Marquez

I am both grateful and semi-cringing at my last post on racism. Grateful because a. I got some things off my chest and b. that post pointed me toward another level, via one of my readers.

Cringing, because, after being pointed to another level, I became aware of some things inside myself, displayed in that post, that are unpleasant to look at. But I’m looking at them. These things I’m talking about, fall under the broad category of white privilege. A subject that I’m at the stage of barely learning to roll over in my crib on. I haven’t begun to crawl yet. But I am listening and learning.

I was on track, when I wrote about listening. That is a good first step. There is so much more, though. In addition to Hannah Drake, who I’ve been following and being inspired by for some time now, I was pointed to two, which has evolved to three, black women’s Instagram accounts.  I’ve been intensely following them over the last week.  They are @wildmysticwoman (Layla Saad), @rachel.cargle (those were the two I was pointed toward) and @ajabarber. There are many, many more black women teaching about white privilege there and elsewhere, but those are the women I am following and listening to right now. There is a lot to digest.

I was going through somewhat of a personal turmoil last week, so welcomed the relief of focusing on something bigger than my smallish problems (pretty sure that sentence also displays my level of white privilege). It’s also interesting that when I’m being cracked open by one thing, the light starts to come in from another source altogether.

I’m not going to go in to much about what I’m learning, but invite any of you interested to just start reading these women leaders and the wealth of information they are offering (especially Rachel Cargle’s social syllabi she has compiled). As I said, I’m just beginning here. 

It was interesting, however, that the very day I started exploring these women’s teachings and having my mind blown wide open, a bizarre drama unfolded centering around Rachel’s page and a white woman, who calls herself an activist, and goes under the handle @25park (Allison Brettschneider). I felt like I was living in my own parallel universe, reading about these concepts like white fragility, white savior complex, white exceptionalism, centering, performance activism, toxic feminism, etc., while seeing it all unfold in real time like a billboard had gone 3D and come to life. It was all right there in this woman’s highly disturbing behavior. I actually had a stomach ache for hours after reading her caustic and **I don’t even have the right words for it** comments.

This eruption centered around black women leaders calling for other feminist leaders– particularly white feminists– to speak out about the murder about 18 year old Nia Wilson at the BART station. I’m embarrassed to admit, that I’ve been so out of touch, this was the first I had heard of Nia’s murder myself. But with what I’m learning, also unsurprising. Apparently, Ms. AB does not like to be asked to do something, because she snapped back with such–again I don’t even have the words--appalling display of everything these women are teaching about, that it almost became like a caricature but without being funny. I got, in such an immediate and deep way, what these black women are trying to teach us white women and what they deal with on a regular basis. I have to thank Allison Brettschneider for that teaching because I could have seen it if I was suddenly struck blind and reading it in braille which I do not know how to read. Even writing about it right now, I still feel disturbed. I think these feelings I’m having are transformative, because they give me a glimpse in to what black women feel on a daily basis living in on this planet.

On another planet than the one @25park lives on, Anne Hathaway, seemed to get a correct word out there in response to Nia Wilson’s murder.

Another concept that is coming up in my diving in to these materials and listening to these women’s cries for awareness and justice and action, is that of spiritual bypassing. 

Finally a name to something I’ve been trying to articulate now for some time.

Spiritual bypassing, a term coined in the early 1980s by psychologist John Welwood, refers to the use of spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid dealing with uncomfortable feelings, unresolved wounds, and fundamental emotional and psychological needs. The concept was developed in the spirit of Chögyam Trungpa’s Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, which was one of the first attempts to name this spiritual distortion.
According to teacher and author Robert Augustus Masters, spiritual bypassing causes us to withdraw from ourselves and others, hiding behind a kind of spiritual veil of metaphysical beliefs and practices. He says it “not only distances us from our pain and difficult personal issues, but also from our own authentic spirituality, stranding us in a metaphysical limbo, a zone of exaggerated gentleness, niceness, and superficiality.” From this link.

I have so many thoughts swirling in my head right now about this, but I’ll keep it as simple as possible.

I cannot teach something that I don’t know yet. I can’t know something by trying to teach what I don’t know to someone else. I cannot be that thing I’m trying to convince people I know enough to teach on, if I am filled with obstacles inside my being, unknown to me, that keep that very thing I think I know, from finding me. I cannot smile or positive think my way past my deeply ingrained unconscious beliefs and attitudes either.

The first step, is to feel it in my bones first. And what I’m realizing, is that my white female bones are filled with privilege that I would like to deny. It’s hard to write that.

I may not fully understand it yet, and I may never, but I know this to be true.

So I’m embarking on a quest, a quest to change. A quest to dive in to myself and see what needs clearing out, so I then can BE better in order to DO better.

I see so much nonsense right now in this “everybody wants to be a life coach” world. People who have decided they want to be somebody and make a living off of it, so they jump right to the role of teacher before they have learned anything about the thing they are attempting to teach. Marketing over learning. Destitute people in bankruptcy court thinking their way out of the trap, is teaching other people abundance techniques at the very same time. While asking them to fund them via “go fund me” campaigns. It’s insane to me. People who have never struggled in the world of relationship, much less maintained a successful one, thinking their way to finding love is teaching others about relationship skills. And so. much. marketing. The way to become somebody, is to learn the best way to market yourself, until you get there. I just can’t. The total lack of authenticity while marketing oneself as “real”.

( Dr. King’s words apply to me specifically, and guide me in unmasking my own ignorance)

If I just sound positive enough, if I read enough on this topic, if I use the right buzz words and emojis laced through them in the right written patter,  if I just have enough followers, then people will pay me for my wisdom! And it’s always crumbling, of course it is.

This kind of mentality guides me right now, because, although, like in my last post, I like to think of myself as the last person on Earth who would be racist, I am wrong. It is ingrained in the fabric of my being and I am just barely beginning to learn about that. The only way, the only way, I can be a true ally in ways I may have already thought I was being, is to keep digging inside. Keep listening to these powerful teachers guiding me and letting myself be humbled and cracked open. This is an inside job first and there is no bypassing that–and guess what–black women can smell my privilege a mile away (and likely it is displayed even all over this post, even with me trying to be careful not to, I am not changed yet, I have a lot of work to do).

When someone tells me the best way to be in support of them– which includes my own husband–the best response is to put away my ideas of what I think the best way to support them is and listen to them. Then do that to the best of my ability. Allison Brettschneider. showed me the opposite of that in neon. Don’t tell ME what to do is such a knee jerk response. It’s infuriating, even to me. I can only imagine what Rachel Cargle was feeling and the barrage of attack that came down on her. I can’t imagine really, which is the whole point.

I’ve known for decades that humiliation is valuable if it can breed humility. It would be a miracle if someone like Allison B.–who is being called out everywhere on these topics–(I would say she’s becoming a poster child for this now), could have that kind of revelation. It could change the world.

My own revelations, however, are more important right now to make the changes that can make a difference.

Layla Saad (@wildmysticwoman) just completed offering a 28 day course in White Privilege that she will be offering again in the coming months. I will be taking it. If anyone would like to join me, I will get you the information. You can start by following her on Instagram where I’m sure she will also post more information on it.

Here is an article to start with.

I’m aware, that my posting about these topics may make many of my regular readers uncomfortable. You may feel the need to unfollow me. I get that. Yet, that discomfort that you or I may be feeling, pales in comparison to standing on a subway station and out of nowhere getting your throat cut for simply being. Or witnessing that. Or knowing about it across the country, or the world, when that person looks like you and feeling your own unsafety in the world.

I just have to do this work. And I know I will stumble, say stupid things, even be offensive unintentionally in my unlearning. And I will keep pressing on.

Ok, back to listening and reading and drinking everything in and letting myself be transformed. And when it feels right, taking action, such as this post.

In the name of Nia Wilson, I write this. I say your name. #sayhername

Artist: Kaylani Juanita