CLOSE TO HOME

Experience and Insight #1

Ahmaud Arbery was shot and killed seven miles away from the home where I grew up in Brunswick, Georgia. Not only that, I was in Brunswick in February 2020, less than two weeks before he was murdered.

The morning before flying back to Louisville, I had just ordered my breakfast in a cafe about a quarter-mile away from the hotel where I was staying. I realized after ordering that I forgot my journal; I stood up, walked outside, and then jogged all the way to my hotel room and back to the restaurant.

Once Mr. Arbery’s case came out to the wider public, I realized I could have been him. A black man, out running during the middle of the day in a nice neighborhood. This realization shook me at my core.

There — but for the grace of the Creator — go I.

Experience and Insight #2

A white colleague, who I have known and collaborated with for a couple of years, announced during a phone conversation that she wanted to be a ‘good ally’. 

In spite of her good intentions, she chose to respond to a conflict that emerged between us two days later with an emotional meltdown that was soon followed by ghosting me, cutting off all communication, refusing to engage in conversation, and choosing not to return my emails (so much for her sincere desire for allyship). 

What I found most interesting about this conflict (beyond the emotional pain that for me accompanies the sudden, unanticipated loss of any relationship) is that at the heart of it rested her inability and unwillingness simply to bear witness to my lived experience. 

I found myself dancing around her projections, reactions, fears, and justifications. My concerns — and emotional reality — got lost in the shuffle. Of course, this was not the first time I’ve experienced such a case of ‘white fragility’ — but it was significant because it occurred during this time of such a massive increase of interest among white folks in the area of racial injustice. 

This conversation got me thinking: how much misunderstanding happens simply because people are unable or unwilling to simply bear witness to one another’s pain, without needing to minimize, deflect, dismiss, or defend? 

And how is this inability to bear witness connected to the larger social issues of racial injustice? 

After all, if I cannot, for reasons of my own psychological defenses, stay emotionally present, centered and grounded long enough to even bear witness to your lived experience of pain (and perhaps own my role in contributing to that pain), how can I possibly work hand-in-hand with you in service of a better community, nation, society, and world? 

PERSONAL AND FAMILY STORIES

Experience and Insight #3

I began writing posts about the complexities of race and sharing them on Facebook. I was stunned by the responses. Many were deeply touched by my personal and family stories and insights as an individual of mixed racial ancestry. 

Many of my stories focused on experiences I shared with my mother, who I cared for at home for eight-and-a-half years before her death in November 2019. She had a lighter complexion and had dealt with bigotry, bullying, and prejudice from both whites and blacks throughout much of her life. 

My grandmother also had lighter, olive-hued skin and several of her sisters actually ‘passed’ for white, relocating to upstate New York as part of the great migration. My grandfather’s darker skin also engendered difficulties for him, but being a skilled musician allowed him entry into social circles that others of his hue had no access to. 

Nonetheless, he warned me sternly not to be a n——r, that is, not to behave like the ‘lower-class’ blacks in the neighborhood. I grew up in a house one block away from a housing project, and several of my male playmates from adolescence ended up imprisoned or dead. 

So, my own history and my family’s history reflect many of the complexities and contradictions of racial identity that are woven into the fabric of our nation. I began to realize that perhaps I had things to say and share that might add in a positive way to the public conversations about race that continue to grow during this time.

EMOTIONAL REACTIVITY TRAPS US

Experience and Insight #4

Much of my professional work over the past decade has focused on helping individuals release the inner blocks that prevent them from living the lives they most deeply desire and deserve.

Usually what’s holding us back is not the conditions or circumstances of the present, but old fears and perceptions from our past experiences that get in the way. We get stuck today because of something we experienced yesterday (or last week or ten years ago) that our brain processed as threatening and then generalized, so that anything remotely reminding us of that situation will re-trigger the old response.

The greatest obstacle to healing these patterns is emotional reactivity.

The more we tend to get stuck in reactive emotions like rage, disgust, fear, shame — the more difficult it can be to let go of past (often traumatic) experiences and make positive changes.

As I reflected on this concept of emotional reactivity in relationship to racial issues, I realized two things. First, that much of the race-related conversations I’ve observed feed on reactive emotions, particularly rage, disgust, fear, shock, and contempt, and second, I’ve already helped thousands of people learn to transform these emotions into equanimity and compassionate action. I could bring this skillset to people within the context of addressing issues of racial injustice.

RACIAL INJUSTICE IS SYMPTOM, NOT DISEASE

Experience and Insight #5

As I began to research current resources that help heal issues around race, I found the exclusive focus on race to be, in one way, a distraction from something that I have observed to be an even more significant impediment to human flourishing.

As I see it, racial injustice is a symptom of a much more harmful disease: dehumanization.

This disease of dehumanization, whereby we see other as less, other as object, other as a ‘thing’ to be manipulated or taken advantage of, rests at the core of every interpersonal, social, global dilemma. 

I began to recognize this disease of dehumanization as the essential cause underlying multiple human problems: sexual trafficking, religious intolerance, violent conflict and war, and all forms of economic injustice.

Extend this pathology of objectification to our relationship with the community of species that comprises life on Earth and we can see the fundamental cause of the climate crisis, which begins with our seeing the biosphere itself as a consumable resource for the sole purpose of extraction and use for human convenience and economic growth.

I began to see that addressing the issue of racial injustice without dealing with its roots in dehumanization could lead to external changes that would not last. Oppressor and oppressed could simply trade places. Without mutual dignity, respect, compassion, caring, we could simply perpetuate the pathologies of prejudice.

Creating a racially just, fair, harmonious and flourishing world requires the awakening of active compassion — which is the one sustainable and reliable cure to the disease of dehumanization.

 —Written July 31, 2020