I first wrote this "essay" for my Facebook people. I put essay in quotations because I'm not sure what it's called, other than a really long Facebook message. Originally, it was intended only for my Facebook people, which is private. I wasn't sure I'd gain the courage to publish it outside of there. However, the courage is coming because the original content has stopped here at Tin Shingle, and this may be part of why. Because I need to share my truth, and then continue on.
Most of my original content is still public, but in Tin Shingle's Instagram. And if you know anything about Tin Shingle, you know that I encourage you strongly to put messaging in Instagram, but also at your own blog/website so that it lives on in a bigger and is viewed by more people.
With this publishing, I may lose some of you as subscribers and followers of Tin Shingle. I understand that, and am OK with that. We are all on a journey of finding fairness and happiness, and you do what you need to do. During this time of racial revelations, it is clear that companies cannot be silent. That's always the debate - does a company take a political stance? The revolution that is happening now is not political. It is human. Companies can't not take a stand. So I'll publish my own revelation here, for you, knowing that you might throw tomatoes at it. Knowing that you might cringe. Knowing that I might be saying the wrong thing.
In my other life as a local publisher and reporter for the local online newspaper, A Little Beacon Blog, I have attended 4 protests. As a reporter. I carried no sign. I chanted many chants. I felt the vulnerability of "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" as I held my hands up while walking, and kneeling on the pavement for those 8 minutes and 46 seconds.
As a reporter, it has gotten me out of the house to attend the protests, which usually end in a listening session open-mic in an outdoor park. Had I not had this role - local reporter - I probably would not have gone. As with most things job-related for me, there is resistance from my family when I leave the house. Could be a book club I hosted, a pop-up shop, and now a protest march. But the professional job gets me out the door, and I push through after I make them food (because that's the real issue, right? Mom is leaving and won't make me a grilled cheese!).
For those of you who are curious about the protests, I encourage you to go. I was afraid the first time. I didn't know the organizers. I didn't bring my kids. Once I got there, the only rabble-rousers I saw were 3 white high school kids carrying 7 tennis racquets, ready to rumble. I took their picture and published it in the article I wrote about the protests, hoping their mothers would see.
In our town, each protest brings out new issues. Like a good facial. Digging around in the pours. There are issues. If you are reading this and you are white, if you are very comfortable in your town, I can assure you that there are pours that need to be cleaned out. You'll need to open your ears really a lot if you want to start to know how your neighbors really feel. There's a lot of love out there. You just need to bring your fear down, start smiling and people, and start listening. And reading.
Alright, Here Goes...
My husband asked me how long it took me to write this. I wrote it on June 7, 2020, and it took about 3 days of manifesting while jogging. Writing it took about 2 hours, from start to editing.
My silence started early in my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. I'm not sure about the exact first time, but the next times codified it. The most memorable time is in middle school - the repeated phrase as we drive anywhere near the Richmond Mall:
"The Richmond Mall. That's where the Black people are now." That was a mystery to me. What were they doing in there? Did they shop different? Were there different things to do? Can I go inside? The mall I went to was the Beachwood Place Mall, and then La Place.
Fast forward 20+ years later, I was back in Cleveland, needing to return an Athleta purchase. Athleta is in the Beachwood Mall. Next answer was: "Oh, Beachwood Place. That's where the Black people are now." Still in my White silence, yet not about to follow this new implied rule of not going into a mall with Black shoppers, I went inside. I had a perfectly normal shopping experience. Black, Indian, White, all kinds of people were inside. And the food court got a makeover and was really cute.
And so begins the exploration of my whiteness, and of my white silence. Because it runs deep. To speak out of silence requires internal, solo digging around in memories and reactions.
Speaking means using words. Very basic words. Words that have come to make white people feel uncomfortable. White people were taught these words were bad, and did not exist anymore. Like the word racism.
If you look at quotes from white people, like Hilary Clinton when her daughter was marrying, you might see something like this: "Over the years so many of the barriers that prevented people from getting married — crossing lines of faith or color or ethnicity — have just disappeared.” Two things here: "color" and "disappeared." The word "color" replaced the word "race," which acknowledges a point of origin. One color alone will not tell you where a person is from. I could be from the United States, or I could be from Germany. How would you know? Until you heard me talk. And of those words I spoke, do I have an accent different from yours? That's your first clue to knowing where I'm from.
Speaking and Words
The first time I spoke was in a friend's Comments, rejecting and correcting her (my white friend) from calling her people (friends and family) white supremacists, and having white privilege. I stuck around, but I denied her. Yet I was curious. Adelaide Lancaster was teaching her white people about racism, white supremacy and white privilege. You may know Adelaide from her days as co-founder of the co-work space In Good Company, in New York City. She is now the co-founder of We Stories, a racial advocate in St. Louis.
This was a couple of years ago. I realized that just saying those words scared me. They were supposed to have disappeared, and because I have black friends, those words were not me. We all were supposed to love each other, and see no color. No difference. Just equality. I studied MLK in elementary school, and closed the chapter. I go to the parades (but have always felt Imposter Syndrome because I don't read the teachings of Martin Luther King...that has changed, I am halfway through my first book, "Why We Can't Wait," and really recommend you read it as a history book, and source of motivation...it's like you're reading real life right now).
But I stuck around Adelaide's social feeds. I saw the books she was recommending. For a while, I thought she was being extreme. Like she was taking white guilt and shrouding herself in these books. Making herself feel better by reading these books that said White Supremacy on them. I judged her. But I was still very curious about what she was discovering and sharing. I silently watched her, read her, and admired her from afar.
Which brings me to my next code of silence I created for myself: word definitions. I did not know these words. These words were for other people to know. Smarter people than me to know. Philosophers to know. "Housing disparity." That was for a person into "social justice" to know about, and take care of. All of these were words that I did not look up. They existed, but were for others. Fascism. White nationalist. I could not describe to you what they meant.
Silence and Repression In Music
Lock this all in with music. Music is a very repressed thing for me. There are albums I'm embarrassed to listen to out loud because I feel like I didn't earn the right to listen and feel. Soulful music. Blues music.
Bonnie Raitt became my first blues musician I openly listened to out loud. Bonnie Raitt as most of my White people knew her is on soundtracks of romantic comedies. "Let's Give 'Em Something To Talk About" in a Julia Roberts movie. But early Bonnie Raitt was blues. The sound and words were very different. She's one of the best slide guitarists. I don't even know what slide guitar means, but I love listening to it.
I was introduced to her by a White surfer dude with super long hair in my first philosophy class in my Ethics In Media major in Charleston, SC. That guy was also in my African Women Writers class, which I took because my private school taught me that I had a disability from learning foreign languages, and didn't let me take Spanish (everyone else did, the private school taught it, I just was a handful who couldn't).
Everyone else in my group went on to succeed in their additional language classes, and some were already bi-lingual in Arabic and Hindi...yet they had been held back from learning Spanish or French. More words I wasn't going to learn and say. So in college, I pursued required "alternative" classes to the required additional language class credits, and got to take African Women Writers. I read, but in silence.
Nina Simone was next. Scared of all record stores, I rarely went into music stores looking for CDs. Imposter Syndrome. One random night, I went into a music store and saw a Nina Simone CD. I picked it up, bought it, listened to it, loved it. I wrote all of my poetry assignments to it during my 5th year of college.
Erykah Badu was after that. I sketched a lot of my chalk assignments from drawing classes to one of her albums. All secretly in my ear buds only. Never on speaker, and never if someone was at my house and I needed to play music. Dave Matthews would be a safer bet (high school - I know - I feel your cringe) or Cowboy Junkies or Nanci Griffith (college).
Lizzo is one of my most recent. Two albums actually. And I've been open about it. It seemed OK with Lizzo, in her "Better In Color" song:
Black, white, ebony
All sound good to me
Two tone recipe
Got good chemistry
J. F. Kennedy's
Kiss hood celebrities
Don't matter to me
'Cause I like everything
You can be my lover
'Cause love looks better in color
Alicia Keys I'm still pretty quiet about. Ironically, when I was tapping into this realization while out running, my ear buds broke. I couldn't hear my music privately and had to put it on speaker. This particular morning the music was the Evita soundtrack (Madonna and Antonio Banderas). I was listening to the album to specifically hear one part of a song that goes slowly and from deep within:
"The actress hasn't learned the lines you'd like to hear. She won't join your clubs; she won't dance in your halls."
Note: The second time she says this phrase in the song (not the first, very different tempo there), which is set to lighter sounding guitar plucking, vs the deep cello during the first time.
I had to play the song out loud, in the park as I ran, and back at home in my shared driveway. Not knowing the real history of Eva Duarte Peron, of Argentina's history, and if the Tim Rice, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Alan Parker movie was accurate. That was my biggest fear. What am I exposing about myself by listening to this album?
And then I didn't care.
Say His Name
When Ahmaud Arbery's video came out, I had to Google down to find it. I watched it. I saw. It was on Mother's Day, and I heard his mother say his name. She said his name before "Say His Name" became a protest chant. She was simply saying his name because she was talking about how Ahmaud was the baby in the family of her 3 kids. And I couldn't stop researching him. And then Breonna Taylor's news came before me. And still my White family had not watched Ahmaud's story. I had to make one of them watch it, and not tell them what they were about to watch. My family member scolded me for not warning them of the graphic-ness of the video. I didn't care.
And then George Floyd's killing happened. And we all saw that. We saw it so many times. Meanwhile, the White woman Karen in Central Park happened, where she lied to police that a Black man was threatening her. The Black man, Christian Cooper, was not threatening her. He was bird watching, and asked her to put her dog back on the leash. Happens all the time if you walk in Central Park with your dog off-leash. The dogs must be on a leash, for everyone's safety. I walked in Central Park every day with my dog, Gerdy, and people definitely wanted her on a leash if they saw us (we were off-leash a lot). Christian is a board member at New York City Audubon.
Slap In The Face
In response to that racist phone call, I made a comment in my social about "treat others the way you want to be treated." It was a kind and gentle and passive statement. Coming from a place of "tolerance," which perhaps became a word of the 1990s and 2000s to blanket racism. To cloak it and make it invisible. My White girlfriend figuratively slapped me hard across the face in the Comments. She works with domestic abuse survivors, and has been known to throw cold water on statements. And that's what it was. A wake up. Wake up! I needed it.
Permission - The Breakthrough
Then in the socials, the Black people told the White people to speak. Speak! This was my permission. My permission to say out loud the word "racism" and look up "white supremacy" and acknowledge that my white skin and my blond hair protect me. Enable me. Give me a very long head start.
When you start saying the words, if you've never said them before, you don't know what to say or how to say them. What if you say something wrong? And you will. Because you don't know. But you will know. Because you may get verbally roughed up in the Comments. Or in your kitchen. Or in family email threads. Because you're exposing yourself.
But you're going to get up, and read some more, and watch some more, and you're going to say something again because this time, you learned something new from some one or some article. And you might get roughed up again. But this time, you might get roughed up from your own kind. It might be from a White man who's coming after you. But you've been getting stronger, learning fast, red eyes from reading so many different browser windows and paper books. And you're going to get up. And you're going to speak again.
I'm going to keep speaking. Keep reading. Keep watching.
I'll eat when I need to eat.
Sleep when I need to sleep.
Garden when I need to garden.
Sit when I need to sit with my kids.
(Note: this is a style of a beat and a lyric from Erykah Badu when she sings and speaks her song Ye Yo. These are my words, but a rhythm I heard and felt from her.)
Stay Awake
But I'll stay awake. During times of sickness for me now, I faint. When I faint, I don't feel it and my body just falls. I might hit my head. I might injure myself in my unconsciousness. To wake you, someone may take your face and slap it. "Wake up!" they say.
And you wake up. And you look around. And you try to remember where you are.
During childbirth, for my third child, the nerve pain was so bad, I fainted.
The feeling of fainting from pain is this: the pain comes back so bad once you wake, that you close your eyes again, to get lost in the warm darkness behind your eyelids. "Just for a little bit; let me sleep for a little bit," you say to yourself. But your midwife, or your best friend, or your daughter, who swore an oath to protect you no matter what, will get in your face, and scream in your face: "Stay awake, Katie! Stay awake! Don't go!"
And you open your eyes. And you try to stay awake. And you let the tears from the neglect of way deep down inside of you moisten your dry eyes from reading so much and typing so much, and you keep going.