@olan

Putting aside who made the recommendation and why it is problematic, Caste was one of the best books I read last year and I recommend it to everyone (yes, I am white - but I think it's an important book for white people to read). Isabel Wilkerson also did an excellent podcast on Throughline talking about the themes in the book. 

4. I am done with this thread and will no longer respond to it. I will offer this from Gandhi: ...What difference does it make if we follow different routes, provided we arrive at the same destination?

1. I was recommending a book I think is excellent, that I am enjoying and learning a lot from. Peas make recommendations about books all the time—we even have a weekly thread devoted to it. My recommendation seemed more pertinent to the subject matter that was being discussed on this thread and so this is why I recommended it here rather than the weekly thread. Recommending a book is not the same as educating others. 

2. It is admirable that you are working on yourself all the time. We certainly need more people to step up to combat the rot in the American foundation that is white supremacy—which I have come to realize over the past four years is THE core issue of ALL of our societal problems. 

3. You make statements about me, make judgments about me that come from your imagination as you have no window into my life. It’s natural that people do this. It is a legacy of our primeval days when failure to make a quick and accurate risk assessment might mean death. It doesn’t make your statements and judgments true. People are complex mixtures of positive traits and faults, and to demonize, to decree you know the full manner of a person, while having no window is false. Asserting that I have no right to comment upon Wilkerson's book “Caste” merely demonstrates an inability to hold those two dichotomies, a person's positives and negatives, together in one's mind. I began this thread underscoring that I am coming from a place of imperfection; I never claimed otherwise. 

4. I am done with this thread and will no longer respond to it. I will offer this from Gandhi: ...What difference does it make if we follow different routes, provided we arrive at the same destination?

She hoped that this would be the thread where everyone would tell her how lovely she was for apologizing and then lay into me like in years past 👀

She anticipated the usual players coming in to back her up. I would have then offered up my complete posting history as proof that no, I was in fact the pea who was on the receiving end of cruel and personal attacks meant to silence me. And it never works. In spite of how common it was to attack the validity of what I was sharing or argue with me about what allyship looks like. She also hoped I would be infuriated and back myself into the angry Black woman corner. That’s the other thing I hope people can see about her intentions. How baity it was.


I’ve dubbed this thread the “Fresh Air Fund Creative Writing Nopology” and hold no hope peano will see the error of her ways. And her response was ripe with them. Not in just her handling of Olan but her real world ideas about how to work toward an anti-racist society.

Back to the idea of wanting to be right or seen as good instead of being a valuable ally:

Let’s see how devoted the ass kissers are to you on this board. ALL of you on this thread send Olan her reparations. Put your money where your mouth is. I bet not one of you will send her a damn dime. If you practiced what you preached, you would see you made a living because of her, you would see you are living in her house. Come on girls give it up to Olan, I see you gennifer in your gated community, papercraft advocates give her some money.
where are you woke people at? I know you ain’t asleep, be “woke” and empty all you have for reparations for hard luck Olan. Come on I know you can do it. Start a go fund me for Olan. Don’t just sit at home in your comfy home with your bank account - show the woman you mean it.....ok who is first

Says the coward who created an alt ID just to troll and be viciously hateful. Paper is your first name?

Someone ought to start a go fund me to get you some brains. Damn...your stupidity is loud. Translation: YOU AIN’T GIVING OLAN SHIT

You’re from Texas, right? Deflate, call names, but won’t give poor black Olan reparations - typical.

Says the coward who created an alt ID just to troll and be viciously hateful.

Someone ought to start a go fund me to get you some brains. Damn...your stupidity is loud.

You’re from Texas, right?

Let’s see how devoted the ass kissers are to you on this board. ALL of you on this thread send Olan her reparations. Put your money where your mouth is. I bet not one of you will send her a damn dime. If you practiced what you preached, you would see you made a living because of her, you would see you are living in her house. Come on girls give it up to Olan, I see you gennifer in your gated community, papercraft advocates give her some money.
where are you woke people at? I know you ain’t asleep, be “woke” and empty all you have for reparations for hard luck Olan. Come on I know you can do it. Start a go fund me for Olan. Don’t just sit at home in your comfy home with your bank account - show the woman you mean it.....ok who is first

medium.com/@ciarrajones/the-violence-of-white-and-non-black-poc-apologies-d1321c0ccb8e


peano


Many Black people will tell you that the past ten days constituted a whirlwind unlike any other. For many of us our phones rang (and continue to ring) off the hook, our DMs full of white people experiencing racial revelation.
The veil now torn, their eyes newly open to the reality of the world around them, they want to talk about it. They want to talk to a Black person about it.
For many white folks, this revelation is coupled with guilt and shame. As such, many Black people are experiencing an overwhelming influx of apologies. Particularly, long overdue apologies for past microaggressions, macroaggressions, and overt racism
Now, before I dive into my critique, let me be very clear, apologies are important. Incredibly important. For those on the other side of harm, apologies provide a space wherein the harmed person is seen and their pain is acknowledged. In a world that renders Black pain invisible, apologies, when done with self-reflexivity, can constitute a very important part of the healing process.
Yet, white America struggles greatly with apology because apology also comes with accountability.
Accountability means examining the root of what caused one’s behavior.

In the case of perpetuating anti-Blackness, this means reckoning with one’s own racism. Many white people (and non-Black PoC) are not ready to do this work, the work of both making amends and taking active steps towards being better ( such as reading critical race theory, attending anti-racism workshops, and educating friends and family).
What many white people fail to understand is that when an apology is devoid of accountability, it is doubly harmful to Black people.
For example, in graduate school I initially made space for white apologies, but I quickly learned that accepting these apologies worked against my own sense of self. I found that making space for these apologies turned me into a dumping ground for white guilt. White folks apologized to me as a way to assuage their shame and then continued being problematic and racist both in and out of the classroom.
These apologies worked to make me mistrustful of myself. Racial trauma makes one turn inward.

Everytime a white person apologized to me and then wronged me again I thought, “I am so weak. Why am I being so nice? Why did I allow space for this?” I felt unsafe within myself and within the world. These half-ass apologies resulted in moral injury against myself and as a result, I created new boundaries. I am now very critical of both white and non-Black PoC apologies out of fear that I will forgive only to be reinjured in perpetuity.
Now, my DMs full of long-winded sorries and soliloquy-like apologies, I think it’s time that we collectively talk about the violence of white apologies.
So, white folks, before you click send on that text message you wrote to your Black acquaintance, take a deep breath, pause, and consider the following things:



Are you apologizing to assuage guilt?
I find guilt, in the context of combating racism, to be virtually useless.
White guilt is dangerous because it impedes upon white action. White people can be powerful allies to the movement because society recognizes white people as fully human.

As such, white people can leverage their humanity in a multitude of ways. Including but not limited to: interrupting racist incidents (bystander intervention), physically protecting Black people with their bodies (such as during a protest march), and by educating white community members so that Black people are not asked to educate while also reaffirming our humanity.
If you are white person recently experiencing any kind of racial consciousness you will probably experience a flood of realizations, including revelations about times during which your behavior proved to be actively racist. Instead of apologizing right away, sit with the feeling. Sit in the discomfort.

Reflect.
Ask yourself: why do I want to apologize to this person? If they react in a way that is unsympathetic towards me, will I get defensive? Will I make this apology about me? Do I want to apologize but not listen to the harm I caused? Am I ready to be confronted with the depths of my own racism? Am I ready to do the work?
Our society does not often ask white people to sit in discomfort, we task Black people with being inconvenienced so that white people are never asked to be. As a Black person, my life on Earth is often uncomfortable because anti-Blackness is a global framework of subjugation. I live in discomfort everyday. I am now asking white people to do the same.


Apologizing is uncomfortable work because we are met with the truth of ourselves, or at the very least, the reality of how we mistreated somebody else. White people, make sure you are ready to see yourself before you even begin to think about apologizing. If not, then your apology will simply be another instance of a white person attempting to emotionally gaslight a Black person so that you do not have to do the work.


Black people cannot be both your punching bag and your God, taking blows while absolving you of any wrongdoing. Do the work. Do not ask us to do it for you.
2. Are you apologizing for public confirmation of your goodness?
I cannot believe I need to say this, but it needs to be said: public declarations of apology and newfound consciousness are almost ALWAYS a miss.
Unless you are a white person with a large platform who also failed miserably in public (which, upon reflection, is a surprisingly large group of white people lol) do not make a public apology or a sudden declaration of your love for Black lives.
All Black people know that dismantling one’s own anti-Blackness takes TIME.
I am Black and I did not come into my own Black consciousness until college during which I exposed myself, through a myriad of Black studies courses, to the painful and magnificent reality of Black history. The America education system is steeped in white supremacy. As such, Black people must work to seek out our own history. We must work to love ourselves. We do the work to develop our Black consciousness and deconstruct our internalized anti-Blackness.

It does not just happen, we educate ourselves.
Quick declarations are not believable and honestly, they are tired. I guarantee you almost every Black person scrolled by someone on their timeline who, until recently, proved to be actively racist. Now, suddenly, inexplicably, this person is espousing the importance of Black lives.
Now, it may be true that they are beginning a consciousness shift, but that shift takes time.

I recommend doing that work in private. Read, read, read. And read BLACK PEOPLE. Do not read a white critical race theorist. Read Black PEOPLE. Read BLACK WOMEN. Read Black Queer People, Read Black Transwomen. And when you think you are done, read some more.
We do not need public displays of trendy anti-racism, we need folks to join the movement. As a Black person I do the work to strengthen my consciousness daily. White people, you need to do this too.
3. Is your apology the result of a knee-jerk reaction to the current state of the world?
Let me start by saying you should not need to watch a lynching in order to finally see Black pain and examine your own racism. White people, read that twice.

And then sit with it.
So, before you hit send on that carefully crafted message that you typed for that one Black acquaintance who you microaggression ten years ago, think about how useful that will actually be to the recipient of the apology.
Ask yourself: What brought about this sudden need to apologize? Did this person already do the labor of explaining their pain and I did not hear them until now? Did we already have a back and forth where I failed to hear them, but now suddenly, I understand? Am I overwhelmed by feelings of shame and guilt and I need to get rid of them? Am I embarrassed?
Oftentimes, white people believe they are apologizing for Black people, but the apology is really for them.
Virtually every time I experience racism from a white person, I see the incident for what it is. The gift of dual sight or double consciousness is that Black people see white people, while white people fail to see us at all. I see through the defensiveness, the over-explaining, the deflection. I see your wrongness, I do not need you to apologize to me decades later because suddenly you see your wrongness too.
An apology a few years later is probably more harmful than helpful. Sometimes it is too little too late. Sometimes the best apology is doing the work and being better to the next Black person/people that you build relationship(s) with.
Ultimately, apologies are deeply personal acts. I am absolutely not saying that white (and non-Black POC) should in any way avoid apologizing. Apologies are of paramount importance, they provide space for healing, closure, and should folks desire it, reconciliation.
However, I am asking that white folks become more self-critical before they apologize. The revolution is self-reflexive. If you know that you need to apologize (and there are many times when you should apologize), do the work of understanding that an apology is not meant to assuage guilt, receive confirmation of your exceptional goodness, or as a knee-jerk fix to global racism. Apologizing is the dual act of recognizing another’s humanity as sacred while also working to dismantle the internalized-ideologies that led you to dehumanize someone in the first place.
Pause. Reflect. Reflect again. Apologize. And then do the work.

This summer, my physical therapist and I bonded over our mutual contempt for our now former president. As she kneaded my muscles, the topic of race came up, as it was the peak of the George Floyd protests popping up all over the country.

She said, “My brother-in-law, (ironically a cop), used to be very racist, but he changed.” This was intriguing to me, so I asked how that happened, a twinge of hope creeping into my heart that he might have the secret key to help solve our national shame.


She said, “My sister decided that they were going to have a Fresh Air Fund kid stay with them.” For those who don’t know, the Fresh Air Fund arranges for kids who live in cities to spend a few weeks in the summer with suburban families who are often, but not always white. The kids are typically Black or Hispanic, and are introduced to typical suburban summer activities like day camps, swimming, and the family vacation etc. Ideally, the Fresh Air kids are paired with suburban children of similar ages.


My PT said that his experience of actually getting to know a person of color transformed him. He began to know a real person, not a cardboard emblem of what his parents, the media, and the greater society told him about Black people. Black people became real human beings with real thoughts and feelings just like his. This child became one of his own, and returned to them subsequent summers until he was out of school.


So here I am posting an epic-length post that I feel fairly certain that you won’t care about either. That’s OK. I am lately gripped with a need to communicate, to be seen and known. To be known by others, and by you, who view me as a cardboard cutout of a silly and cruel, and oblivious white woman, that you seemingly despise. I do this only for myself and my growth as a human being. To show that I am in fact, real flesh and blood. But the bottom line is I’m done with the back-and-forth derision, I’m done with the spreadsheet-keeping that causes conflict between us. It does nothing to promote better relations between white people and people of color.
 

Because I realize that conflict, that derision is getting us nowhere. That viewing each other as cardboard representations of real live people is a dead-end street and does not promote the transformation that will be required to create true equality in this country. And that is “us” in the 2 Peas sense, but also the “us” of the larger society.


I reviewed past posts of mine that I saw were filled with derision toward you. Derision that was a defense I erected at feeling criticized. Derision that I am now ashamed of and offer a genuine apology to you.

I’ve been analyzing my habitual reactions to your posts to figure out why I felt criticized, why I found them such personal button-pushers. The pattern seemed to be that you started a thread or reacted to existing threads, linking articles (helpful and thoughtful articles that in a post the other day, you said you did not care that I had that reaction to them.) But then came a dig, then came derision. Derision for what we women of 2 Peas are, where we are in our journey.


So how was I interpreting your posts? The best analogy I could come up with is the analogy of a toddler learning to walk. We don’t punish them when they fall down and their walking skills fall short of perfection.

We, the women of 2 Peas, are mostly white, mostly economically comfortable and have been safely ensconced in our white privilege for our entire lives. We are where we are in our individual journeys of understanding, acknowledging, and acting, ranging from fairly woke to never gonna get there.


I get your message. Kind of. “Wake up white people!” you exhort. But then in the next breath, after inviting us to join you, we fall up short and earn your derision. Jump, you say and in the next breath, you say, that’s not high enough. This is what is known as a double-bind. Double-binds make people feel crazy and paralyzed. It sometimes may take me a while to figure out that a double-bind has become part of communication with another, but when I do, I’m out. I don’t do double-binds. They are harmful to me and it is my right as a human being not to engage in unhealthy ways of communicating.


The reality is, each of us has the human right to grow at an intellectual, a psychological and a moral rate at our own pace. And this leaves us open to criticism from Black people who will say this is the cop out of white privilege. But I will use a phrase I detest, because it seems apt. It is what it is.
Wishing we are more enlightened than we are is an admirable goal, but we are where we are and getting there may be a life's work, and is definitely not subject to someone else's ideas of what is acceptable.

I will read the Black history I want to read on my own timetable, I will choose the Black authors that resonate with me, rather than jumping on the bandwagon of the “white lady in the suburb book club” books that sprang up in the aftermath of the flurry of murders and other aggressions of Black people by cops in the spring and summer. I will read them slowly, savor them, let the unfamiliar messages permeate my body, let myself try to feel an infinitesimal amount of the rage and despair that I will never truly understand, as I do not have that history in my DNA.


I will will myself to comprehend the extreme level of frustration and rage evidenced by the writer James Baldwin in Eddie Glaude Jr.’s book “Begin Again” which describes how he saw all the promises of change coming out of the Civil Rights movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s deflate into apathy as white people regrouped and retreated back into their protection of The American Lie that Black people are unequal to white people.


I will delight in the poetry and prose of Ross Gay who in his “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” delivers the whimsy, the heartbreaking sweetness, and the sudden gut punch that comes from experiences living life as a Black man.


Now to address the comments you’ve posted. The thread in which we discussed white women’s roles during the days of slave-owning and I suppose, post-slavery, I asserted that white women of that time who lived within that system did not have the power to dictate, criticize, or make substantive changes in the perverted system of slavery. You listed some references that asserted that indeed, women weren’t just innocent bystanders in a horrific system. I saw your response, and wanted to respond but life got in the way (yes, white privilege) and I never responded. I should have responded, but I didn't. My apologies. It is frustrating to have knowledge you want to convey seemingly ignored and overlooked.



I suppose that one can always find the example that differs from the norm, and you did, in spades. Thanks for the information. I learned something. It gave me much to reflect upon.


However, in doing some additional reflection up this, it seems to me that beyond the (peano, sit down and shut up warning ahead) examples you came up with, that another insidious role that white women played in the South was the myth that sprang up like a poisoned fruit. The myth of the white woman, the precious, pure flower of the South needing protection from the marauding and raping Black man, in the form of the hangman's noose wielded by men who "needed" to protect her. The idea that nothing more than the flick of her finger meant that Emmett Till (and countless others like him) would be left swinging from a tree, victim of a system built on lies.


So, where are we? We are all real people, trying to muddle through our human weaknesses and shortcomings on the way to hopefully becoming better people working for a more just world.
We are more complex, my joyous, more angry, more tender than a cardboard cutout.

If you have made it this far, thanks for reading.