Privilege is Power

I have come to see that the more privilege we hold the more important it is to be clear about the power we wield.

And when I say power, I mean historic, systemic and collective power.

Danger and deep harm happens when we don't have this context. The scary thing is that privilege operates by putting blinders up for us and our sole focus on individual situations or individual relationships further damages our ability to see what is going on. Those of us in positions of power need to take down the invisibility cloak and see clearly our positions and how this impacts our relationships.

When participating in the Beloved Conversations curriculum at my church last year I got super clear about the way my fear of harming people has truncated my ability to be in deep and authentic relationships with people of color in my life. Addressing this is at the core of my commitment to learning about and engaging in reconciliation and conflict transformation.

As a white, cisgendered, educated, financially secure, heterosexual, able-bodied person I hold a lot of privilege.

For over 20 years I have known that being white in this society means that I reproduce harm just by living an unexamined life. Even as I have worked to dismantle systemic racism, my fear of harming others has continued to limit my impact. When I am honest with myself I see that I’ve often played small to reduce risk of damage I could do.

One of my most freeing realizations came through conversations with Aaron Goggans during a Liberation Logic Workshop. He said that there is a profound difference between hurt and harm.

When we are in relationship with one another, when we are open and vulnerable with another person, we risk being hurt. Hurt causes pain. It stings, is uncomfortable and needs tending to. But harm is different. Harm causes lasting damage.

No matter how much I learn and grow, I am going to hurt people through my ignorance and blind spots.  So I better learn how to clean up that mess. Cleaning up the mess is part of reducing harm.

When we cause pain, we need to be able to quickly address that hurt and hear how our actions have been layered on intergenerational experiences of harm. When we do not recognize our own power in a given situation, claiming responsibility for what we have done and doing so in a way that recognizes the different risks tied to material safety, our unintentional missteps add to the deep and festering wounds caused by our racist, patriarchal, oppressive society.

This is why I lead the Trust and Reconciliation work at All Souls Church and why I am learning about restorative justice.

I have seen so many white folks I know, respect, and love do this really poorly.  Rev. Rebecca Parker drew the image of barbed wire around our hearts to describe white fragility. Too often we fall to defensiveness. Sometimes this looks like hiding behind laws or policies.  Sometimes it is an over emphasis on the individual players. Sometimes it is picking on another's faults. Sometimes, hiding the facts and keeping information from others. And sometimes it is clear finger pointing and blaming others.

I believe we need some deep spiritual practices to cut through the barbed wire, before we show up trying to repair relationships. We need to deepen our ability to know and understand our social position.  It is important to know this in our heads, but I believe it is as, if not more, important to access an emotional and physical knowing. We need to be connected with our own bodies and hearts before we can offer a deep listening and holding of another’s experience.

Spiritual practices that connect us to a well where we can draw strength.
A source of grounding to help us show-up.

Repair comes when we show-up.  

When we not only own the hurt we have caused but we also hold the context of historic, structural and collective harm that has been done and is swirling around and through the hurt we caused. We need to be able to hold the depth of pain caused by white supremacy.  We need to enter these conversations with a commitment to learn and grow. With clarity about how we will take responsibility for not only the hurt we have caused, but also the collective harm within which we exist.

When we do this richness, depth, resilience awaits.

Death. Life. Faith.

Rubbing his feet. Pulling the covers over his body. Tucking him in one final time.

He never woke. We knew he was near the end. We knew we couldn’t give him the care he needed in his home alone if he woke.

He didn’t wake. He slept peacefully, with the love of his family filling his final days.

I’d spent much of his final month with my grandfather. Cooking for him, giving him medicine, tending to his wounds. Lung cancer had come back. He fought it once. He’d been told his life was over when I was young. We were given 20 more years with him.

And I got to be there as he welcomed the end of a life well lived. A full life. Mistakes, yes. Regrets, maybe. But life lived through and through.

My grandfather had been a social justice advocate. With a strong compass and unashamed voice he called for justice with his every breath.

But often in his early years the grander fight for justice was prioritized over family ties. Over respecting and loving the people in front of him.

My grandmother was both heartbroken by and deeply in love with him. They were divorced for decades, but always loved each other. They couldn’t successfully share a home, but had tried many times. Toward the end of his life the love my grandpa had for Grandma G took over his whole being. You could see it in his eyes every time he looked at her.

As they recounted stories of the love and pain they shared, I was able to be wrapped in the history that made me.

Broken, imperfect, righteous, humble beings who lived in a world full of injustice. Ancestors who both fought to bring about equity and peace and at the same time, reproduced harm.

The moon is an image that always ties me to my people. My grandparents told a story of the beautiful orange moon that blessed them on one of their first dates. My children still blow kisses to my grandparents through the moon. It connects us and leaves us in awe of the world that is.

In his final weeks my grandfather was visited by old dear friends and colleagues who had long ago passed. They came to his basement apartment. He held brief conversations with them as he sat in his old and failing body amidst the stacks and piles of anti-war, justice and peace books.

My grandfather did not believe in an after-life. He did not know what would happen to him. His father had been a United Church of Christ minister with ancestors from Germany. When my great-grandparents returned to Germany to visit before World War 2, alarm bells sounded for them, their lives forever changed. Shaken by the horror they saw and committed to bring awareness to injustice.

My great-grandmother was a ministers wife, orderly and controlled. She died the day before I was born. My great-grandfather was a gentle soul, who found passionate love and remarried in his 80s.

The day my great-grandfather died I was eight. I sat on the floor in front of a full-length mirror in our duplex on Ten Rod Road as cars whizzed by outside. I was fully consumed by trying to get my hair straightened into a high ponytail when the phone rang. A phone call that marked the end of a life.

Two weeks into my freshman year of high school we got a similar call. I answered the phone and heard my grandmother’s broken voice ask to speak to my mom. I sat on the edge of my mother’s bed as tears poured down her face. My uncle had been sitting on his couch in Arlington. After a normal day of work he’d called his mother, so she could hear the joy in his 3 year daughter’s voice. His wife was near by and he mentioned that he did not feel well. Moments later his heart stopped beating. His body collapsed. He lived for three more months in a vegetative state. My family put their lives on hold in Seattle and Rhode Island and stationed themselves together by his bedside. Unified by love, we navigated the struggle hand-in-hand.

In reflecting now, I actually think my uncles death may have saved my life.

The night we got that call, I had been walking in what felt like a broken and harsh world with no sense of purpose or direction. My brother had dropped out of high school and was lost in the depths of drugs and alcohol. I was following his path.

But when John collapsed, I had to take on responsibility. My mom needed me to help at her shop and help at home. My family needed me.

And through the grieving process my mom found the Unitarian Universalist church. The church where I found community, purpose and hope. Death brought me closer to life and my faith allows me to hold the complexities of this world.

Death.
Life.
Faith.

All so fleeting and precious.