events in minnesota and central park and the surrounding dialogue are swirling in my head and deserve a response. this post from another white woman written as advice to other “well-meaning” white women advises me to basically keep the focus off me–5 racist anti-racist responses good white women give to viral posts. her wise counsel is to confine our supportive (designed to be) anti-racist remarks to “i’m sorry,” “i see you” or “that’s awful.” she warns of several specific “making it all about us” pitfalls that “good” white women fall into–highly recommend reading this before responding to anything on social media.
https://twitter.com/yokatykatikate/status/1265432347664506881?s=20
speaking of which, trending on twitter (see below for the full clip) today is van jones on cnn (perhaps harkening to the famous quote by dr. king), apropos of the publicized recent racist incident towards christian cooper in central park observing that “it’s not the racist white person who is in the ku klux klan that we have to worry about. it’s the white liberal hillary clinton supporter walking her dog in central park who would tell you …’i don’t see race,’… ‘i see us all as the same,’ ‘i give to charities,’ but the minute she sees a black man who … she has a slight thought against, she weaponized race like she had been trained by the aryan nation. a klansmember could not have been better trained to pick up the phone and tell the police it’s ‘an african-american man, come get him.’ so even the most well-intentioned liberal white person has a virus in his or her brain that can be activated at an instant and so what you’re seeing now is a curtain falling away.”
Y’all — Van Jones just said on CNN that it’s the White, liberal HRC supporters we have to look out for, and I-
— Jax🌹 (@Jaxlzz) May 29, 2020
by making this about me, a white woman, in contravention of the blogpost advice above, i can attest to the virus in my brain that jones speaks of. the other day i was walking down the street in sacramento. a shirtless man, who looked as if he slept on the street, came rushing at me from the side with his arms outstretched as if trying to grab me. terrified, i squeaked out, “oh, please don’t” and ran to avoid his trajectory. he continued forward and grabbed instead a trashcan into which he vomited.
even though i immediately came to suspect that he was rushing for that trashcan and not me, i was very shaken up and scared by the incident. it took me a couple of blocks to recover. as i called first my husband, who i didn’t reach, and then a friend, i reported it to them as above. but here’s the thing, i noticed that it took enormous restraint for me to leave out the detail that he was very dark skinned–“black” my head told me.
indeed, as i continued to walk i observed that in many ways the order of threat registered by lizard brain was actually “black,” “homeless,” “coronavirus,” and then “man.”
so, i am personally in a position to validate that the virus in my brain is real and it is easily activated. i have been programmed from birth to see color and to be afraid of black people, particularly black men. that programming is deeply embedded in our collective unconscious mind. i have no idea what it will take to destroy and uncreate this deeply deeply engrained pattern.
all i can say is i am sorry. i see this and it is awful.
