A Little Space to Fill

I haven’t written in a couple months and I think this time its got to do with the ways in which all the themes I usually like to address are impacting me relatively directly these days. I started this blog back in 2005 after I had moved to NYC and begun gradschool. Looking back over my writings I feel as though they’ve gotten progressively worse, as though what I’m trying to say has become harder and harder and been more frequently clouded over by other extraneous things. Or maybe I just had more of a deep need to address my views and visions back then and now am seeing less of a reason to do so. Scratch that, its not less of a reason to do so, no, there is still a need to address race, class gender, and the like, its just that perhaps lately I’ve gotten wrapped up in dealing with those things in very personal ways as opposed to political ways. Perhaps I’ve been slowly going through the process of finding it more and more difficult to keep these matters at arms length. See I think an issue becomes easily discussed when have either not gotten deeply into it personally, or have already found our ways out of it and can look back on it- discussing the issues rarely seems to go well when we find ourselves in the thick of it- at least with me.

So what is it then that I’ve been trying to get at here with this whole blog? As I see it a couple of themes I’ve tried to address throughout this blog are race, gender, class, belonging, and personal connections. As a white woman who grew up middle class in a very small city I grew up with a certain amount of privilege and it wasn’t until 2005 really that I was asked to deal with what that privilege meant- not just to other people but to myself. I became aware that as a woman I was refused certain privileges but being white I was afforded others. I became aware that my ability to attend the university I did meant I had expectations placed upon me and opportunities given to me strictly based on whether I was able to afford a certain amount of tuition. I also became aware that given each of my status’s I had choices to make. Primarily choices about how I would interact with others, how I would utilize and deny my privilege, how I would approach living conscious, and how I would support the people I cared about, as well as myself, in dealing with those choices. Not that I believed that I had the answers and could help others through with such ease, but that I could be a support to them in their own struggle with this stuff, be open, understanding and honest, and hear them when/if that was what they needed from me.

So I started this blog while I was looking at those topics, and as I progressed I began addressing them first with myself , then with my professors and classmates, my clients, my staff, my family, my friends and acquaintances, and finally the people I want to have closest to me. And the thing of it is that as it’s come around to those last few levels, which all are operating simultaneously at the moment, I’m finding I’m having the hardest time. The political has become more and more personal and for me, like I said before, it’s hardest to articulate your understanding of the issues when you’re deep within them. The thing with these themes though, is that they won’t go away, and I don’t know how or when I would ever come out on the other side with enough understanding to feel distance once again- I don’t think its possible, and to be frank, I don’t know that I want so much distance from these themes that I somehow become detached from them. So I guess there in lies the complication. How do I remain actively involved in these themes and still be able to acquire some type of understanding around them and be able to articulate that, here or anywhere else.

Most recently the themes of ethnicity and personal connections have cut very close to the quick for me. Being white, and the ways in which I operate in the world around that, have been something I’ve taken up more and more strongly in my life and while it’s a good thing and an important thing, and possibly even something I’m feeling more prepared to deal with than ever, its also been a complicated thing. Now this is by no means a complaint- I feel absurdly lucky that the complication has come so late in life when I have been able to think about and discuss the themes in mature ways with mature people prior to having to deal with it on a personal level. I am aware that as a privileged white person I’ve been afforded this luxury of not having to think about it until I’m good and ready. No, in a way the problem comes for me in that I still feel completely clumsy in addressing these issues with the people who I want closest to me, the people who matter the most- particularly when those people are persons of color. Do I, and if so how do I, articulate my stumbling blocks to someone I care about or want to care about when what I have to say, or how I’m dealing with it, or the fact that I consider it difficult at all may be received, and appropriately so, with hostility, resentment, anger, confusion, annoyance, disgust, or any combination of those things if not outright rejection? In many ways I don’t think I can and I don’t think I should. In many ways to articulate them in such a way is to ask for help and guidance from someone who may have had to deal with these matters their whole life, whether they wanted to or not, and oftentimes without any guidance whatsoever. In many ways it seems self centered and privileged to even bring the topic up with people who haven’t had a choice in the matter. And so sometimes I don’t- at least not in certain senses. This is part of the reason I joined a white anti-racist group. For me to ask persons of color to sit patiently with me while I get through my own struggle with privilege and whiteness is to continue to ask to be given that privilege and to me that would be like a man asking me to feel empathic towards him and his struggle with his male privilege- it just doesn’t make any sense.

Now don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean that I feel that I ought to never address it. I think that to not address it with people of color in my life is taking the easy way out and I’m not really interested in any more free passes based on the color of my skin. No it’s vital to address it, but the importance comes in learning to address it not from a standpoint of privilege and expectation, but from a standpoint of empathy, understanding and a desire to learn, increase awareness, and move towards eradication of the problem.

So you see, this is just one of the ways these themes are hitting me full in the face these days, and while its been unexpected and its caused me to fall silent about certain things I guess it doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped thinking about them entirely, or that I believe these matters don’t impact me, and its not that I think that they have become irrelevant to discuss or irrelevant to me- its just that I’m kind of in the thick of it right now and in a way I’m more interested in trying to figure out what other people think on the matter, rather than spouting off about what I think I may know. I guess that’s all I’ve got to say for now.