Swirling in Whiteness

I saw a meme on Instagram today that has stuck with me and made me think a little. It was a quote by Rachel Cargle:  “Anti-racism work is not self-improvement work for white people. It doesn't end when white people feel better about what they've done. It ends when Black people are staying alive and they have their liberation." —  @rachel.cargle Amen to that. I worry that there is a lot of work being done right now because of the circumstances we are currently living under. You know, a pandemic and a social justice revolution are going on at the same time. These are not normal times. But these are times that are changing the world.  I am so grateful that starting in the middle of March I had nothing better to do with my days than go for long walks and listen to podcasts and audiobooks. I watched the world come to life this spring instead of spending my days inside the walls of the school where I teach. I found the work of many amazing social justice warriors and found some...

I think I'm having trouble getting started on this topic because I am still figuring it out somewhat. My awareness of the term ally is not new. I've been aware for many years that there are marginalized people all around me whose voices need to be heard and supported in the name of equity. An ally provides a pillar of support, not another voice. An ally focuses on learning and understanding the truth and then sharing that truth.   Until recently, I thought I was an ally because I pay attention to the issues and I'm infuriated by the injustices I see. It hurts my heart, for example, that there isn't a more widespread urgency in Canada around the Truth and Reconciliation calls to action. In my opinion, not enough people even know what I mean by that. They don't understand that we will never get to reconciliation without everyone's collective awareness and acceptance of the truth. It's one thing to be aware and to continually be learning, but this doesn't ...

I can't remember when I first heard the term systemic racism. I do remember having a foggy understanding of it, mainly because I couldn't name and explain examples of systemic racism in action. While I knew it was about systems of oppression that are built to specifically marginalize some people, I wasn't equipped with a deep enough understanding of it to be able to engage in conversations about it. That's what happens with white people who benefit from systemic racism. It becomes so normalized that we don't even think about it. I'm sure any person of colour could give me a nice long list of examples.  I wouldn't have done a very good job of explaining it to someone in the past. I'm still not great at it, but I'm trying.  The world now has a clear example to use to explain systemic racism because it has been in the news for the last two months since George Floyd was murdered by police officers. I have a sensitive take on police and policing because t...

I find myself quite often revisiting some of the nuggets of wisdom that I took from my foundational coursework at grad school. One of my profs once said, in the context of figuring out if privilege is a factor in any situation, that you can just ask this question: Who has the power in this situation?  Indigenous people were somehow convinced to sign a bunch of treaties even though they couldn't read or understand the language they were written in. Who had the power in this situation? Black people are terrified to be pulled over by the police for fear of it escalating into something violent. Who has the power in this situation?  Women are afraid to walk across parking lots to their cars after dark for fear of being attacked. Who has the power in this situation?  People who live in certain neighbourhoods have more difficulty securing mortgages than those who live elsewhere. (This is called redlining.) Who has the power in this situation? Elderly are treated poorly in long t...

I couldn't write yesterday. I was paralyzed by my lack of plan. There's no outline that I'm following except for a bunch of random notes I've been writing in my journal, and even that has no rhyme or reason to it. In contrast, the writing that I do in all the other aspects of my life seems to start with an outline. It's part of the writing process that I teach my kids at school. Start with brainstorming and thinking about how you're going to structure your ideas. The chapters that I am writing for my masters research project all started with outlines. That's not really what's happening here. My intention is to write about what's on my mind, what I learned that day, and what I still want to learn. So in the midst of being stuck yesterday, wondering what to write about first, I found myself circling back to the title of this blog: Swirling in Whiteness . Before I became so acutely aware of the construct of race (yes, people made this up so someone coul...

I'm not ready to teach people about whiteness or racism or privilege, but I want to be able to do that some day. I feel called to do it. It's heavy. It weighs on my heart daily. There's a little fire burning there. The spark appeared several months ago when I went to see a museum installation about Nelson Mandela (which I will probably share more about in the future). What I can say about that right now is that the main question I left there with was: Where were the white people, the allies, the helpers -- whatever we want to call them? Anti-black racism was the major theme of the day, and I was fascinated to learn more about Mandela's work, but I am white and I found that what I was curious about was what the white people were doing, because I was unable to walk away from that experience without assuming that there were white people in the mix who were opposed to the oppression. And there were. I'm reading about them right now in Mandela's autobiography -- Lo...