Month: June 2020

Today in Houston a group of urban riders on horseback joined the Black Lives Matter protest there. They were fifteen or twenty black people mounted on beautiful horses. (I love horses. They’re all beautiful.) When I watched the clip I had a moment of surprise at seeing black people on horseback. This is racism in my brain: that moment of surprise before I self corrected and told myself that of course black people ride horses. Why shouldn’t they? Yet that pause in my comprehension shows that I have stereotypes in my head. We all do. It is the work of a lifetime to discover them and counter them. After that moment of surprise I did a bit of reading and learned about the history of black cowboys which has been erased from public awareness because they were not included in popular media and cowboy mythos. This is racism: where a people’s contribution to the history of this country is erased by hundreds and thousands of individual decisions not to include them.

Racism lives in all our heads. I do my best to catch mine and correct it before anyone else sees it or is affected by it. However, I’m not perfect. No one is. So there may come a day when someone calls me racist. In that moment I want to have the personal courage and humbleness to not react defensively. A person crying racist is like a person shouting “Ow!” when I step on their foot. I hurt them and it doesn’t matter if I meant to or not. My job is to apologize and step back, then learn better where to put my feet. It is possible that the person I hurt will not believe my corrections are sincere or sufficient. It is my job to not get defensive about that either. Instead I should take an additional step back and get some neutral opinions on whether there are further reparations I need to make for the damage done. “Neutral opinions” is not me going to my friends for reassurance that I’m an okay person. It is me finding perspective, which includes an evaluation of boundaries to protect myself as well as repair the damage done.

Social media and the news is very noisy about racism this week with the ongoing Black Lives Matter / George Floyd protests. We saw similar protests on a much smaller scale in 2014. I’m encouraged that the news reporting of these protests is far more nuanced. I’m encouraged that more white people are learning how to explain and understand racism. I’m hopeful that the two months of practice we’ve had thinking collectively because of the pandemic will transfer to the systemic racism in my country. The “All in this together” slogans should not just apply to quarantine and pandemic. The only way to stave off another great depression is to make sure that we take care of the economically disadvantaged and remove the obstacles that keep them poor. Racism has to be addressed as part of that because it is a silent and pervasive obstacle in our country.

Years ago I watched a friend at a convention telling people that he had a terminal illness with only about five years left. Over and over he would speak the news and then have to feel the person’s emotional reaction to that news. Over and over he comforted his friends about his own impending death. Because the experience was dramatic it stuck with me, but the same holds true on a less dramatic scale. Everywhere those black horse riders go, they likely encounter people like me: white folks who are surprised that they exist. Time after time they have to be patient while white people work through that surprise. This is a very common way that racism impacts people. I, as a white person, can go ride a horse and no one will question me. I can just enjoy my ride. The black horse rider likely ends up having conversations about their existence with random white people instead of just getting to ride. (Note: I’ve not actually talked to a black horseback rider about their experiences and because of what I’ve just pictured in my head, I probably never will get to because I don’t want to accost some random horse rider and contribute to the problem. If I have a friend who is black and who I discover likes to ride horses, then during a conversation where they choose volunteer information, I might get to hear about their experiences.)

I’m afraid I’ve rambled a bit in this post. It doesn’t have a cohesive thesis nor a firm call to action. My college English professor would send it back for a re-write. But I’m going to leave the ramble, because the work of confronting our own racism is messy and confusing. We will feel contradictory things. We will have dozens of thoughts. I know I’ve revised and re-revised my understanding of racism a lot in the past few years. I did a pile more thinking and revision in the past week. This week is extra challenging because my emotional bandwidth was already impacted because of Howard’s health and the pandemic. It is less important for me to do a pile of advocacy and reading all at once than it is for me to commit to spending time learning and advocating in small pieces, as I can, over the long haul. Racism will not go away when the protests subside, not unless people actively work to make it go away. Bit by bit, year after year.

I first wrote and posted this in November of 2016, but it is how I feel about the news from this week and the thoughts are important to reaffirm. Original post here.

Last winter I fell because of a patch of ice on my front walk. It was dark and cold. I didn’t see the ice before my foot landed on it. The result was giant bruises all over, and a couple of micro fractures in my hand and wrist. All of that is now a memory, healed up. But today I am thinking about the moment after the fall. I don’t remember the fall itself. I do remember a moment of disorientation “why am I here on the ground?” Then the pain hit. I was incoherent with it for at least a minute. All I could do was make a loud, distressed noise. It was pure instinct, crying out. My brain knew that, in my pain, the best way to summon help was to make noise. That first wave of pain passed in a minute or two. I was able to control the noises more. Then I was able to assess the damage, figure out how to stand up, get myself into the house, and begin to treat my injuries.

I wonder if there is a name for that moment when the pain hits. Doctors probably know it. Even if there isn’t a specific name, I know that emergency personnel are trained to handle it. People in that first blast of pain are not rational. They can’t be. The pain short circuits careful thought. What is left are survival strategies: howling into the darkness and lashing out at anything that might cause more harm.

I have been present when someone gets hurt. I’ve seen that moment of irrationality from the outside as well as felt it from the inside. I’ve seen someone pound the wall because they stubbed their toe, only to discover later that the damage to the hand is worse than the toe. I’ve heard people say hurtful things in the first flush of pain, things they would not ordinarily say. I’ve learned that it falls to those who aren’t hurt to help those that are. Part of helping is having compassion for that moment of yelling an flailing. No it doesn’t make sense. Often it isn’t productive. It can lead to further injury both to that person and others. Sometimes the flailing hits the helper so hard that the helper then has to manage their own pain for a time. In that first painful moment rationality and planning may not be possible.

All people experience pain in their own way and on their own schedule. One person may proceed to rationality in seconds while another requires minutes, hours, or even days. The severity of the injury also affects the recovery. In this too, everyone is different, a blow which one person shrugs off, can destroy another. I fell and had bruises. An older friend’s fall left her with three broken ribs and fractured arm. I was functional, if hurting, the next day. She was not back to normal for weeks.

Emotional pain is as real as physical pain. It can trigger the same neurochemicals and the same physiological reactions. An emotional blow can trigger the same irrational reaction as a physical one.

I am seeing a lot of irrational reactions to recent events. I’m seeing lots of lashing out. I hope that those who are not hurting can be kind to those who are. Give them space while the pain overwhelms them. Understand that they have to yell and lash out, they can’t not. Recognize that they may be overwhelmed for a lot longer than you think is reasonable. Depending upon the extent of their injury, they may be permanently different, even when that first irrational pain has passed. Pain changes people, changes perspectives. Have compassion for that too.

We have wounded. There is healing to do. There will be disagreements about how that healing should be accomplished. Those disagreements will cause new pain, new irrationality, new lashing out. So we must come back to compassion. Over and over again. Every time there is anger, fear, damage, we must return to compassion, empathy, kindness. It will be hard.

As we move out of that first pain, the strategies adapt. Then we must learn to live with the cognitive dissonance of having compassion for those who rail, howl, and fight against us, while not relinquishing our resolve to change the world for better. We must learn to hold tight to both resolution and to compassion for those who react in pain and fear to the changes we seek. This sort of compassion is exhausting, but it is necessary. Many people who seem like opponents could be allies with an application of compassion. There are true opponents out there, people who calmly and rationally choose things which hurt us. We’ll have more energy to oppose them if we can tell them apart from people who are reacting out of fear or pain.

I wish there were easy answers. I wish that there were one set of words that could provide healing to everyone. There isn’t. My words here will be healing to some and will make others angry. Both the person healed and the person angry have every right to feel as they do. Emotions are what they are. They should all be allowed. It is actions which must be controlled and managed. I do not control the feelings which show up, I have a responsibility to carefully choose my actions. Today I’m choosing to extend compassion toward people who are in the midst of pain and fear.