Saying goodbye to a year where, for much of it, we found ourselves restricted to only a few spaces, has me thinking about the ways place shapes identity. How do the places we find ourselves, shape who we are?
Before the pandemic and before we ended up in our home for much of our days, our family visited the North Carolina museum of history. For my five year old, the glimpse into the past of this place where we live, was too much. Soon after we arrived, she covered her ears, walked toward the exit and repeated “I don’t want to be here. I want to leave.” The restored slave cabin, remnants of plantation life and tangible pieces of the confederacy, overwhelmed this typically unshakeable girl. I wondered what these sights and this place could be telling her about herself? What might they be telling her about our family?
In the southern US – with proslavery monuments and modern spaces named “plantation” – whiteness feels different. But is it? With name and commemoration, I see our communal spaces trying to tell a harmonious story of whiteness. We name things “plantation” but overlook the violence and terror whiteness enacted on plantations; we hold onto and honor pieces of the culture which empowered slavery, but do not acknowledge and recompense for how white people gained power and wealth. Though it initially felt and looked different, I now see the same whiteness.
This place where I find myself, amidst homages to whiteness, is helping me better understand my connection to the race I’ve inherited. Before living in the south, I was convinced that whiteness is different in different parts of the country and that our multi-raced family was safer in the north. The northern whiteness I knew defined itself in contrast to that of the south – our northern whiteness was somehow less evil, less threatening and not as culpable for how whiteness harms.
But the brutality of whiteness is not just located in the south and back then, it is everywhere and it is now. All over this country the ruinous truths of whiteness often go unchecked and un-storied. What looked different to me on the surface is really a token of the same underlying truth, whiteness is free to dominate everywhere – even when no stone statues celebrate it. And now, I understand that whiteness isn’t different here, it’s that I am differently impacted by whiteness here. Because different places make up different parts of who I am, the ways I attend to whiteness might be need to change from place to place.
The swap in physical location from north to south provided a new perspective to the ways whiteness affects me. Seeing racial injustice all over our country, while living among confederate statues and places called plantation, disrupted my well honed skills of ignoring the ugly parts of whiteness. I began to see how my story of race was was curated by the social and historical narrative of whiteness in the north. It was a progressive, positive and friendly story of what it means to be white and it was a narrative well supported by the world around me. Just like the story of whiteness being told with monuments and statues in the south, my story glossed over the untoward parts.
No matter how hard we try to tell another story of whiteness, the truth of whiteness is that it destructively clings to power and works to maintain the status quo. We witnessed this last week as a group of mostly white protesters, emboldened by the President, forcibly entered our capitol building to hold hostage our democracy. We saw the privileges of whiteness maintained in the markedly divergent response from law enforcement awarded these rioters juxtaposed with that received by other protestors, such as BLM and Standing Rock.
Whiteness maintains its position and perpetuates the same narrative even as we continue to lose black and brown lives to police violence – and now to the relentlessly racialized impact of Covid-19. Justice, health care and human worth are distributed disparately while whiteness remains on top. I feel this sway of whiteness as I resist a steady pull to not question what whiteness is, what it means and what it does. Every place I go, I encounter the same pressure to conform to the same old story of whiteness and not rock the boat.
Even still, I look for a way to be white that is whole and accountable; a way that is just and is hopeful and answers for harm. It’s difficult and complicated and I often feel as though I’m fumbling. But it is absolutely necessary. I need a racial identity that aligns with my dreams and values and that enables me to best embody love and care. The things I’ve learned so far help me stand against the white narrative I’ve known and reassure me that change is possible.
Presently, with the troublesome story of race unfolding before us and no American space free of it, many are already about the work of relentlessly and courageously opposing this narrative. Yet I can’t help but feel that more is required – specifically, that more is needed from white people, like me. What can we do to join with those who are already well practiced in fostering community and coming together to mutually counter oppressive whiteness?
I sense other white people feel this too. I hear many of us asking, what can I do? While I cannot definitively say what another person’s contribution is to make, I know that white people are essential to the work of righting racial wrongs, are critical in rejecting the established narrative of whiteness and are needed to create a new and better story. A place we can start is with trusting that to be white is to be racialized, owning that we have a part to play and sharing our stories with one another.
For me, because race is a part of my story that I have not paid meaningful attention to, it is a piece in need of examination. This means that in the day-to-day living of life, I mark the ways whiteness influences me – my perspective-taking, my actions and how I am in relationships. I’ve come to know that the story of who I am is forged in relationship and place. For this reason, I take care to notice what my relationships look like and ask who do I share space with? Because I am differently impacted by whiteness in different places, I take in the spaces that I occupy and continually ask, what do these places tell me about whiteness?
There are many possibilities for our collective narrative of race in the US, we are not held captive so that we can only preserve our current story. Michael White, a narrative therapist wrote, “Where there is violence there is always response and resistance, the acknowledgement of which helps open up alternative story lines.” (2004, p. 47) People who have been marginalized by whiteness have much skill and knowledge in responding to and resisting the violence of white supremacy because their lives and humanity depend on it. In what ways am I acknowledging, honoring and learning from this? How am I responding to and resisting the violence of whiteness? Though in different ways, my life and humanity too depend on it.
White, M. (2004). Working with people who are suffering the consequences of multiple trauma: A narrative perspective. International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community, (1), 44-75.