You know y’all, as your favorite cult leader, I get a lot of shade thrown at me for the very thing this meme speaks to.
We do a lot of repetition. People say the practically the same thing all the time.
We engage with people who don’t quite get it and we never ever kick them out of the car.
We listen for people huffing and puffing and we wait. Long enough for them to catch their breath, to regroup, and we are here offering sustenance and orangeade and Band-Aids for their blisters.
One of the hallmarks of relentless reliability in our relationships and in our Praxis is that we leave no one behind. Shaking shoulders get borrowed coats. Parched lips get the extra Blistex because we’re always prepared to be a balm.
We never walk alone. Racial justice has never been and will never be a solitary exercise. Which is why you never carry just enough provisions for yourself.
Stock up.
Keep walking.
Join the discussion in the Bistro.
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for me, old habits die hard. Especially when the soup we swim around in every day is rife to benefit me. It takes intentionality and practice to not default to old patterns.for me, old habits die hard. Especially when the soup we swim around in every day is rife to benefit me. It takes intentionality and practice to not default to old patterns.
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It is easy for me to see myself as the guide to how fast things should go, especially when I feel like I am having to wait for others to catch up and then wait for them to have the rest that I already had before we start again. My white supremacist culture values ability and speed over care and patience. It values leaving others in the dust. Dismantling white supremacy starts with me. I have to reject my ingrained urge to see my own speed as the right speed. Often if I am going fast it means that I missed important steps along the way. Rejecting white supremacy means seeing the infinite value in each person. Of course I must wait not only for the catch up, but also for the rest and renewal.
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Yes – seeing my speed as the right speed is so tempting, whether that’s a fast or a slow speed. Assuming we have it right and everyone else is wrong is so supremacy at work – even if it’s over other white people. Because once we start putting ourselves on a moral pedestal, it’s easy to get complacent about our own growth.
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As someone who has been the last person on the group hike (and left behind so many times) as well as the person who *feels* ahead of everyone else on projects (even if I’m not), I definitely feel this from both sides. It’s so important in social justice work – especially racial justice work – not to get caught up in insider language. So often, using jargon and insider language is an act of supremacy, to establish an in group and an out group. And most of the time, the people shoved into the out group are the Black folks through tone policing or not using the “right” vocabulary by ironically the white people who claim to be helping. Exclusion is almost always used to establish and reinforce power structures. Community needs to be about eliminating those structures as much as possible and keeping those with power as accountable as possible.
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I have been guilty of literally this very thing–judging others for being the last ones on the hike, having to rest “extra long” for them and getting annoyed. Or feeling so much better than someone else because I got a better grade at the top of the class. The underlying flaw in my thinking in all these scenarios is in valuing the ultimate goal more than the process.
I often hear a quote that goes something like, “Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved”. I dehumanize others by casting them in the light of a problem for me to solve so we can get to the end of the hike faster.
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I participated in a half marathon with my workplace as a team and after I had run my leg of the race, I noticed a coworker preparing for her leg while expressing some nerves and wanting everyone to know she would be walking and not running. I walked her leg with her and let her set the pace but I knew my presence would help her to push herself. Did I go with her in an effort to win or to support her? Both.
Supporting others where they are, not walking alone, repeating the legs we’ve already done, means walking towards racial justice with more deliberate speed as a community.
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Coming back to this as I didn’t personalize well in my first response. I definitely want to set the pace and that means I try to control things at both ends of the spectrum: when I’m moving reflexively and confidently, I slip into default behavior of judgement of others who aren’t where I am, and at the same time, I have all of the excuses ready for when I want to go slow (resistance, clenches, won’ts). At both ends of the spectrum I’m acting in white supremacy to sabotage the work, weaken relationships, and avoid being the person I say I want to be. I will keep my backpack full to share on this journey.
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