Lace on Race

Conversation with Claire: Two Highways

In the last week or so I’ve read the posts and comments on Lace on Race with a stomach ache of nerves and a tangle of irritation in my reader’s mind. Comments to Lace about how Facebook works shoot acid into my stomach. Explanations of what offends “me” or what I will or won’t accept (someone stepping over my boundaries, for example) make me want to slap people. My mind asks “What? This is what white women want to talk about? We are doomed.”

Lace on Race looks like two highways – The Highway of Negotiation about How to Participate in Lace on Race and The Highway of Serious Content and Engagement – and they aren’t even going in the same direction.

The first highway is clogged with traffic. It takes five hours go to 15 miles, and all the way I am praying for a bathroom. The cars and trucks haul endless self-centered bullshit about what I am offended by, what I am willing to tolerate, how I prefer to do things, so here’s a few suggestions, and here is what I know about how FB works, just FYI. I’m only trying to help. It is the essence of “I decide the rules of engagement here.” Gridlock.

The second highway is clear of traffic. If I wanted to I could speed along, many rest areas en route, sweeping inspiring views, and lots of good although very chewy and crunchy Relational Ethics 3-course meals to challenge me. No stomach acid. Instead delicious soul-satisfying challenges to engage with.

The Highway of Serious Content and Engagement is smooth running. I want to stay in the car and have riders like Claudia Rankine and Lace and Marlise and Teju Cole. Conversation. Stuff I can learn. Questions to ask. Challenging ideas for future thinking. Someone who understands my yearning for inner change and hope. Rest stops w/espresso drinks! Homemade oatmeal and raisin cookies!

The Highway of Negotiation is old and worn. I want to get out of the car. No one wants to ride with me on that road. The bridges are out. No rest areas. Junk food. We will never get where we want to go by sticking to that highway. I know that it’s not possible or practical to completely close it because most new drivers are cautious and want to go that way. All that loud self-involved negotiation. I had not realized before how much we white women depend on all that negotiation to maneuver. And how effective it is for blocking engagement, thinking, discomfort, challenges.

All of this to say that I can make a choice. Negotiate if I absolutely must negotiate, but keep it minimal. Just about anything I need to know about engaging w/Lace on Race is already posted in the pinned posts. I am not special, with special needs. Someone else already worried about it and posted about it. Or, Lace herself made a clear statement of expectations. Read that stuff first.

Then, I can find the first exit, and turn down the Highway of Serious Content and Engagement.

That’s why I am here.

Collaborating Writers

8 responses to “Conversation with Claire: Two Highways”

  1. meganh Avatar
    meganh

    Such clear writing, thank you. Trying to be on the HIghway of Serious Content and Engagement. Reminding myself I am not special in this work, and do not have special needs. I operate in a world of systems and patterns. Gotta keep seeing them clearly so I can see who I really am.

  2. Kathy Kratchmer Avatar
    Kathy Kratchmer

    Thanks for the question.

    I think the change in my engagement was sparked by the influx of new members and reviewing guidelines and what it looks like to respect Lace and our community. It looks like regularly commenting and interacting with others who do. It’s not optional. Never was presented as optional. And yet, I was not respecting that part of our ethos. So I’m changing that up. It feels like a lot some days, but it isn’t—not if I’m really invested in the health and well-being of our community, not if I want to manifest the respect I say I have for Lace and the space she created with great intention just as it is: No carve outs.

  3. Karen Avatar
    Karen

    I think you’re right. I think it’s so buried or repressed or something though. So when called on it we’re in complete denial. This is all so fascinating, as it is new to me to see things this way. How old and frustrating and tiresome it could be for people of color who deal with it every day.

  4. Shannon Avatar
    Shannon

    I think the negotiation reveals so much about how white women see authority. White women (including myself) typically will follow rules and authority – as long as they are from someone they see as authoritative. Because of Black women’s place in society and white women’s minds, white women often won’t recognize Black women’s authority and instead engage in this dance of negotiation. It’s a way to reassert power and say “But I don’t need to listen to you because I don’t take you seriously or really think you have power.”

  5. Laura Berwick Avatar
    Laura Berwick

    I feel like I have a better understanding of whiplash today. Not that I didn’t believe Lace when she has talked about how it feels to get into a fender bender on our highways, and not that I haven’t seen the vehicle parts scattered across the road in the past. But yesterday was the first time I experienced one of our spin-outs in real time. Maybe Lace saw it coming. It took me surprised and sideways.

    But also, being there in real time, I also had a real time view of the triage Lace was doing, and I saw others helping, and took the opportunity to try to help as well, and that brought to the forefront for me our existence as a community.

    If we’re drivers in our cars, we can have our windows and radios up as we motor down either high way. Or we can be like the traffic jam I was stuck in as Houstonians tried to evacuate before Hurricane Rita, with our windows down, sharing our tunes, and like the utterly adorable young man who asked me how I was doing and if I was okay from behind the wheel of his pickup, at JUST the moment I was about to snap and go utterly hysterical sitting in my car.

    I think I’m driving at a slower pace, still. I’m probably one of those people going below the speed limit in the left-hand lane. But I’m going to roll my windows down and point out the scenery to the people in the cars beside me, like I see others doing. I think there’s value in this metaphor for me in that way, even before getting up to speed, which is my goal.

  6. Danielle Joy Holcombe Avatar
    Danielle Joy Holcombe

    Kathy, I appreciate that you talked both about your own steady walking (or needing to be steadier walking) WHILE talking about bringing others along. Especially with a pretty big influx of new community members. You know which highway you want to be on. And you don’t want to travel down it on your own.

    Have you been energized differently in recent days with all the new members/engagements?

  7. Kathy kratchmer Avatar
    Kathy kratchmer

    The highway of serious content and engagement is where I want to be, but part of our ethos is moving together as a community, not having a group that runs ahead leaving others in the dust and not looking back.

    I understand this as part of our lumpy crossings. I value this ethos. I am failing mightily at living it out by engaging in ways that might help move us forward together.

    I ebb and flow in community here—sometimes withdrawing to process, sometimes because i don’t want to engage when I’m feeling tired or depleted which is most of the time these days. And I’m just now seeing: isnt that ridiculous? Like I think my racist white self is less problematic when fully rested?!?

    So not transparent or real of me. So a more honestcassesment. I’m pretty solidly in the traffic jam of negotiating my engagement And still playing it safe.

    So like Lace said in a recent video, I can’t get to where I want to be if I don’t see and own where I am now.

  8. Varda L Avatar
    Varda L

    It’s the roundabout of white supremacy. It’s where all the effort that Black women spend to improve our communities gets sucked up and turned into nothing. Pulling off of it is the first lesson.

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