[Lace on Race Admin Staff]

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https://laceonrace.com/2021/02/20/dismantling-white-supremacy-at-its-darkest-heart/

Dismantling White Supremacy at Its Darkest Heart

Discussion

[Laura Berwick]

The reasons you list are key for me to really internalize, as I engaged financially at least monthly. By virtue of being white, I benefit disproportionately from intergenerational wealth, even as a middle classer. As a resident in the USA, I partake of an economy that runs on and is greased by racism. What I have above and beyond my needs I can and should and must use towards greater equity. Because I BELIEVE equity is right, and I OBSERVE that equity does not exist.

I also… do not have literal skin in this game. I will never be in danger because the society I live in has trained its members to view dark skin as threatening by default. My financial engagement is me investing my money in improving equity, because no other portion of my life suffers from inequity. In fact, I benefit.

A friend of mine was bemoaning the other day that a book she was reading was identifying so many instances of racism, and it was eye-opening, but the book wasn’t telling her what to DO. And I said, first, give money. Just hand money on over to people who DO know what to do with it. Second… now that you know more about what racism looks like, more ways it expresses itself… do things against it. Figure it out, you’re super smart, and shouldn’t need a checklist.

Also I told her she should come to Lace on Race, but I can’t force folks to opt in, so we’ll see…

But this space is doing… just amazing, life altering things. My life has changed toward becoming less harmful in ways I would never have come up with on my own. I engage financially to help that go farther tomorrow, and even farther after that. Because the internal work is the work, the work is important, and the work needs funding AND practice AND action.

[Emily Holzknecht]

Handing money over to (Black and brown) people who DO know what to do with it itself is undermining white supremacy because we white people think we have to figure out what to do ourselves. We think we have to have all the answers and be in charge or at least have verified the validity of the people we’re handing money to.

[Jessie Lee]

The financial engagement piece of LoR seems to be the thing that upsets critics the most, and that most results in the accusation that we are a cult. This seems like… not a coincidence.

Why do people clench so hard and sometimes even become violent when it comes to financial engagement, which is how we listen to Black and brown people, compensate Lace for her labor, make it possible to pay other poc who write for LoR, and lessen and mitigate harm?

It’s advantageous to white people to withhold our financial engagement. Both because it allows us to hoard resources as we always have, and because it allows us a socially acceptable out from working to build the world we say we want to live in. By framing Lace as a charlatan cult leader and us as gullible sheep who she’s duped, critics make it seem like they are opting out of something foolish and/or nefarious instead of choosing to uphold white supremacy. Same thing with accusing you, Christina, of buying a seat on the Board, which is so very false. I think the accusations are actually defensiveness born from conviction.

To personalize, I still feel that clench/defensiveness sometimes, when I see a request for direct giving after I’ve just participated in one, or I think about increasing the amount I engage with here. I get on this line of thinking that “I’m doing so much already” and “I’m doing more than many other people I know” and “I have to look out for myself so I don’t end up in a bad way,” all of which keep that darkest heart of supremacy beating strong. I’m going to work on becoming more conscious of those clenches, reframing them as signs of my continued investment in white supremacy, and divesting from there.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by  Jessie Lee. Reason: Grammatical error

[Shara Cody]

I appreciate the idea of reframing clenches around financial engagement as “signs of continued investment in white supremacy” where the only opposing response in support of our North Star is to engage financially.

[Shara Cody]

This list of the ways that financially engaging is a fundamental part of anti-racism praxis makes it undeniably clear that not financially engaging is contradictory to doing the work. When I analyze my financial choices against this list, I could just put a check mark next to all 6 items and say “done”. But checking the box is not what I’m here to do so if I interrogate my engagement in each item of the list again using #6 “Expand our capacity to the truest, maximum extent”, I can find ways to remove the limits I think are there and attack “white supremacy at its darkest heart”.

[Christina Sonas]

I love that extension, Shara – thank you!

[Robin Van Haste]

In addition to being a statement about the value of Lace’s work, I think that financial engagement is also a statement of trust. I trust that whatever I give will be used in service to the North Star, and I don’t need to control how it is spent.

[Deleted User]

I understand that financial engagement is crucial to the work being done here. It’s important we put skin in the game because the systems that are so entrenched are reluctant to part with anything.

[Emily Holzknecht]

Maybe it’s trust?… maybe it’s just lack of supremacy. Trust would be “I believe you will do good things with this” and maybe lack of supremacy would be “Whether I think you will do good things with this is irrelevant. I financially engage because I am following the North Star.”

[Rebecca McClinton]

I am thankful for the kind, hesed reminders to engage here financially, and I see more and more clearly all the time how that must to be a part of this work. I appreciate Christina’s words that since money has been a vector for harm, it equally must be a vector for reducing harm.

Financial engagement here has helped me be more in line with my financial praxis outside of this space and in my community as well. It initially meant some conversations that were pretty challenging and sloshy, but I realized in the process of that it was my slosh at play significantly more than anyone else’s in my household. I find sometimes on hard days at work, financial engagement motivates me to keep going so I can keep those commitments and praxis front and center.

[Emily Holzknecht]

Lessening and mitigating harm to Black and brown people perpetuated by white people like me and by white supremacy requires me to do inner work and strengthen muscles. I am thinking about in the pinned posts when Krista Tippett says for white people holding vulnerable conversations about racism feels dangerous and Claudia Rankine says “It’s only dangerous because you don’t do it. Things become ordinary very quickly.” Financially contributing to Lace on Race feels dangerous, it hits our clenches, in part because we are not used to doing all the things Christina lists. By doing it reliably and pushing ourselves to work through our clenches and then pushing until we find more clenches and working through those is making financial engagement less dangerous. It’s making it more ordinary not just at Lace on Race but in the wilds too. We need to do our internal financial work just like we need to do our internal relational work and root out our white supremacy in all these areas.

[Konstanze Weltersbach]

Financial engagement is important because money keeps things going. Appreciation doesn’t put food on the table.

[Rhonda Freeman]

I might use this, Konstanze, ‘appreciation doesn’t put food on the table’. What Lace does here is work. Hard work. Teaching work. Work that requires skill and dedication and love. My Catholic Social Justice beliefs states that everyone deserves an opportunity to do good work and an opportunity to be compensated for that work.

[Shara Cody]

From the post this part “if the Lace on Race project were commodified, the hours of coaching work alone would provide her a very comfortable six-figure income” stands out to me next to what you said that “appreciation doesn’t put food on the table”, @stanzi . White people expect that POC do the work themselves to combat racism and support their own communities without or with very little compensation. Lace chooses to stay in community instead of business and to live out her praxis to help put food on the tables of all Black and brown people. I choose to compensate Lace for her skilled work, to financially engage with LoR and other BIPOC led organizations, and to be in community and learn to leave behind the transactional.

[Rhonda Freeman]

This: “Expand our capacity to the truest, maximum extent. Black and brown people are forced to create capacity — for labor, for frugality, for health, for well-being — far beyond what is required of most white people. Antiracism work must also go “far beyond” the false, white supremacy inscribed limits around our capacity, especially financially.” Since coming to this space, I have been much more aware of just how much the black and brown people in my life are ‘on’ constantly. Not just doing their job to do their job, but contending with all of the racism that goes with it. One of the areas that I want to mitigate harm is for the black and brown people to not have to deal with my questioning of how they are going to spend money – in any way shape or form.

[Author]

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