[Danielle Holcombe]

https://laceonrace.com/2021/04/12/how-much-community-time-resources-is-too-much/

How Much (community? time? resources?) is Too Much?

Discussion

[Michelle Wicks Cypher]

I love the image of being a thread in a larger tapestry. You cannot hide when you recognize you are a part of a tapestry. When I pull back, then I cause a pucker or snag in that tapestry. each of us, whether we are actively engaging or lurking, are a thread. How that community looks and works and grows and does amazing things – depends on each of us threads. Very powerful visual for me. I do totally relate the idea though of thinking that someone else in the community will respond. I see it at church, in Girl Scouts etc. Is it truly community if I am also holding back though? When each of us steps up and out in our strengths and in our gifts as well as in our vulnerabilities – we accomplish so much more. One of the things I love about financially engaging is that it makes me feel even more a part of the community. I feel like I am contributing to the great work Lace has started here and does day in and day out. I want to engage more in general when I am also financially engaged. Part of it is skin in the game (I am more likely to show up to work out when I have paid to meet a trainer as one example) but it is also knowing that I help make the community happen. I am a part of the chrome books purchased for kids when online learning was starting. I am a part of providing mental and physical health and rest to WOC who need it. I am a part of providing food for the Snack Shack to provide to those who need it. I am a part of my own journey to reduce the harm caused to Black and Brown people by white people, including me, and by white supremacy. I am a part of that journey for many other walkers. I am a part of the LoR FB page going from a FB page to this bistro to a center for equity work. FInancial engagement is so much more that paying Lace for her work, although it is certainly that and should be that as well. Yet, if that is the focus, combined with the supremacist soup we swim in, combined with the many white supremacist weapons ingrained in us – then I fall back on thinking in terms of “enough”. And a white view of “enough” for a WOC or for a space led by a WOC, is always inadequate. I know I do my financial engagement the middle of the month because that is what works for me and my paycheck schedule. I am challenged to give some the beginning and then more in the middle. To help reduce the waiting for the numbers to come in, but also to increase my by in and to increase the good that this community can do.

[Emily Holzknecht]

“Is it truly community if I am also holding back though?” And we are always holding back, right? White supremacy teaches us to hold back, to keep ourselves isolated because actual connection and community can be a threat to white supremacy.

[Michelle Wicks Cypher]

I think it is still community, just imperfect community. We are here with a common purpose – the North Star. We just are imperfect in our community. If we wait until we have it all right to be a community, then I don’t think we would ever reach community and we would miss out on the motivating factors of being in community. At least for me, part of being in community includes wanting to better the community, wanting to participate in community. If I dismiss that it is community because it is imperfect, because I am imperfect, I only further harm the community and those of us in it. I think it is very valid to examine how I hold back and how working on changing that helps the community and our shared purpose of reducing the harm caused to Black and brown people by white people, including me, and by white supremacy.

[Emily Holzknecht]

I agree that waiting for perfection before community would not get us closer to community. Like waiting for reparations before it is perfectly set up how to do that would not get us closer to reparations.

[Deleted User]

“Is it truly community if I am also holding back though?” And we are always holding back, right? White supremacy teaches us to hold back, to keep ourselves isolated because actual connection and community can be a threat to white supremacy.”

I’m thinking about your question (above). The fact that we’re a group in cyber space, not in physical proximity to one another; we don’t, in fact know each other, or the folks we aim to be serving and uplifting. We are strangers. I have no personal knowledge or experience of anyone here, or Lace, etc.

That same circumstance hasn’t stopped people from supporting Doctors Without Borders, ACLU, NAACP, BLM or a local food bank or homeless shelter, etc. We won’t ever meet the child we sponsored in Gambia or the woman whose business we fund in Zimbabwe. We don’t need to meet them, or have close proximity to help, at least financially. We do it, because we can, and it needs to be done.

We each need to take individual responsibility to support the change we wish to see in the world. We also need to work collectively to make the biggest difference we can make, here at Lace on Race and elsewhere, in our neighborhoods, and all over the world.

Some folks who come to LoR don’t have a great deal to offer, financially. Those of us here, and in other groups, are stretching ourselves to make up for the millions of folks who don’t care, are actively intentionally racist, or simply aren’t aware.

So we raise awareness. We educate. We ask for their participation. We tell others in our close circles what we care about and how we are working to end racism and white supremacy. But as Lace has said, we can’t demand. We can only live out our values, visibly, loudly, publicly – to be seen – not for self aggrandizement, but to bring awareness to the work needing to be done, in hope those around us, will join us.

[Danielle Holcombe]

For my part, I think that I am here in this community less to educate others and more to root out the violent habits of white supremacy that remain in me. As a community, we do have financial initiatives that are aimed at provision for others and I’m so grateful and humbled to have been a part of some really big things here, but I don’t know that I would say we as a community “educate” others so much as we are here to educate ourselves and learn from our teacher; and then hold each other accountable as new people, doing new things in new ways.

If I think of this community as a group of folks who “get it” and are trying to get others to get it too, then I am holding myself apart from the violence of white supremacy rather than owning my complicity in it.

*edited two typos for clarity. No substantive change.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by  Danielle Holcombe. Reason: *edited two typos for clarity. No substantive change

[Emily Holzknecht]

Rebecca, thank you for adding your thoughts. You are right that we don’t know each other here in the ways we would if we met in person, particularly if we spent as much time in person as some of us spend interacting with each other at Lace on Race, but after 7+ months of walking at Lace on Race, I don’t think I can say that a lot of the people here, or Lace, are strangers either. Most of the 10,000 followers of Lace on Race are strangers, but some I have encountered in one way or another every day for more than half a year. That’s more interaction with them than with most of the people I would claim to know in person. And it is the type of interaction too, where we are vulnerable with each other and relate to each other with hesed, where we walk eye to eye, where we let ourselves be known, that makes a difference in whether we are strangers. That is more significant than the distance between us or whether we’ve smelled each others’ bath products. And that type of relating is missing from things like sponsoring a child in Gambia or a woman in Zimbabwe. Those things can be done from a place of right relationship, but that is not a prerequisite. As with the distinction between charity and donation vs financial engagement, there is an internal difference that makes what we are doing supportive of community even global community or reinforcing non-communal, supremacist ways of relating to others.

[Christina Sonas]

The challenge for me is that these right relationships are mostly with white women. It’s good and safe practice. It can’t just be white women and practice though, with spillover to my family and friends. I’ve got three, maybe four local BIPOC organizations and I’m going to reach out to see if I can be of service to one of them.

[Danielle Holcombe]

That’s a good point Christina and thank you for pointing us to look outside our community here as well. I look at the work we to with one another here (the learning and relationship building) similar in a way to my internal work. It is necessary but if it doesn’t spill over into my offline life in real ways, then I am not lessening and mitigating harm to black and brown people.

For me this can look a number of different ways. Getting involved with local Black-led orgs for sure, but even the seemingly small detail of how I interact with Black people in my local community in the day to day. There is no part of my internal that doesn’t need to be interrogated and there is no part of my external walk that should be unaffected or unchanged by our work together here.

And it doesn’t all get done in a day and so I still use an iPhone but my shopping habits have changed and are changing, for example.

[Christin Spoolstra]

“When each of us steps up and out in our strengths and in our gifts as well as in our vulnerabilities – we accomplish so much more.”

I love how you phrased this, Michelle. I’ve been thinking a lot on Lace’s pit crew and hot pot analogies and how while I do have my strengths, I need to be continually stretching myself to shore up my weaknesses in order to be stronger for the community. When I find myself pausing and waiting for someone else to fill in the gap, I often do so because “they’ll be so much better at it than I would.” When I refuse to risk that vulnerability, though, I am doing a disservice to myself and to the community by refusing to grow.

[Julia Tayler]

This string of replies have been very helpful. Like others I have been known to think in the past that other people will cover. There’s so many people that are reading or listening that I don’t have to step up. Lace and this space has helped me realize that I’m responsible for me. I’m not going to run out of money. I have enough. Another key was mentioning what additional funds could bring. I hadn’t fully thought about that. What a a great month that would be.

[Rebecca McClinton]

Dani’s words here about community remind me the degree to which I still struggle with whyte individualism. I can see how this impacts my fiscal purview when if I can’t fix it/take care of it on my own I then quickly dismiss the importance of my part and get into that “enough” mentality Dani describes. Meanwhile the personal impact of that on Lace takes a significant toll. There’s something you shared a while back, too, Dani, that I’ve considered several times since, both here and in other spaces, and that’s encouragement to always be reconsidering, re-evaluating my financial contributions to make sure they are matching my praxis. That’s another way I have to continue challenging those ‘enough’ mentalities.

[Danielle Holcombe]

We can keep reminding and challenging each other. ?

[Rebecca McClinton]

deal! :0)

[Christina Sonas]

As racism threads through every aspect of our selves and our society, so too must antiracism look everywhere, to unravel those threads. I can’t do community the same way, or “enough”; my baseline for each is designed for wh supremacy. I need to align and maintain and realign my adjustments for antiracism. But I don’t have an answer to “what it takes to get buy-in”. All I know is what it took for me, and that’s discouraging: 25 years of progressive thinking, followed by 5 years of “well-read racism”, as Lace calls it, before I arrived at the point of truly changing my behaviors, choices, actions to lessen and mitigate wh harm to Black and brown people. My kids are young adults, and I bring to them the tools and strategies I learn here, the inner work and the societal work of restoring justice for Black and brown people and of dismantling wh supremacy. Their kids will have those skills from an even younger age. But 55% of wh people voted for Trump 2020, and they don’t care much about racism. So my walking, in this community — and my praxis, as I move through the world — will also be “enough”.

[Shannon Brescher Shea]

It’s such a good point that we can’t do community the “same way” in antiracist spaces as elsewhere. I think we also can’t do community “the same way” from antiracist space to antiracist space. There are certain types of principles that hold true in terms of relational ethics no matter where we are, as Lace has been teaching us. But there’s also a desire to have this cookie-cutter approach, where we can just be the same and say the “right things” in each space and to each person. There’s a wanting safety and security based in white supremacy in that need. But that takes away from the unique relationships and connections that each space has and how we need to learn to approach each person and community individually.

[Clare Steward]

Seeking credit for my attendance while hiding in plain site and skirting accountability and personal responsibility is a behavior I some times slip in to and that pattern is usually followed by an episode of self-righteous indignation when I feel like I have been unfairly shouldering the majority of the collective workload. It is part of the losing strategies- retaliatory behavior and withdrawal and that only hurts the people I am in community with. There are other toxic aspects there as well- measuring myself and my worth against others, judging, making assumptions, competition, the cookie seeking behavior…all of it. This is a pattern that manifests itself in my working relationships, personal relationships and here unless I actively and intentionally work against it.

[Emily Holzknecht]

I have been trying to think of ways I seek to get credit by showing up but then hiding in the crowd. I am thinking that a lot of times for white people attending protests is that. We don’t do the work of organizing, we show up and post our selfies and get credit for being part of the movement, but our showing up doesn’t go beyond the head count at the protest. We’re not changing our behavior or taking real risks or putting in the time or the money that others are, but we are getting the credit for the hard work they are doing.

[Rebecca McClinton]

It is kind of astounding how very little work white people do and then feel like they are ‘unfairly shouldering the majority of the collective workload’. I appreciate how you call that out here. It’s that self centered focus. I definitely drift towards that self indulgent mindset typically when there’s something I’m not wanting to see in myself. I’m also thinking how sometimes I do take on too much, but for the wrong performative reasons rather than slowing down, being present, effective, taking it all on, being in effective, often harmful and rushing through. It’s a drift between those polarities, I think…giving myself more credit than I’m due for doing ‘so much’, or taking on more than I can be effective and meaningful with and doing a crappy harmful (non kind-candored) job of it.

[Shara Cody]

Reacting to feeling that I’m doing more of the workload than others is resonating with me too. More measuring means less relationship. It means separating myself from others and very likely sloshing on BIPOC.

[Shannon Brescher Shea]

“More measuring means less relationship.” That definitely rings true. I think when we think “am I getting my money’s worth from this relationship?” it becomes inherently transactional and that’s the end of real mutual respect and relationship.

[Jessie Lee]

I notice this in myself too- the extreme swings from withdrawal (for me out of this sense that I have nothing of value to add) to self-righteous indignation that I’m doing more than other people I know. It’s like I offload my own self-loathing onto them instead of do the work to assess where I’m at. That needs to involve both cherishing what I have to offer and identifying how I need to step up.

[Emily Holzknecht]

I am thinking about this way of contributing to community to make sure there is enough. That is hoarding without guilt. If the community has enough, then I can hoard the rest without guilt. I’m not taking from anyone (except all those whose calls of distress I am ignoring). I am also thinking about how on the other hand white people like me like to do one time grand gestures where we give what looks like a lot all at once and feel like superstars, feel better than others because of it, but it’s a one-time thing and in no way are we reliable, so over the long-run we both get the cookies and get to hoard because without a reliable contribution, we quickly reaccumulate that grand gesture that we made and more. So it’s all coming back down to performance and hoarding again. If the community has enough, I don’t look bad. If I give a grand gesture, I look awesome. If the community has enough, I can continue to hoard. If I give a grand gesture once, I can continue to hoard. If performance and hoarding underlie my actions then I am not a new person doing new things in new ways.

[Christina Sonas]

So beyond the question of “Does the community have enough?” would be the question “Do I have too much?”

[Michelle Wicks Cypher]

I also ask – who is defining what “enough” is? In our white society – there is no such thing as enough. No individual or corporation/business ever feels like they have enough money, enough stature, enough power. The more I have, the more I want. We wp put that same characteristic on others and I think that is part of why we wp are afraid to let POC have “too much” because we fear that the more they have, the more they will want and eventually I will have less because they are “taking” more. That is how we wp think – the more I have, the more I want. Of course we will point out ways that I am the exception, or I can find specific situations where there’s an exception to wanting more, but usually it’s simply because we /I have not been in a situation of being able to have more. Even trying to decide what amount is “enough” for this space – is there such a thing? The more Lace on Race has, the more good Lace on Race can do. The more there is for our community partners. The more there is for helping smaller entities. The more there is to hire more people to reach more people to do the racial equity work that is so vital. I’d like to take the white idea of there is no such thing as enough for good use and to motivate me always to reevaluate where and how I can engage more as there will never be “enough” because there is so much good to be done with more. And if exceeding the goal for the month is still not enough, then I cannot rest on the idea that I have done “enough”.

[Shara Cody]

I really like what you said here, Michelle, “the more Lace on Race has, the more good Lace on Race can do”. That in terms of financial engagement there will never be enough because it means Lace having the resources to do more, more for community partners, more for making the world safer for Black and brown people.

[Danielle Holcombe]

Thanks for this Michelle. You’re right. I don’t think there can be an amount that would be “too much” for this space because there are so many more things we could be doing and would (and WILL) be doing if/when those dollars come in.

I’m glad to be prompted to contemplate the joy and opportunity in excess.

[Emily Holzknecht]

“Do I have too much?” is such a challenging question to trust ourselves to ask ourselves. The potential is so strong there to reframe and reframe until we have excused ourselves enough that we can answer “No.” Considering my participation in exploitation helps me orient to the question of “Do I have too much?” in a way that makes it a lot harder to say no. If I am exploiting people either more directly through exploitative labor or less directly through environmental exploitation (still exploitation of people) in order to have the things, experiences and safety net I have, then I have too much. And of course I exploit people or the environment 12+ different ways before I wake up in the morning, so I will always have too much. I could see this getting more uncomfortable to navigate if I also felt exploited, but I almost never feel exploited, so I haven’t had to navigate that and this is only about me answering the question of “Do I have too much?” for me, not a prescription for others.

[Christin Spoolstra]

Love the reframing of “Does the community have enough?” would be the question “Do I have too much?”

And from there to be continuously expanding my definition of community

[Catherine Seaver]

I absolutely love the powerful shift in words: Does the community have enough? Do I have too much?

And to constantly expand my definition of community. I’m breathing that in deeply.

[Shara Cody]

The times in my life that I’ve been truly engaged in community or groups is when I’m in charge or I’m assigned to do something, which is only taking responsibility when hierarchy or position direct it. I don’t think “oh, someone else will respond to that question / meet that need” when I’m really all in; if I think that, I’m just… there… without intention and without responsibility and just as Danielle described “for credit”. I’m not comfortable at all with Lace feeling fear, anxiety or doubting herself each month because of the monthly budget. I haven’t felt the clench that Lace might get too much, instead I fear that what I’ve engaged with isn’t “enough” or that the exchange rate from CAD to USD makes it not “enough”. From there I’ve stopped myself several times from researching the cost of things in the US recognizing that doing that is trying to measure and justify my contribution instead of focusing on giving as much as I can. The only way I should measure my financial engagement is by asking myself if I’m truly giving all that I can to make sure I’m losing something and not by what Lace and the community “get”.

[Jessie Lee]

I appreciate this reframing, Shara: “The only way I should measure my financial engagement is by asking myself if I’m truly giving all that I can to make sure I’m losing something and not by what Lace and the community “get”.“ Focusing on intent to lose something takes me out of that supremacist impulse to manipulate, control, and wield power over through strings-attached financial engagement.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by  Jessie Lee.

[Shara Cody]

@jessie As I learn to uncenter, it can be confusing when focusing on me is not centering. In this case “do I have too much?” as someone said above, or making sure I’m giving something up reminds me that the only way it should be about me is with regard to the things I need to give or change in myself.

[Deleted User]

Hi Rebecca,
Have you read much that Lace has written about financial engagement? You and I certainly have talked before about the ways we here at Lace on Race talk about financial engagement. If you feel like you are “helping” Lace, or the team, what are you helping us to do?

In reply to your question, Danielle (above),

We walkers here are pooling our resources in order to help one another have a measurable impact on racism.

We are more powerful in our efforts to lessen harm and bring comfort and healing to Black and Brown people when we work together, showing up to support in all the ways we can, financially, emotionally, spiritually, politically, socially, practically – in the spirit of love, unity, hope and healing.

This is the heart of what engagement is about.

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[Danielle Holcombe]

I try to think about my financial engagement here in this space as my personal investment in the work of this space, which very much includes my internal work. It’s my ‘skin in the game’ only this is no game.

There is a reason you won’t hear many seasoned walkers use words like donate or help. Those both tend to come from a top down stance. There is a real savior mentality in the arena of charitable giving and that mentality is one we are working to root out of our own lives here.

We are walking here eye to eye, shoulder to shoulder. Both with each other (so no top down, dehumanizing, snark, etc. and also no pedestalizing of another) and also with those we partner with financially and even the ultimate recipients of whatever resources are being provided. We are not saviors. The institution of white supremacy and capitalism (it’s economic wing) need for there to be people on the bottom and people on the top. But here we are just people and we can work to subvert the goals of WS and capitalism by engaging liberally with all of our resources and keeping a flat and round structure where there is no top and no bottom. And so, even when my intentions are good, I need to use care with my words so that I do not make another smaller or less, as I make myself and my contributions appear grand.

[Vicki van den Eikhof]

I engage financially because I support the mission of Lace on Race, but also because it helps keep me engaged in other ways. I have to come to the website or the FB page to find the Paypal link, so I read a few posts and comments and maybe make a couple, too. This continuing conversation is critical to my continued growth.

[Christin Spoolstra]

Danielle, Thank you for stating this so explicitly. This concept of “enough” is one with which I have wrestled a lot and it’s connection with community reminds me a lot of Marlise’s Quilt article in the Hope & Vision series. There is such a tension between individual praxis and eye-to-eye community and that tension is so much more potent when it comes to financial engagement in a self-sustaining community. So when I see Lace’s ask and am privy to her emotions surrounding being short of our budget, how do I respond? Do I increase my engagement for the month? Do I share and comment to increase reach so the community is more likely to respond? Do I assume the community has already engaged as willing and do nothing? My response seems to vary month-to-month which is not saying much for my own reliability. There’s a lot of white supremacist culture in which I was indoctrinated and through which I must wade and fight but it’s the nature of true community with which I think I struggle the most. Like Lace said in the Vox article, white women are in a toxic relationship with ourselves. I am responsible *to* this community. I am responsible *for* this community. I am responsible *alongside* this community. And I must push past the concepts of enforced scarcity and “enough” in order to do that.

[Julia Tayler]

I love how you talk about enforced scarcity. Also the reminder about Marlise’s Quilt. Going to reread now.

[Christin Spoolstra]

Let us know if you make any new connections to deepen our understanding of this post!

[Julia Tayler]

I found myself in so much of this post. I’m continually working on my money issues. I’ve used them all. Not enough. Don’t have any. Where’s the money going? But like others have mentioned I’m more in “the game” if I have engaged fully including financially. I’ve been reevaluating the budget with fresh realistic eyes. Also contributing first thing every month. I love the image of the tapestry too. I have to stay strong and not unravel.

[Jessie Lee]

“I have to stay strong and not unravel” – to me this speaks to the strength and power of community (and is giving me some fresh insight on the tapestry metaphor). The more my thread is woven between other threads (the more connected I am here), the stronger the tapestry is. When I withdraw, as I know I’m prone to doing, it makes my thread easier to break free. The tapestry will remain intact and functional, but my part will be missing. The more our threads are woven together, each thread touching as many others as possible, the more we can cleave together and stay intact when something threatens to unravel us as a community.

[Shannon Brescher Shea]

>>Before finding this community, my view of community has often been something along the lines of “oh, someone else will respond to that question / meet that need.”

I’m usually the opposite – I assume I’m the *only* person who can / will meet that need. That leads to saviourism and taking up all the oxygen in the room. I’ve had to really learn to step forward when needed but step back when other people’s voices need to be heard (especially marginalized folks’ voices.)

>> Community in the past for me has often meant a way to pull away from people. The larger the community, the easier I can hide there. I will get “credit” for my attendance and yet have no responsibility at all.

I do use community as a way to pull away. Instead of hiding, I treat it all as work. I value productivity and “what gets done” as more important than relationship. People in my volunteer groups have taught me the value of discussion and mutual respect and how when you take action without those things, they’re often more harmful than if you did nothing at all, especially in the community volunteerism and activism spaces.

[Danielle Holcombe]

I feel this too Shannon. I tend to make myself indispensable and then it’s so easy to sit in my own corner building resentments too because I’m “doing all the work.” But it was my choice to charge in, to do all the things, to make my competence my shield from community AND to take on all the work in the first place.

I love this conversation we’re having. I’m so glad to read all the ways that we each can see ourselves using tactics that actively avoid community with one another.

Now to change our habits. 😉

[Catherine Seaver]

I read your piece Dani a few weeks ago and it has popped up many times in my thinking. I should also say, it’s been a while since I wrote anything here at the Bistro and I’m working on showing up here more reliably – posting here for accountability. And thanks to @emily for asking if I was in the Bistro! I really appreciate the call-in.

When I first read this post it reminded me of the powerful concept I learned here at Lace on Race when I first joined – about the myth of individualism and how it supports white supremacy, how it reinforces perfectionism and “boot-strap” thinking.. and how communalism, in contrast, is a whole other way to live. What jumps out at me is how hard individualism is to avoid – because we so often hold back, assume someone else, some other individual is going to step in. I think that’s why I so appreciate the emphasis Lace puts on personal responsibility because, without it, we so easily slip into the patterns of white supremacy.

To personalize, I’m the co-vp for our PTA at a Title-1 school where my kids are in kindergarten and grade 3… this year has been incredibly hard for our community (like so many others), and as a small organization we’ve been trying to respond to the needs of rent, utilities, groceries, school supplies, and basic needs… and the needs are always growing. We do not have enough people who are willing/able to step up – and I’m very aware of how our pta, a historically white organization that’s now overtly anti-racist, is still not representative of our community, it’s many languages and groups. And yet as I write this, I also haven’t had the energy to more consistently ask people to step up, to remind people that we are in this together – I think that’s part of how I get pulled into the individualism, it pulls me into hopelessness, it blinds me to the North Star by feeling overwhelmed. So it’s impacted both how I communicate or fail to communicate, and as a result, limits the things we can accomplish together… I’m grappling and confronting this, and realize the power of my thinking not just about myself, but about how others will respond, has a profound impact on what the reality of our communities look like.

It feels like I need to learn to better hold both the power of community and my own individual responsibility – I am hearing the words of Alice Walker and the Black abolitionists I’ve been reading, that we are the ones we have been waiting for. I keep walking.

[Danielle Holcombe]

That’s a good point regarding communication Catherine. I’m thinking about how often I assume the response of another in order to avoid asking them the thing.

It supports the narrative I tell myself about being a good person. If I already know how they will respond, I can anticipate what they need or don’t need and “not impose” or whatever I tell myself so that I don’t have to reach out.

[Jessie Lee]

“This is what we get with white supremacy. Competition, individualism, manipulations and maneuvers – always trying to get ahead.” Yes. With white supremacy, there is no enough, only an endless and fruitless pursuit. When there’s a hierarchy there will always be the perception of someone to try to get ahead of. For what though? The instant gratification of artificial self esteem always wears off and leaves in its place the lonely ache of a hollow life.

[Rhonda Freeman]

Pivoting to race, I believe that I learned to consider ‘our community (white people)’ and ‘their community’. It’s not. It never was. It is the sum of us. It is our community. It is our planet. It is our money. It is our resources. It is time to start living that way. One way I can do that is to financially engage from first fruits and not ask questions about where the money is being spent.

[Author]

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