[Marlise Flores]

https://laceonrace.com/2021/04/09/racism-is-americas-accent/

Racism is America’s Accent

Discussion

[Kerri Fowlie]

<cite>Kerri Fowlie</cite>April 11, 2021

Yep. I’ve been clenching with this reflex. I’m fed up of being the “bad” actor. I’m fed up with being a disappointment to Lace. I’m angry that my years of counseling – learning that I’m ‘good enough’ is challenged here. I’m angry that, despite the intense personal work I have done “out loud” in this space, the arguments with family members about racism that has left, not only me, but my family effectively disowned, still hasn’t bought me into this club. There. There’s the transaction. There’s my problem. My frustration. The reflex. No, Lace, I didn’t think my anti-racism work was finished. I just wanted to explore Black literature, follow anti-racism writers on Medium, watch Ted Talks and make sense of my newfound awareness. I AM changed, in as much as I see so much racism now that never would have been on my radar before. I see it in my colleagues and even on the “good” side of my family- not overt racism- I see the subtler micro-aggressions that are, apparently, what being a ‘nice’ white woman is all about. I can see my benefit in maintaining the status quo: white women are second in command to white men, whose duty it is to protect us. ALL of my “outside” reading has confirmed every word Lace has written – especially Bell Hooks ‘ “Ain’t I a Woman”. I’m back in Radha ‘s “liminal space” and I don’t like it. I can’t un-see or un-learn what is revealed in this work here with Lace, but I’m a resentful child in the constant requirement to examine every nuance of my personhood. I’m defensive because the deck is stacked against me, I never get to be “good enough”. In not being black, I can never be the good person I think I am, because white is inherently bad. And here I am, back to being a child, seeing the world in absolutes. My head is tired with the intensity of the personal work. The abstract readings, where I don’t have to bear my soul, are easier because I can read them more objectively. I am here. I am struggling. I agree that my racism is a reflex, but if it is inescapable, how can I move forward, off of this liminal space?

I’m sorry this is so raw, and doubtlessly problematic. I’m struggling.

[Christina Sonas]

The liminal space about being “good enough” is a massive challenge for white people, in all spheres, I think because white supremacy gives us “good” while driving us in the opposite direction from “enough”. Our inner humanity KNOWS that we are not being good when we are supporting racism. So we are really, deeply incompetent at holding the both / and: I am both good enough, and able to do better. It’s a critical threshold, because as you say, when we feel harmed by challenges to our white supremacy, we will not endure with the work.

[Kerri Fowlie]

Gosh Christina, I thought I’d responded to you, but I can’t see my reply, so I’ll try again. Your comment was helpful in that it reminded me that I can hold two things at once. I can be a good person, but also be deeply flawed and just plain wrong about many things. You know, I think this is the crux of my family schism? I called out my brother-in-law’s racist posts last year. This was someone I was close to, but he thought I was telling him that he was a bad person, so he ex-communicated me with a long message to my husband. He then blocked my husband (his brother) too. I was devastated, because I loved him, but I’d felt compelled to call out what I found unacceptable. Now here I am, being triggered in the same way. Urgh. Go figure.

[Christina Sonas]

I saw your response on the blog post where you first commented 🙂 I hadn’t seen the parallel between how your BIL responded to you, and how you’re feeling now. That’s important, because it’s personal to your experience.

[Vicki van den Eikhof]

Kerri,
I feel the pain and the rawness. I have not always been reliable, either. I will not always be reliable in the future. I am about to leave the house but I want to come back and walk with you on this in a few hours, if you’re willing.

[Vicki van den Eikhof]

Kerri,

We all wound others-every single one of us, every day sometimes. While we often wound unconsciously, the only way to heal is through conscious effort. And I can see that you’ve taken steps in that direction.

The most basic, universal human need is to be seen. To feel real. And the only way to meet that need is in a community. Part of being fully seen involves seeing where we are in error-how we harm others. This is seeing eye-to-eye, or, seeing as we are seen. Sometimes this can be a very lumpy crossing, but when done in true community, we are a place for you to rest your tired feet, and we hold you accountable by expecting you to get stronger at managing your own slosh bucket, and helping others in their own lumpy crossings.

In this particular community, we focus on harms done to BIPOC people. This is strategic because if the most marginalized in our community are safe, then the rest of us will be, too. For those of us with more privilege, it can feel like quite a stretch sometimes. I really have to use my fictive imagination, I have to become ever more aware of the ways in which I might harm someone, and I never like realizing how harmful I’ve actually been.

Those voices that you hear that tell you that you are a disappointment, or not good enough, those are the places that white supremacy’s seeds are planted. That’s where the real work is. You are already worthy, and already loved, but if you can’t feel that, how can you possibly show it to others?

I hope that you can recognize the love that is here. When you can see the love, you can move forward.

[Kerri Fowlie]

That was really gentle and kind, Vicki. I’m gonna sit with that for a minute and read the new responses with what you’ve said in mind.

[Vicki van den Eikhof]

Now that you’ve taken some time to read through all these responses, how are you feeling? Do you feel love here?

Do you feel hope?

Do you feel like you can make a difference?

This is community. We love and serve, we help each other see, we ask hard questions. It’s all about relationships. Our big girl temper tantrums prevent true relationships from forming or working.

I hope you will continue to practice by engaging here. If you do, you will get stronger. Your moments of doubt and despair will become fewer and less frequent. You will begin to love better, and thus, become less harmful.

[Lace Watkins]

A quiet query.

Others are walking with you, and i will leave the bulk of this to them, but in reading the above, questions nag.

“Good enough” for what?

Also, this.

What might you feel are the differences between therapy and this space, where the focus is on applied ethics?

I know there is more; your feeling that i am disappointed in you, for one. But I don’t want to bombard you; nor, candidly myself. There’s much that could well be activating for me if I allowed it to be. So we should go slowly.

So you don’t necessarily have to answer me directly, although of course you certainly can should you choose.

Perhaps though, they could be in the background as you engage with Vicki and Christina.

[Kerri Fowlie]

“Good enough” in that I am intrinsically valuable, regardless of my flaws. Good enough to be visible in this space. I’m trying to learn, I’m not punching down when I clench (but I’m certainly a flight risk). I’m not trying to talk over people, I am trying to listen. And the childish, churlish part of me stamps my foot pointing to others who are worse! Why am I so childish here?

The difference between therapy and this space of relational ethics is the focus, which should be on our North Star, instead of counselling me, using your time and effort to comfort just another whyte female. My clench creates this vortex of guilt. I am ashamed at how badly I do this work, my lack of resilience. I don’t want to hurt, disappoint or trigger you, all of which seems inevitable and infuriating for us both.

[Rebecca McClinton]

This is reminiscent to me of the post on positive psychology recently. Psychology and healing has to include an accountability piece. Unfortunately too much of psychology doesn’t. I personally think that’s because as a therapist it makes you not very “nice” and “supportive” to bring in the accountability part. Therapists want to be liked by their clients, so it’s easier to skip that part and just stick with the self esteem building part. I also think the thing people (including myself) struggle with re: abuse is that we think the abusers in our life should be the ones taking accountability and responsibility, not those victimized by their behaviors. “It’s not fair.” True, perhaps it’s not, but that may be the most important work of all, working through that clench. It’s something I have to radically accept. I wrote a song as a teen titled “reimbursed”. The chorus says “mourning what I thought I’d gain, thought I’d be reimbursed for the prices I paid”. In my own raw way as a teen I was trying to work through that clench that I still bump into (and seeking reimbursement, hmmm…sound like white supremacy or what?!). It’s this existential clench I have daily to work through. I see here in this work in new ways how that gets weaponized in all our other relationships and particularly on people of color.

[Clare Steward]

Thank you for bringing up the seeking of reimbursement. I definitely get stuck in the transactional and feel entitled to the payback or the reward. I have often felt the “it’s not fair” reflex in my gut when I realize that as far as I’ve come it’s only a few steps within a lifelong journey and the focus is not on my movement/progress but the movement towards changes in our systems and core structures and collective ways of being.

[Kerri Fowlie]

Accountability, even when it doesn’t feel fair. Yep. I’ve got to stop shrieking (albeit internally) that I’m a “good guy” while resenting being held accountable for my actions – or lack thereof. Ok. I can take that.

[Deleted User]

Hi Kerri,

This comment struck me. I also have an internal “clench” or pushback/resistance, around being a “good” person.

As a kid, I got the message that being “good” wasn’t my intrinsic, innate, natural state. I believed that my “goodness” was conditional, based on how I “performed” spoke, behaved. I believed I had to demonstrate my worth. This set up a pattern of me seeking feedback from others, about my self worth. If others in my family didn’t feel good about me, I didn’t feel good about me. This was mostly interactions with my parents, but it extended to most older adults as well. I became a people pleaser. I still am, to an extent. I am motivated to make others happy. If I make people happy they will like me and approve of me.

I’ve struggled with self-esteem all my life. I felt I had to demonstrate and prove my worthiness to be considered good, within my nuclear family. It’s a primal reflex, this “clench” and it’s buried deep. The result was, I sought out confirmation of my goodness – value & worth – from the outside, from others. My sense-of-self wasn’t rooted internally, but externally.

Does this resonate with you?

[Jessie Lee]

Hi Rebecca, welcome. You’ll find that many community members have challenges with maintaining healthy self esteem. Lace has written a lot about this in the Starters section of the menu here (called pinned posts on Facebook, both of which are the same collection of essential, foundational posts). I’ve learned so much from them about how my self esteem issues fit a pattern that’s rooted in white supremacy.

[Deleted User]

Yes, I am working my way through them – the starters AKA pinned posts. Thank you for the welcome.

[Jessie Lee]

Thank you for touching on the lacking accountability piece in positive psychology. Part of unlearning our tropes and schemas is to root out this insistence on being soothed. Being soothed doesn’t necessarily challenge our thought distortions that have a negative impact on our own self-worth, which is a problem when pivoting to race bc white people then weaponize our low self worth against Black and Brown people. We draw rigid boundaries for ourselves with no regard for the other, who can’t draw the same boundaries without enduring harm for it.

[Jen Scaggs]

It is mind-boggling how people can claim that they are being harmed by others simply pointing out the harm they have done to them. How are we ever going to reduce and mitigate the harm done to Black and brown people if we don’t acknowledge the harm?? Should it be upsetting to find out that someone thinks you have done or said something racist? Absolutely. But the thing that upsets you most should be the harm you have caused to another person, not that the situation makes you feel bad about yourself. “Racist” is a necessary adjective to describe and identify acts of racism. It doesn’t have to be an insult. As the post says, racism is a reflex, but it doesn’t make us a bad person unless we refuse to identify, acknowledge and mitigate it.

[Clare Steward]

I find myself thinking the same thing, how can someone become so defensive and protective when it is pointed out to them that they have done harm? And then that person becomes me when I’m called to account and my reflexive harmful behaviors take over when I’m not in an intentional mind set to receive the information….my accent is still there. It’s in every single one of us and as soon as I try to exclude myself from the problem, my accent comes out loud and clear. My default behaviors are still not aligned with our North Star and so the work continues to consciously and constantly align myself with our ethos until it becomes reflexive…. and even then, I stop the intentional work or there will be a relapse

[Jen Scaggs]

Yes, Clare I know I can become defensive too! It is tough. But when I look at the big picture, it doesn’t make any sense to claim victim status just for someone pointing out something hurtful.

[Kerri Fowlie]

Oh Jen, that was a tough, but excellent point. I’m getting stuck in the ego part of the equation? Is that what you mean?

[Jen Scaggs]

Kerri, my comment wasn’t directed at you necessarily, but more an observation on the people mentioned in the original post. But I do think we have a tendency to get stuck feeling bad about ourselves, when we should be much more concerned about the people we have harmed.

[Deleted User]

Your comment was illuminating, as was Clare’s, and Jessie’s below. It’s helping me to examine how a take in and respond to feedback about my clumsiness and misstepping. As I stick my toe, cautiously into the water here at LaceonRace, trying to not harm, trying to not center myself, instead I stick my foot on someone, or in my mouth. This walking in the space requires a kind of inner changing that is healthy and essential in all parts of our lives, not just here in anti-racism work.

I have been thinking about a I read along while ago, as I sojourn here. I don’t know if anyone else here has read this, it’s called, The Four Agreements” A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, by Don Miguel Ruiz.

The Agreements:

Be impeccable with your word
Don’t take anything personally
Don’t make assumptions
Always do your best

The teachings of this book are popping up for me right now. They intersect with Lace’s teachings.

[Jen Scaggs]

I haven’t read that book, but I can definitely see the value in those agreements and you’re right, it all intersects with Lace’s guidelines. It can definitely be challenging to do this kind of self-reflective work while simultaneously not making it all about us. I know I also find myself making a lot of clumsy missteps myself, too!

[Lacey Lipe]

Hi Rebecca,

I hear what you’re saying about being a survivor. I myself have C-PTSD from a lifetime of prolonged and severe trauma.

Something that often trips me up, particularly recently, is not so much the abuse itself, but a home environment where my family constantly did things like make me re-vacuum the carpet repeatedly because the vacuum lines weren’t parallel… Because of this, my internal monologue is a loop telling me that I’m gonna fuck shit up.

I like what you say here, “This walking in the space requires a kind of inner changing that is healthy and essential in all parts of our lives.”

The idea that you (or any of us) will make so-called missteps or be “clumsy” here is absolutely the point. This is where those things must happen.

If I am in my daily life and I freeze because I’m worried about making missteps and screwing up, lives could literally be at stake because I failed to manage my slosh irl.

The internal and the external go hand in hand in order for us to be safe for others and in order to lessen and mitigate the harm endured by Black and brown people that is perpetuated by white people like ourselves and by white supremacy.

[Jessie Lee]

This part: “Even if you move away, the accent still lurks. When you get angry. When you are back in comfortable settings. When you are tired.”

I’ve moved away from the place where I’m not accountable for my part in the cultural abuse, but also… I’m still as prone as ever to that re-flex. I must identify those specific situations and conditions where my accent is likely to come out, and define for myself what it would look like to replace my re-flex with an eye to eye stance… with a ceding of the power that’s always available for me to grab and leverage against BIPOC.

[Kerri Fowlie]

Yep. That quote landed with me, too. But what do you mean, you’ve moved away from the place where you aren’t accountable? I didn’t follow that bit, sorry.

[Christina Sonas]

How I read that is that she does accept her accountability now. She’s not in the rejecting accountability place anymore.

[Kerri Fowlie]

D’oh! I can see it now! Thank you Christina!

[Emily Holzknecht]

I really appreciate Marlise’s emphasis on the meaning of the parts of the word “re-flex” as well as the whole. Our flexing our whiteness is reflexive and we do it again and again.

[Shara Cody]

The use of re-flex is making me picture someone flex a bicep over and over. It’s a small movement and may go unnoticed if you’re not looking for it. My flexes as a white woman could go unnoticed by myself and other white people if we don’t look for them. As well, it doesn’t take a lot of effort, coordination, or strength- it’s not a difficult action to do.

[Clare Steward]

What a great way to describe the pervasiveness of white supremacy, as a persistent and ingrained accent. It’s easy to claim that it’s not my fault or that I shouldn’t be held accountable for something that I was born in to and didn’t consciously choose to take on and reject someone pointing out my accent (racism) as blame or character assassination … it’s easy to see that side WHEN I am still claiming ignorance for my part in it all and seeing myself as only a victim of the racist soup we swim in rather than how I participate in it and uphold it… when I see it as something that is happening to me vs seeing it as something I am perpetuating. It is activating to drop my guard and accept that I’ve been harmful, hurtful, dangerous but as Lace reminds us, being activated is not being harmed so I must work through my activation so I can lessen and mitigate the real harm that I inflict. It doesn’t make me a bad person to know I’ve done wrong. I must face the wrongs I’ve done and course correct to be in alignment with who I want to be.

[Rebecca McClinton]

reading your comment has me thinking about the freedom that comes from acknowledging misstep and admitting when we’re wrong. I think we white people build it up in our heads that it’s the end of the world to do so (I know I have in my life anyway), when really it feels pretty freeing to say, ‘you know what, I totally fucked up there and make you and me both a fool. I’m sorry I caused you pain and exhausted your energy. I’m gonna do better. thank you for your patience’. people of color aren’t expecting perfection, but I can’t build trust without being honest and real with myself and them.

[Marlise Flores]

I am thinking about all the adjectives I grew up hearing used for others, for me, and struggling to find any not related to white supremacy. Even the “positive” ones. Accomplished-too much-bad-good-weak-shy…on and on these words used to describe a transactional relationship. Words I use to tally my worth, my goodness. But that framework is white supremacy. Would it be better to ask myself, do I think I am finished? Am I complete? Not as a solitary piece of work but as a puzzle piece. Are my edges smoothed so as to snap in place with others? Or am I trying to be an entire puzzle all by myself?

I think this underlying framework of good vs bad is often where there is so much resistance to naming racism, to recognizing it is a behavior or response in me as much as my accent.

Am I moving and acting in such a way that grows wholeness? And am I defining wholeness as an individual assessment, or, as it should be, a communal being?

That’s how I lay down my clench of being enough, of being good. I was not made to be static. Unlike a puzzle piece, there really is no completed state where I find my perfect little place and rest content in my edges.

Buber talks about how naming attributes of anyone or anything is a I-it relationship. White supremacy sees attributes as defining features….the ending phrase in our books. Buber says to step back and see the whole being, to hold everything at once, including the potential-in my view, the necessity and commitment- to change, is an I-thou relationship. What Lace says is seeing eye to eye. This is the corridor where attributes transform from static to changeable, to behaviors we can and must mitigate. Where we bring ourselves, open to being changed by the other. How can we be open to another, if we refuse to change our harm?

When will we see this eye to eye openness to change as a gift, a commitment, and a necessity?

[Kerri Fowlie]

That’s helpful. Who is this “Buber”? Activation through labelling as a static characteristic. Transactional relationship. I’m going to read that a few more times, Marlise. Thank you.

[Marlise Flores]

“I And Thou” was written by Martin Buber in 1923. That boom was one of my first lens shifts in how to be in relationship with others, and recognize my inclinations to treat others as “it” or “other.”

[Emily Holzknecht]

“When will we see this eye to eye openness to change as a gift, a commitment, and a necessity?” It seems like a chicken and egg situation where seeing this eye to eye openness to change as a gift etc would allow us to dismantle white supremacy and if we were to dysmantle white supremacy, we would be able to see this eye to eye openness to change as a gift. They seem like a chicken and egg situation because they are irrevocably entwined. Neither is really first. I must work on both at the same time.

[Clare Steward]

So much to think about here. I definitely need to break away from the mindset that there is a time that I will be a complete and finished puzzle or that I can be the whole puzzle by myself. There is a lot of control and power in that need to be finished or be seen as complete. Competition creeps in to that too, where I am constantly measuring how I stack up *against* others vs how I fit with them.

“Am I moving and acting in such a way that grows wholeness? And am I defining wholeness as an individual assessment, or, as it should be, a communal being?”

I have to flip things all around in my mind. As I was growing up, my dad told me that when it comes to a relationship, it is important not to search for another half to make myself whole….it is about two whole people coming together to form a partnership. Don’t look for another half to complete you, be complete within yourself so that you don’t rely on someone else to make you happy. This makes sense to me but it is limited. I think this is a both/and situation where I do need to work on myself to be whole but avoid the dangerous trap of individualism where I am self contained and become an island- be the whole puzzle all by myself. How can I work on myself, my one piece of the puzzle AND see others as whole beings and as important and essential pieces that I join together with.

[Jessie Lee]

The control and power in needing to be seen as complete, yes. On the surface it seems self-empowering, but when you scratch that veneer, the supremacy shows through. Im thinking that real & radical self empowerment is rejecting the notion of becoming complete and embracing a constant state of flux and evolution.

[Jessie Lee]

Ugh the deeply ingrained transactional approach. It’s baked into every re-flex I have. What am I getting or not getting out of this? How does this benefit me and how much does it cost me?

This part: “Am I moving and acting in such a way that grows wholeness? And am I defining wholeness as an individual assessment, or, as it should be, a communal being?” I’ve been defining wholeness as individual – centering on if I am reaching MY full potential and becoming the woman I say I want to be rather than if I am using my resources to grow community wholeness so that WE can reach OUR full potential? That’s a significant mindset shift.

[Emily Holzknecht]

“Even if you move away, the accent still lurks. When you get angry. When you are back in comfortable settings. When you are tired.”
When you live within it and everyone around you talks the same way, you don’t even know you have an accent. There is no awareness. It is when around others who don’t talk that way that we become aware and begin to learn to speak in other ways, but for sure when we get back around people who are comfortable and familiar, it comes back, and we don’t talk about the accent because everyone is talking that way. But we need to talk about it. When we are around white people we need to talk about racism, especially in these spaces where it is so much the norm that we don’t even have to think about its existence. And we need to use caution in terms of the company we keep. We need to go back into the comfortable settings and make them uncomfortable, but we also need to keep strong company with others who are working to root out racism and confront it so that we are strengthening those muscles and those synapses rather than the other.

[Clare Steward]

So true Emily, that when we surround ourselves with others who have the same accent, we don’t hear it. It is so important not to slide back into that comfort zone and make sure I surround myself with many voices, perspectives and be in community with people where we can hold each other to account.

[Christina Sonas]

When we move to a new-accent place, we gradually take on the cadences of that accent over our own. Which speaks to the importance, with the abstract accent of racism, of getting ourselves into antiracism communities to surround ourselves with with what we want to achieve. Thank you for this angle.

[Rebecca McClinton]

If I’m comfortable, there’s likely something I’m not confronting, always an important reminder and one I need to revisit frequently, especially in a world that is designed for my comfort.

[Christina Sonas]

I am hard-pressed to conceive of someone beyond infancy who isn’t in some way simultaneously a survivor and a perpetrator. The hierarchies of race, class, etc. place me as a perpetrator, sometimes a survivor, in ways that are aggregated — but no less real, and still personal in many aspects. The inadequacy of the “both / and” is endemic in wh culture, and I find it a serious obstacle to antiracism work. Marlise’s examples show this, and her metaphor of an accent is so useful: racism as something we acquired by circumstance, which is nevertheless ours to accept or reject. People train away accents all the time. Not surprisingly, people of color are compelled to this regularly, in order to be (marginally) more accepted by wh society. But I too can choose to retrain my accent, and to practice so that my rate of relapse gets lower and lower.

[Vicki van den Eikhof]

I think it’s vital to remember that we are all capable of harming others-no matter how much we wish it weren’t so, no matter how much we might idolize someone, we all hurt others. And we are all hurt by others. I have been trying to shift my thinking from one of worth and unworthiness, to one of wounded, and healed. To think of others in terms of their worth, or worthiness, is so transactional. As if I could assign a worth to anyone, or determine their true worthiness. But when I see others’ behaviors, their acting out, I can remember that they are either innocent (oblivious), or they are acting from a place of woundedness. Wounds can be healed. Sometimes we run into willful ignorance, and I think even that, deep down, is based on pain or fear–trying to protect something that they fear might break or is already broken.

This way of thinking can make it easier for me to see others eye to eye.

[Shara Cody]

Seeing the behavior and reactions of others as coming from a place of woundedness is something that I so often forget because I react to what I judge to be the wrong reaction of others. I react to others making it about them even though I should be able to see them eye to eye because it’s a reflex I have too.

[Jen Scaggs]

Yes, no matter how wounded we may be ourselves, it is still up to us to accept or reject the accent. You’re right – accent reduction can be done if we put in the work. At first, we may not even hear the difference between the sounds in our native language (racism) and the sounds in our target language (anti-racism). If we have not been taught from a young age to speak the new language, we may not even realize how far off target we are. Gradually, little by little we will start to understand how to distinguish and formulate the sounds of our new dialect, anti-racism, but it will take extensive exposure and continual work on our part to truly eliminate the accent.

[Shara Cody]

Offending from the victim position is a go to for white supremacy as is mistaking discomfort and accountability for harm and attack. Accents are hard to change and hard to hide. Thinking of racism as the accent of our society because it’s a shared way of being and acting that we don’t recognize because it’s all around us; white supremacy is the code we are taught to live by. I have an accent and can be trying my best to avoid letting the accent come through and as soon as I relax a bit and don’t focus on preventing it, it can slip out. The same way that while I’m working to change my behaviors in service to our North Star, I can easily slip up and not do as planned if I stop thinking about it, get tired or stressed including reacting to the very things I’m learning to react differently to. I agree that racism is a reflex because it’s perpetuated often without thinking due to it being entrenched internally and externally in us including me. I have a strong reflex to close my eyes anytime something gets close to them. I can’t put in eye drops because of it and have had friends and family hold me down trying to get drops in my eyes; they think I’m playing with them as they get more and more frustrated but I can’t control it. I can’t keep my eye from closing unless it’s held open and even then it tries to snap shut; it’s a fight. I think racism and white supremacy are that strong of a reflex, including in me, that I have to actively fight to keep my eyes open. I’m changing my reflex from closing my eyes (like looking away, not listening or seeing eye to eye, not speaking up) to fighting that reflex everyday to show up and suit up and stand up. Only I can keep my eyes on our North Star, no one can do it for me and sometimes my eyes will need some drops and another walker might hand me a bottle but I have to learn to put them in myself.

[Jessie Lee]

You’ve got me thinking about voluntary action and involuntary reflex. I’m wondering if racism is ever truly an involuntary reflex. Lace has mentioned the myths of white innocence and benevolence, and I think Marlise’s distinction between reflex and re-flex might speak to that.

Like you said, re-flex makes you think of a bicep doing this subtle but intentional motion. It’s a familiar motion that we can do after barely any thinking because supremacist behavior is programmed into our muscle memory. But there is thinking, which makes it a voluntary choice. I have agency in choosing every one of my harmful actions, which includes choosing not to disrupt my most ingrained patterns of supremacy.

That truth stings and I’m still resistant to it. I’m reminded of what Emily said on another post (the bruises/blush one), that we white women prefer explanations that fit our supremacist narratives (paraphrasing).

I’m working on checking myself on my language. Did I really not anticipate how one of my harmful re-flexes might land? Or did I just not hold myself accountable until someone said something out loud? I can and must hold two things at once: that it’s critical I do this work in community that holds each other accountable. And that I do the work of examining my own motives and holding myself to the necessary behavior change that only I can really know I need to make.

[Shara Cody]

I’m glad you pulled out the difference of voluntary action versus involuntary reflex. I think racism is a learned habit that might become so reflexive that we think it’s not in our control, but it is, as you said a voluntary choice. I think my comment about my involuntary reflex of my eyes closing was harmful because I always have choice in how I act- it’s not outside my control to change the way I act and relate in the world to make it safer for BIPOC.

[Rhonda Freeman]

Tonight, I find the idea of racism being an accent somewhat hopeful. An accent is something that is a part of you, but something you an work on. Something that is tied to your background but something you can become aware of and do something about. I appreciate this image and will take it with me.

[Grace Bannerman]

One of the key behavioural points I see here is believing and being able to hear when I am or could be harmful, and taking the practical steps necessary to avoid that – proactive, repeated choices to behave differently. Not wanting to hear about racism or how I could do harm is a power flex – I can safely ignore people pointing it out or calling me in on things, because I am not personally harmed by racism as Black or brown people are. People calling me in are likely affected differently but are taking the risk/giving the gift of telling me where I can make myself safer in a situation where I inherently hold more social power because I’m white. “Gift” seems too voluntary when it’s a matter of people’s safety and comfort (besides my own), though.

[Author]

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