[Marlise Flores]

https://laceonrace.com/2021/05/19/the-definition-of-white-space-you-dont-and-cant-know-me-here/

The Definition of White Space: You don’t and can’t know me here

Discussion

[Michelle Wicks Cypher]

Your words are so visual. I could see myself in each of those scenarios – sitting on the porch, sitting at the table, enjoying the pie – all while detached and removed. rather than engaged and involved. I contrast that with the scenes in my head of making jam together. Me, my MIL, SIL, and daughter, cooking the fruit, preparing the jars, bumping into each other, laughing and talking and telling stories of past and present. Not removed and detached – but involved and engaged. Even within family – there are times I try to detach myself. We are trained again and again on what is “polite” conversation and what is and isn’t allowed. It is easy to swing from one side to another in terms of I am reading this anti racist book, I am donating money to this Black organization, I am “woke” and am different than “those” racist folks to it is so interwoven and systematic and a part of everything I say and do and who I am that I cannot exist without harming Black and brown people, so why try? This space has helped me to learn to embrace the and rather than focus on the but. I am racist and I am working on anti racism. I am harming Black and brown people and I am working to reduce the harm I cause. I am messing it up and I am working to do it better. I am here throughout the process and journey, not on my own and not doing it my way (or resisting doing it my way and course correcting when I realize I have turned to my way again) and cooking the fruit and preparing the jars together and enjoying the tasty jam on the homemade bread that was lovingly made and brought by someone else. Not perfect, but beautiful. Or, I should say, imperfect AND beautiful

[Laura Berwick]

The distance, the detachment you mention… I absolutely feel that temptation to think I’m different than “those” people. It’s a horrible sort of mental contortion that I think engenders the fear I hold when I think of being open about my racial equity work with people close to me that I feel… aren’t open to it? I was raised to be “not racist” and there are indications that being “not racist” is more than enough for some people in my circle, and that me wanting to go farther is… not appreciated. But the few times something has been said openly, it’s funny how when it’s not a hypothetical in my mind but a person I love before me, that there’s… no longer paralysis, even if there’s still fear. But it becomes easier to think my way forward in love, and to speak from that love. I… don’t know if they hear it the way I wish they would. But I know it has kept me connected with my people, and that’s important.

I need to be known here and I need to be known there. I need, as a matter of full praxis, to be known as this person I’m working on here, known as this person everywhere I go. I’m going to keep jam making in mind now. Imagine the warm sun through my grandmother’s kitchen window, the glint of it through the jewel-shining jars. And I’ll take my breath and say what I need to when I need to say it. In love.

[Vicki van den Eikhof]

This is making me think about the way I sometimes hold myself aloof from others. It is often a form of self-protection, but it is one that becomes unhealthy because it can interfere with relationships. I can continue to hold myself apart, until I become entirely alone. I’ve been there. I am there. Or I can be vulnerable and reach out. Strike up a conversation, find an opportunity to serve, reveal the true me, and not run and hide at the first sign that I might have done or said something that hurt someone.

I can outsource my cooking, cleaning, caring for children, parents, etc. But I can’t outsource my relationships or personal development. The kicker is that relationships are formed as I engage in these essential activities of cooking and cleaning, caring and teaching. If I allow others to do all that for me, I am cutting myself off from opportunities to have meaningful relationships. It is in the hot kitchen, with screaming kids and phones ringing, bumping into my sisters, that these relationships are forged, deepened, and appreciated.

Here at LoR, our cooking and cleaning, caring and teaching, are done virtually, but they are still just as important in forming relationships as they would be IRL. Without seeing all the dishes in the sink, I might be tempted to forget about an online community. It’s not always right in my face, like my piles of laundry and screaming kids, but I can make it that way if I use my agency to do so.

[Jessie Lee]

I really appreciate your last sentence about using our agency to see the metaphorical dishes in the sink of our online community. I have to make the effort to come inside, connect, and find out how I can serve.

[Christin Spoolstra]

“Can I escape ALL the harm I do, through appropriation, goods acquired through slavery, accumulation of resources, etc.?….no. Harm is woven and it is woven deep.

But to use that to despair, give up, blow up, shut down, or run away is taking away all my agency for new steps. For using fictive imagination to understand how I make others less safe in all the spaces I exist in.”

I once ran away for this very reason. I saw the harm in every choice and I followed the logic that unless I gave up everything and lived on the street that I was only doing this work half-assed and by saying that I was doing the work but not going all the way was even more disingenuous and harmful. That choice was the antithesis of relationship and an abandonment of responsibility. So I returned.

I returned to do my best and then do better. To engage with my resources to the best of my ability and then do better. To move ever closer to the North Star. To do this, though, is to be on constant guard of the won’t masquerading as the can’t. Which is why I must be seen. Why I must have deep and authentic relationships in this walk. Because I rely on being known and knowing to be pushed and stretched and kept out of stagnation.

Being known means being called out in the most intimate of ways. When my relational shields are up my pain points are hidden and can’t be prodded. But I need those pain points disrupted to become choice points. In true hesed relationship that point will be prodded and then nursed. To be known I must risk laying it all open, complete vulnerability, trusting that those I’m asking to know me are good actors with the North Star front and center.

I have that trust in Lace and the LoR community. Pass the pie and then I’ll tackle the dishes…

[Rebecca McClinton]

I like how you reference leaning into the pain points with willingness and full presence. It’s too easy to hide behind shame shields of aggression, and withdrawal, instead of leaning towards and into.

[Robin Van Haste]

I relate to what you said about despairing and running away. I like solving problems. It’s tempting to think that since I can’t really solve this problem, there’s no value in me being here. My retreat isn’t neutral, though. It fuels the problem.

[Christin Spoolstra]

I love what I’ve learned from LoR about divorcing myself from the outcomes, to act as my praxis demands I ask regardless of how the other person responds. I too like to solve problems and can talk myself out of doing anything because it won’t even make a dent. So I divorce myself from the outcome and walk because it’s who I say I want to be.

[Julia Tayler]

I can relate to wanting to run away too. Feeling like we can never make up for the past. I really appreciate you saying that you divorce yourself from the outcome and walk. It has been frustrating to have discussions with people who seem to not want to learn or grow or change. Maybe I’m planting seeds that will at least get them thinking.

[Christin Spoolstra]

@emily said something on another post about guerrilla gardening about this planting seed idea, and I love it. But even if the seeds never land or never flourish, there is value in our having those conversations for the health of our own praxis

[Julia Tayler]

Thank you for bringing that up. I think I missed that comment or still have to get to that post.

[isa hopkins]

Like other respondents I relate to the problem-solving impulse… the “am I doing enough” which is rooted in the idea that we cannot ever just *be* enough. As you write, the choice to run away is “the antithesis of relationship” — and I think that’s the core of it. The way that white supremacist patriarchal capitalism teaches us to understand ourselves is the antithesis of relationship. Shifting to a relational frame, where the point isn’t simply “no more harm” but rather “transforming harm into repair and deeper connection,” is so… so very opposite to the values of whiteness, to the values that are embedded everywhere. And part of the appeal of “doing enough” is that at some point, then, the work will just be… done.

But relationality doesn’t offer that (false) promise. It just asks us to keep showing up, as ourselves, again and again. Without the reward of getting it “right” or doing “enough” or any kind of “metric”. Because people are not problems. Relationships are not problems. Solutionism doesn’t solve any of this.

[Rebecca McClinton]

I love authenticity, raw, and tender, sweaty and soft. I admire and desire it, practice it, but it still feels elusive in ways, at arms length. When I have to have things ‘just so’, or “needing a solution before we’ve truly listened and absorbed” as Marlise says, I know I need more practice. Authenticity takes practice and is key to causing less harm…to listening with my whole heart, body, and attention, and leaning in rather than out, rather than smiling/nodding and being only half-present. Placating is violent, not practicing the presence of others. I’m intrigued by mirror neurons, the ones that make us cross our legs or arms when others around us do, that lead to us mimicking one another. But am I mirroring in self preservation, or am I mirroring in empathy, acknowledgement, reflection?

[Shara Cody]

Being focused on the solution is something I identify with as well. I’ve been reminding myself of the recent FB post that it’s about the who and not the how to help me be with the person instead of try to fix things.

[Rebecca McClinton]

thank you for that reminder about the who and not the how. So easy to get stuck in the how because of what it means I have to gain/lose.

[Laura Berwick]

I’m also very solution focused. I’ve started tying it, pretty often, to the losing strategy of needing to be right, but… with a twist. I feel like I need to be SEEN AS right more than I need to BE right, and that leads to me wanting to be the clever woman with the perfect solution immediately, rather than the caring woman who really listens to what is needed, and how maybe it’s not needed from me complete and perfect, but is something I need to be willing to give my imperfect portion to.

[Rebecca McClinton]

I like how you parse out the difference between wanting to be ‘seen as’ right as compared to ‘being’ right. I can definitely find myself in that! When I’m wanting to be ‘seen as’ right it’s likely because there’s something or someone I’m not willing to be eye to eye with.

[Shara Cody]

That’s an important distinction you’ve pointed out @laura-berwick to be seen as right more so than to be right. How can I be right when it’s someone else’s feelings or situation? Only they know what they need.

[Julia Tayler]

Your statement of seen as right vs actually being right is thought provoking for me. I always thought I needed to be right but now realize that seen as being right is probably more accurate. I also want to have the most clever solution immediately. More to consider.

[Jessie Lee]

“But am I mirroring in self preservation, or am I mirroring in empathy, acknowledgement, reflection?” This is such an important question. We mirror who we surround ourselves with, and the more I show up and stay in this community of new people doing new things in new ways, the more I mirror those new ways of thinking and behaviors.

[Christina Sonas]

My 15yo has this thing they do, of coming to me demanding that I do something, and when I start talking with them about their options for action, they get angry that I’m “problem solving” and they “just wanted to express their feelings”. Which isn’t the truth, because what they wanted was that I take care of fixing all the things. They carry inside them silent expectations about what should happen, how it should happen, when it should happen…

White supremacy is a pervasive and perpetual set of silent expectations, developed and maintained by white people. Antiracism, on the other hand, is a set of entirely transparent expectations: lessen and mitigate white-on-BIPOC harm. When I come into this antiracism community at Lace on Race, I bring my secret expectations with me, and, despite knowing the overt expectations of the community, it’s so easy to say I don’t understand them or can’t achieve them or they weren’t made clear to me… So easy to set up rhetorical fallacies and outright falsehoods. Because my white supremacy is a self-protecting system. Everything I push at myself that would take me out of the entirely straightforward work of antiracism is my white supremacy, and because of my white supremacy, it will seem reasonable and logical and true.

But it is none of those things.

No one (in my twelve months here) has ever left saying, Thank you for this amazing space, I have gained so much from it, and I am taking an opportunity to serve in antiracism work with this local organization for ten hours a week and I will continue practicing everything you’ve taught me including being receptive to the Black and brown leadership there calling me into further growth and if it’s alright with you I’ll come to you for a consultation session if I’m struggling to deal with something.

Instead, they all leave because they are struggling to deal with something, and that’s exactly the time to access all the help we can get. If we run away, white supremacy wins. Not antiracism. I stumbled through a valley of unstable rocks just a few days ago (and I’m sure I’m not out of it, just in a nice glade for a bit, because it was about some very core parts of my personality and identity).

Keep stumbling. The community will keep us from breaking something.

[Rebecca McClinton]

I really like how you speak to white supremacy’s “pervasive and perpetual set of expectations”. Expectation itself almost feels like a definer of white supremacy culture. I like how you contrast that with antiracism’s transparent and eye to eye expectations. I also appreciate your speaking to stumbling as a litmus test that we’re doing the work we should be.

[Shara Cody]

“Stumbling” feels like an accurate description for me too but you’re right that by doing this in community, the tables will still be set and the food flowing as we each recover from stumbles. Struggling to deal with something within myself and not meeting silent (harmful) expectations push us to give up (or for some, not start at all) and fighting the sabotage of supremacy is an everyday battle.

[Rhonda Freeman]

ooof. This one hits close to home. I am really, really good at this one. I have taken a course (three times so far) on a method for talking about race with David Campt and each time I am still a ‘Scout’. I listen and consider things I might say to engage people in conversation – then, I rarely do it. I engage financially, and support those that do speak up, but me, well…I am not a good writer… I am not a good speaker….I am not very convincing…If you could see me now, I am wincing to admit that all that Marlise shares above is me to a ‘T’. Sigh… got it. Trying it here a little and a little. walking. Stumbling. practicing my stories for engagement…

[Shara Cody]

Politeness and social norms demand inauthenticity. The way I, and most white people, have been socialized keeps others at arm’s length and casts anyone out who doesn’t adhere to the norms/rules which as Marlise said, maintains segregation. I think it causes us to manipulate in every interaction instead of being our real selves. I’ve definitely been noticing this more and more about myself where I do have authentic relationships with close family and friends but have trouble acting that way all the time or developing more of those relationships. The ways that this plays out at LoR described in the post are ways to take without giving back, to show up just to have a look, or to say I joined without engaging; all of that is white supremacy maintaining itself through each of us. My engagement here and IRL as I awkwardly try to change my behaviors is not harm free and is far from perfect but I’ll stay to clean up the mess and I’ll keep coming back to do the work.

[Laura Berwick]

Something I have really had to come to terms with is, in spite of the way our society values my individualism, I truly am not so preciously unique as I am tempted to think. More, I can get through life well enough without knowing this about myself, because I’m not at danger from the pattern of white woman harm that I am a part of.

People who are at danger from that pattern, that is, Black people and people of color, have to know the pattern intimately for their own self-preservation. They can’t unsee it. In this way, even when I expect I’m known, or think I’ve made myself known (which is interestingly different from allowing myself to be known…), the people I expect know me still can’t unsee this in me. So it’s imperative to me that I see it in myself, if I want to do anything about it. And I will have to actively do something about it. Because the way society builds up and erodes me won’t improve me in this regard if I’m passive.

I don’t like doing dishes. I’d much rather sit on a couch quietly and eat my pie. Shouldn’t my presence be honor enough to a hostess?

But we’re not invited to be guests here. Lace does not position herself as a hostess any more than she wishes to present herself as a domestic servant to this community she sustains.

We’re partners here. She has leadership and wisdom to offer. But we all have to be active in our own… well… reformation. We have to accept her leadership, and put ourselves actively behind the change we say want to see in ourselves. And for that, we have to be known. Maybe especially by ourselves! If we really know ourselves, we can open that up for others to know us without fear.

If we’re afraid of the selves that others know better than we do… If we’re afraid to be shown the patterns we’re meshing into, the tired, treacherous, well worn path our footsteps are marking… We’re really afraid of what WE don’t know about ourselves, I feel, not that others know us incorrectly.

[Jessie Lee]

Reading this was convicting, as my default setting when my praxis is not aligned to my values is to withdraw and not let myself be known, which also means refusing to know others. As you point out, this is a pattern that reinforces segregation. When I engage in it, I’m centering my ego and upholding white supremacy.

Whether I’m doing this from a place of overly low or overly high self-esteem doesn’t matter; either way I’m too fixated on myself to see and know the person in front of me. That’s picking up and wielding the oppressor’s weapon of dehumanization.

And I can only do it because of the privileges and power I have as a white person. I can afford to be superficially self-sufficient, to “retreat into [my empty shell] and try to fill the emptiness with stolen goods.”

I’m thinking about how this ties into racism and white supremacy being primarily economic constructs, as Lace often says. As long as I can afford to be superficially self-sufficient and not interdependent, doing that will be my default setting that I revert back to during certain choice points/pain points. That’s why I have to be so intentional about putting more and more “skin in the game” by engaging in this community and others with my finances, time, energy, and other non-monetary forms of capital. In other words… with my whole self.

[Emily Holzknecht]

I am thinking about the neurodivergent post and about shyness/socially awkwardness etc and how that can be used by white people as another excuse to not gain the skills necessary to give our fair share and let ourselves be known in community. I have used this excuse. I need to do more to take responsibility to learn how to function better despite me challenges. Others do not get to use this excuse.

[Robin Van Haste]

“We must linger after to help clean up the messes made.” I am suddenly struck by the thought that I’ve been taught NOT to make a mess… that the most important thing is to not make a mess, not cause trouble, keep things light. I think what I’m learning is that I’m still causing harm, even with no visible mess. The only way to change that is to engage, knowing that I probably WILL make a mess, and I must stay to help clean up. I hope that I can learn this so well that it becomes something that I do outside this space, too.

[Shara Cody]

“I’ve been taught NOT to make a mess” hits home for me too, Robin. Rules and etiquette were first and people were third after the food and any gifts that were exchanged. Actually I should have said that me and my family were third and other people were fourth. Engaging at LoR is definitely helping me change this and the more I engage the more I’m getting down to the deeply embedded root of it.

[Emily Holzknecht]

I am thinking about the urge to hide the mess. We are given feedback on something we say, pointing out a little bit of a mess, and we try to ensure the feedback-giver that there is not mess rather than to address the mess.

[Emily Holzknecht]

I am thinking about when I started to comment on Lace on Race. Lace especially and some other walkers to a degree were exposing so much of themselves, letting themselves be known and yet even though I had started commenting, I was still hiding myself, being cautious not to reveal where I live, what state even although Lace very openly was talking about Lemon Grove CA and mentioning shops and restaurants that she visits. And of course where I live is only the most literal way I was hiding myself. But I am here to lessen and mitigate harm endured by Black and brown people perpetuated by white people like me and by white supremacy, to be mentored in doing this by Lace and by other walkers, but how can I be mentored if I do not let myself be known? How will Lace and the leadership team know how to challenge me if they don’t know where I am struggling or where I have my blinders on or where I am clinging to white mythology? It is work to hide. It is also work not to hide, but hiding is a particular kind of work because it is always in opposition to everything else that we are trying to accomplish in a racial justice space. It is in opposition to relationship and community. So when we are hiding we have all these processes running all the time just dedicated to hiding and that takes up most of our bandwidth so that we can’t participate in the rest of what is going on including just reading because we don’t have our whole bandwidth to dedicate to it. Not hiding is not in opposition and therefore doesn’t involve all these extra processes and doesn’t eat up the bandwidth.

[Christin Spoolstra]

Such an important point! I’m reminded of a Bradbury quotation: “If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you’ll never learn.” Except let’s substitute kind candor for hit…

[Shara Cody]

“It is also work to hide” is so true, Emily. Although it’s a behavior that is more reflexive so it “feels” like it’s easier, it does take work by distorting ourselves and holding up the walls. There’s work in resistance.

[Julia Tayler]

This post resonated with me too. I tend to be the wallflower type. In the corner, not very socially adept – just waiting for it to be okay to go home. The post and the comments really got me thinking about hiding and what it does to me and to everyone else. I’ve never been the life of the party but that doesn’t mean I hang out on the porch. Getting in the game is hard but as Emily stated above – it’s work to hide too. And hiding doesn’t work if the North Star is the goal. I have to stay in the car/party and let people see me.

[Rhonda Freeman]

Julia, I find myself adding the words ‘repeatedly’ and ‘over and over again’. I was with dear friends this weekend and spoke up for the North Star. It went ‘ok’ but was uncomfortable and took a bit of energy. I found myself thinking ‘phew, I did pretty good there. Done now!’ But i really wasn’t. I was there all weekend. Lots more opportunities to speak up – with kind candor.

[Julia Tayler]

Yes there’s no done. That’s been something I’ve really been thinking about these last few weeks. A really slow cooker. Good job speaking up. I’m really working on that. With some people it’s easier than others.

[isa hopkins]

This post really summarizes something about whiteness that I… struggled to learn. As a white Latine person, I grew up with somewhat different social norms; “don’t linger” was definitely NOT a part of my upbringing! Lingering was very much the norm — after all, if you valued spending time with people, then… wouldn’t you want to spend more time with them?

As I got older I discovered that this wasn’t a common norm, especially amongst (non-Latine) white folks. I didn’t figure it out immediately, of course; there was a lot of social opprobrium before I realized that behavior I understood as a reflection of friendship and intimacy and warmth was being received as “rudeness.” Eventually I just started telling my friends to be really direct with me when it was time for me to go. I framed it as my own problem: “I’m really bad at reading the social cues for an exit.” But reading this I think it was less about social cues, and more about expectations that I simply was not trained in.

But these things can also change; my parents now are much less tolerant of lingering than they were in my childhood. They’ve become financially secure, which they were not when I was a kid, and their ability to fully embrace and embody “middle class values” (aka whiteness) shows up regularly. A couple years ago at the holidays, some very close family friends visited at length, and after they left my parents went on and on about their lingering, how they “couldn’t take a hint” — which boggled my mind, given that these were the same family friends with whom my parents have delighted in lingering for decades. But while my parents have found financial security as they got older, the opposite has been true for this other family; the husband was briefly incarcerated, they lost their house, and their social circle has shrunk. Of course they cherish their friendship with my parents, a space where they can be known, where they can linger, or at least where they could. I argued about it with my parents at length after they left.

And I guess I bring that up, and bring up the earlier context of not “knowing” the “rules,” not to exonerate myself but to recognize how insidious these “rules” really are; they are so very rarely spelled out, as they are here, and so they can seep in to our relationships so easily, even when they’re not what we’ve been taught to value. Momentum is towards isolation and separation, almost always. Relationship requires effort — not merely to show up but also to push against all the poisonous ways that whiteness, and capitalism and ableism and cisheteropatriarchy, seek to reduce our relationships to scripts, to social transactions. To just another way to distract ourselves, instead of a meaningful opportunity to confront ourselves. A place to hide.

Anyway. I’m not the most regular participant here. But I’ll keep trying.

[Author]

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