[Lace Watkins]

https://laceonrace.com/2021/08/31/the-six-tenets-tenet-4-grow-in/

The Six Tenets: Tenet 4 – Grow In

Discussion

[Rebecca McClinton]

Oh my I can certainly find myself in nodding vigorously before internalizing what leaning in truly means, both in this space and in this work. Lace describes the tentativeness of growing, the displacement, and externalization here so well and I have exhibited every bit of it. Who I am and how I do who I am is more important that the outcome of what I do and that can only come from growing in. It takes a marriage of leaning into the pain of that pruning process and hope that things can and will be different through it. Makes me think of Dr. Cornell West from the MLK series talking about the filth and stench and labor pains with which we’re born married exactly with the miraculous beauty of birth, all those robust AND’s in service to the North Star.

[Shannon Brescher Shea]

The birth metaphor makes me think about the relationship to parenting. I follow a lot of folks in the gentle / positive parenting communities and some of them talk about “re-parenting,” which basically means re-teaching yourself things that you were taught by your parents, but they taught you them in toxic ways. I think “growing in” and doing the internal work is similar. Instead of it just being what our parents taught us – although that’s definitely part of it – we’re having to re-parent what society has taught us about race and racism. We’re having to root out these really deep assumptions and frameworks and replace them. There are plenty of resources to do so, but the actual work of it requires a lot of vulnerability and effort, just as teasing out those things that happened in our childhood does.

[Rebecca McClinton]

What a perfect metaphor and I like how it ties into our most intimate relationship with ourselves and closest kin. It’s easy to dismiss and distance from so much of the soup of white supremacy I grew up in as being ‘back then’ when in all reality if I’m not digging in and taking a hard look at that stuff what I’m doing is perpetuating it.

[Rhonda Freeman]

I am drawn to this metaphor as well. As a parent I find myself working to at outwardly with courage while consistently doing the inner work to keep myself grounded and present. So it is with this relational work. Trying to stay grounded and present and aware of my own racism while consistently making active choices to mitigate harm to brown and black people.

[Shara Cody]

I feel all of this swirling journey towards growing in and trying not to get lost on the inside and also as Lace said, “ Not at the expense of exterior praxis”. Doing the interior work continually definitely takes courage and sustained commitment. The line, “It takes a sense of something greater than ourselves to begin and maintain the Hero’s Quest into the interior, to find and root out the weeds of ambivalence, of passivity; of arrogance (and of its cousin, false humility).” Really sums it up for me. Having the ethos of lessening and mitigating the harm perpetuated to Black and brown people by white people and white supremacy helps me to remain focused and committed. Having the ethos of lessening and mitigating the harm perpetuated to Black and brown people by white people and white supremacy helps me to remain focused and committed. Knowing I’ll have to fend off paralysis again lets me see it as expected and not something to blame myself over but something to meet eye to eye within myself. Working as a community keeps me accountable to keep moving forward both inward and outward.

[Rebecca McClinton]

thank you for that counter balance about not getting lost inside. I have to lean in, but not stay there or use internal work as an excuse not to do the external engagement and action work. It has to be simultaneous, not getting lost in or’s, or ‘i’m not ready’s’.

[Grace Bannerman]

Thanks for this point about expecting paralysis, as self-blame can become unproductive and self-absorbed as well…I think it will be helpful in teasing out the differences between that and actual interior work and watching out for known patterns of white person behaviour in myself.

[Nicole Larson]

I certainly have made the error of jumping into action before doing the internal work, many times. I have also had the nerve of questioning a mixed-race person about their lived experience at one point at least.

I am grateful that I am not still at that point. I am especially grateful to Lace for initiating that.

That said, I own the racism I have exhibited. I also own the responsibility of changing my thoughts, attitudes, and actions, one lasting step at a time. The Lace on Race North Star, Western Star, and more give me not only reading material, but ammunition to change myself, to the benefit of at least most people within this country.

I know many Asians, Central and South Americans, Africans and African-Americans, Europeans, Native people, Atlantic and Pacific islanders, and Australians and New Zealanders to at least some degree. However, until and unless I not only increase my awareness of racism, but my personal involvement in it, I cannot and will not be useful in the fight against it.

[Grace Bannerman]

I appreciate your distinction between awareness and involvement and its prompt to action!

Also, how do you expect your relationships with those people in your life to affect the inner/outer work, and the work to affect the relationships?

[Kelsi Watters]

I can locate myself in this too. My antiracism journey began with me doing things externally – in my words, my actions, my studies, etc. I had to learn to confront my own racism, to acknowledge my own white privilege and white supremacy – that was where the Growing In for me began. I had to dig my hands into the compost and mix it in. I’m still doing that, and will be every day for the rest of my life. I need to continue to do my interior work, to continue growing in a praxis and way of life focused on our Northstar, lessening and mitigating the harm endured by Black and brown people perpetuated by me and my white supremacy. When I do that interior work, the healthy seeds in the garden will be planted, they will become more than seeds and begin to bear fruit. Who I in my interior self, is who I am.

[Christina Sonas]

I can see how very much my unexamined interior made my external praxis weak, inconsistent, and dangerous. I’m a strong believer in function over aesthetics; Lace’s challenge and guidance revealed how much I was violating that principle by ignoring all the white supremacy structures inside myself, my identity, my beliefs. (Conversely, my white supremacy was functioning strongly and didn’t care about the antiracist aesthetics I was presenting.) Now I consciously hold a racial awareness spotlight to my interior, and work on strengthening it as well as on repairing what it reveals to me.

[Shannon Brescher Shea]

That function vs. aesthetics distinction is so important – especially the fact that we often want to pretend that one is the other. Lace linked to the Vox interview when she talked about the black square thing and how harmful it was and I think that’s definitely a time when something was an aesthetic and many people convinced themselves that it was functional.

[Emily Holzknecht]

I am thinking about strength grown from adversity but “with a pliable and vulnerable heart of flesh”. I think white people like to attribute absolute value to things, absolute meaning it is always a good quality or always a bad quality and what is done with it or how it is done is irrelevant to the goodness or badness of it. I am reminded of the tendency in schools and in childhood to teach about a person overcoming and end it there. We learn about Helen Keller “overcoming” being deaf and blind, but nothing about what she did with the rest of her life and in doing that we silence her voice. As Lace discusses, not all strength is the same or used to accomplish goals that serve the north star. I realize now that before Lace on Race for me, strength was something I was trying to sort out. As we talk about here, who we spend our time with and expose ourselves to greatly influences who we are and in terms of strength, I saw a lot of words and actions that seemed strong, but that when I tried to emulate them always seemed to turn out badly and looking back I understand now that they were losing strategies. They were not strength with a pliable and vulnerable heart of flesh. Finding strength is a process of ongoing inner and outer work.

[Clare Steward]

I can definitely understand the lure of living in internal work and sheltering there because it’s safe. Balancing it with the Courage to grow up and grow out….to take it outside in action is necessary to lessen and mitigate harm. Internal work can lead to naval gazing and paralysis.

On the flip side, action without internal work can he dangerous and harmful. It can lead to finger pointing and othering. It can lead to punching down and tearing others down and inflicting damage. If I never hold up a mirror, I will be resistant to direction and correction and will blow up, shut down, and run away when confronted and being called in.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by  Clare Steward.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by  Clare Steward.

[Grace Bannerman]

I think the traps of self-absorption, paralysis and timidity are more likely to be my issues in this work. I can’t tell how much I’m motivated by “wanting to be a better (white) person” vs. being motivated by the North Star, or actually wanting to achieve the world I say I want. I guess that’s part of the power of doing this in community, to be able to reach out to one another if there are concerns about that. Another issue with that mindset is that if I’m doing this for personal development, then I’m ultimately the person who will benefit from my own development and therefore get to set the pace, whereas focusing externally on the issues of racism and white supremacy by working in community and taking external action means being accountable to others and contributing alongside others. I will look for follow-up actions when reading or doing inner work so that I do not become stationary and detached.

I also appreciate the point about Mystic planting without knowing what will wither and what will grow – exercising agency over my/one’s own behaviour and accepting the outcomes. Kind candour for everyone.

[Shannon Brescher Shea]

—-And we look for something, someone, anything and anyone to blame.—

Ooof, yes. This is why I always laugh and then flinch at the memes poking at conservatives. Even if they’re true, they feel like they’re passing the buck – “look at *those* people – they’re so ridiculous about what *they* believe and it’s *their* fault.” I really, really want to be able to just laugh and move on. But this space has made me stop and think about where the blame is being placed and if that’s both true and actually points towards our North Star.

—- All of the hindrances and barriers to effective and durable change displaced onto external forces: systems and institutions; bad actors, historical inertia, which leads to ennui, and even despair, are true for us too.—-

Whenever I feel tired with dealing with social justice issues, I try to think about the people who don’t have the privilege of being tired with them – that the racism and discrimination is there whether they are tired or not – especially those who deal with multiple marganilizations like Black women. It doesn’t lessen my tiredness, but it does point me towards that North Star again.

— They are all about the doing–but they have long known that who they are as they do their crucial work of healing the world is always more important than what they do or accomplish.—

I remember reading a book in high school (won’t mention the book both because it’s a truly terrible one and the whole “not recommendation” rules), but there was a character who ran a charity and was obsessed with people’s approval of her work. Because she never felt like she had enough credit or respect, she was bitter and miserable. When I read it, I realized it was going to be very, very easy for me to become this person if I wasn’t careful. I recognized that I could end up wrapped up in basing my self-worth on the judgment of others – and so orienting my work towards that instead of the real needs of others.

Not doing the interior work can be so dangerous – both because of burnout but also because of white people’s tendency to slip into saviourism. Without the interior work, white people in particular move towards what we already know through our experiences – which is often rooted in racism and actively harmful to Black people. We have to constantly do the internal work so we can turn towards people to listen to them, to cultivate that curiosity and respect.

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