Dialogue Description:

For our June dialogue, we will focus on material that we learned at a workshop on the psychology of racism. We’ll be watching a short video on shame and vulnerability and looking at how shame and other psychological experiences (anxiety, denial, fear, etc) challenge, support and inform our work with oppression and privilege. How can we better understand the psychological motivators of prejudice so that we know how to work with it in ourselves and in others? How can we learn to tolerate the anxiety, shame, guilt and anger that we might feel when addressing our own white privilege and gender oppression so that those emotions do not deter us from fully engaging with and exploring issues related to racism and sexism?

Dialogue Notes:

These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken at the dialogue. We get that these may not be very readable to those who were not in attendance at the dialogue, and, honestly, sometimes even to those of us who were. We still feel it is important to keep them available as part of our accountability process and for archiving and reference purposes.  Some of these notes have been digested/transformed into blogs.

watched brene brown’s ted talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame.html

  • researched behavior, specifically: idea of vulnerability in US culture and ways we defend against it; ways we work with shame; gendered experience of shame
  • myth of vulnerability as weakness is profoundly dangerous – it is emotional risk, exposure, uncertainty, and it fuels our daily lives – it is themost accurate measurement  of courage – birthplace of innovation, creativity, change – to create and make something that has never existed before
  • to talk about vulnerability we have to talk about shame – and vice versa
  • shame is the swampland of the soul – you don’t construct a home and live there, you put on galoshes and find a way to move thru it
  • shame drives “youre not good enough” and “who do you think you are”
  • shame is different from guilt – i did something bad (guilt) v i am a bad person (shame) – shame is deeply connected to depression, addiction; guilt is inverse
  • people who dont feel shame have no capacity for empathy
  • shame feels same across gender but is organized differently: for women it shows up as “do it all perfectly without breaking a sweat”; for men: “dont be perceived as weak” – a father at a booksigning said of men and vulnerability: “my family would rather watch me die on my white horse than fall down”
  • shame is conflicting expectations of who we should be
  • empathy is anecdote to shame
  • often we want to engage in the fight only when we are bulletproof  – but is important to just want to sit with someone and dare greatly

discussion

response to video

  • r.d. lang has concept: ontological insecurity – witnessed in extreme dissociation – belief that very being is at risk if you allow certain ideas in
  • she talks about shame in individual way – what about group shame and coming to terms with the past?
  • white people feel overwhelemed when confronting history and what “white people are” after 500 yrs of colonialism instead of looking at structure and behavior
  • assumptions of homogonous white experience erases different experience YET simultaneously erases white culture – which does exist and which we have so much difficulty articulating
  • individualist US culture helps prevent analysis of structural oppression and usefully shifting mindset to more meanginfully engage with converastions about race
  • refocusing on Brown’s definition of guilt can be liberating – “we have done painful oppressive things” as opposed to “we are inherently oppressors”
  • the “different ways” that shame is organized by gender don’t seem that different

reflections on shame

  • shame is paralyzing, guilt is something you can acknowledge and do something to fix it or alleviate it
  • system likes paralyzing aspects of shame; keeps us from changing the system
  • when do i get to feel like i’m doing enough?
  • what is being done in the name of whiteness can be ignored when we are constantly “doing” and “changing” and “fixing”
  • jay smooth reccomends moving away from tonsilites approach to anti-racism (i had it removed) to a dental hygiene form of discourse – we are swimming in history and misrepresentation and we must constantly work with it much like we must upkeep oral hygiene – and be geatful when someone points out racist actions, like when telling us we have something in our teeth
  • if we are better able to see our friends and where they’re at we’re better able to see ourselves
  • it is good to sit with guilt for a second – it means we are open
  • we often use term “paralyzed” by guilt – let’s be mindful of people who live with mobility issues – how else can we describe this without using an ableist term? maybe “incapacittated”
  • bodies have developed 5 ways of coping: fight, flight, freeze, appease, dissociate – these are things our bodies came up with to stay safe and alive and are good – let’s not add shame on top of shame by feeling shameful for feeling shameful – we need to acknowledge how our body did what it thought it needed to do to cope with racism, and that maybe it wasnt useful, and ask ourselves “how can i push past it next time?” instead of beating ourselves up
  • who am i to feel bad for myself and the way i reacted when i heard about a lynching?
  • sometimes we assume white ppl must have dissociated from overt forms of racism – what if they felt great plasure in it? not just the whites who had photos taken of them in front of lynched black men, but now, like the guards at abu grahib posing with dehumanized arab men? how do we deal with that?

doing enough

  • it’s not enough to raise consciousness or have a dialogue with other white people – there needs to be a moment of accountabillity and humility where we step into the larger world and take action
  • AND it is so important to not be mired in the shame of feeling we’re not doing enough – how do we take action in a sustainable way and take accountability around the work we can’t get to
  • how does shame and self-silencing around race intersect with similar experiences as people socialized as female? particularly as the former is a dominant position whereas the latter is subordinated?
  • it can get tricky when we do something that could be read as empowered as a female AND entitled as a white person
  • for someone socialized as male it can feel incapacitating to deal with both white privilege and male privilege – wonder if it’s okay to deal with one in the moment and let go of the other? can we focus on one identity aspect at a time?

building empathy for ourselves

  • important to meet yourself where youre at – build capacity to empathize after lifetime of dissociation, including dissociation from yourself
  • as a white person i dont feel guilt for whiteness – easier to remind self that feelings/perceptions/actions existed long before me as white person – focus more on what i can do but believe it’s impossible to fix the problems in my lifetime
  • important to examine what we’re feeling in place of the guilt
  • first reaction to that statement was resentment that we must feel something in place of guilt – but i have alienated friends because of my work around race – there IS something in place of the guilt that people can sense and that keeps people from feeling close to me
  • somatic body work and social justice work is an important thing – lots of centering and breathing and looking at whats underneath that armor that white people learn to develop
  • check out beverly tatum’s article and the ways that students could not cognitively engage with a course if they were not given space to name emotional reactions to discussions of racism
  • appreciate that people share their emotional reactions to this dialogue and the ways that people in the room – who are very eloquent – have been messy. messy is good – indicates presence with what it happening in the moment and willingness to be vulnerable as opposed to refined
  • how are we supposed to embrace white identity and conversations about whiteness when it often feels shameful – check out AWARE-LA’s radical white identity: knowing roots, intersectional identities, practices for liberation

denial

  • if someone is having an intense reaction around racism – how do we deal with that? and on the flip, how do we deal with other white folks checking out of conversation around race, denying place in it?
  • we should be mindful that how we view the world as white antiracist people is an entirely new belief system to people who are unfamiliar with it, and it can feel overwhelming
  • freire’s pedagogy was to take experiences that resonate with people we’re talking to and examine the different ways it resonates to get a measure of where people are at so we can get to a common location
  • whats the difference between meeting someone where theyre at and letting racism slide? its important to honor that it impacts us in a negative ways and that we need to have that acknowledged and taken care of, too
  • we can help people hear what they are saying more clearly – ask if that’s what they really meant, and give them a chance to reflect and correct
  • do we meet people where theyre at to bring them to where we are? does that dishonor what people can contribute as far as understanding what is preventing them from engaging with the process of developing an antiracist consciousness so we can be more strategic as well as compassionate. there is something that is true for them that we need to engage with to make positive change
  • we can get blocked thinking we are good white people – good and bad is a harmful dichotomy – think of selves as openly engaged with antiracist work and empathize with the ways culture has created a coping mechanism of denial around engaging with antiracism – these are not in opposition to each other, and are actions, not characteristics

closing

think of ways we boost our resilience

  • ask how we can be curious and stay in connection whereas we might want to stay in control
  • exercise – yoga, pilates, jogging
  • breathing
  • be gentle with ourselves
  • let ourselves be seen
  • get in nature
  • art
  • humor – especially political and subversive and mocking systems of oppression
  • receiving compassion from others – always pleasantly surprised when people appreciate expressions of vulnerability
  • friends
  • these dialogues