Leaving the Box of "Black and White:" Personal Reflections On Whiteness

"Problems are best solved not on the level where they appear to occur but on the next level above them....Problems are best solved by transcending them and looking at them from a higher viewpoint. " Dr. David Hawkins, from Healing and Recovery

As a white male father living in America in 2020, I am working hard to figure out how I am to hold my racial identity, and what it even means for a white person to do so. My experience is that there is a silence under, within, and around whiteness. This silence is part of the "package of the privileges" inherited with whiteness in America. As we collectively question this package, it feels very important to consider some deeply personal questions, including: Where am I entering the conversation from? What assumptions are informing my actions? Who am I being in this conversation?

This is important and challenging work, and I admit that despite ongoing efforts over many years, I don't have the answers (yet). So far, I have mostly been listening to and considering contradictory perspectives, considering my own long-standing assumptions, engaging in dialog with friends and professional colleagues, observing who they are being in the conversation, and reviewing thoughtful advice and recommendations offered on these complex topics. More than this seems necessary.

I share my point of view here reluctantly, acknowledging that race in America is not a subject designed for LinkedIn commentary. That said, part of me feels the need to speak up precisely because of the "white silence" I mentioned a few moments ago . . . so I am limping into the conversation here with some partial thoughts and questions.

At the outset I would like to state my belief that each of us can develop awareness of who and how we are being, both in relation to ourselves and in relation to others. This awareness includes all aspects of who we are and how we show up at the "intersection" of our being. For example, this might include how we hold our gender, economic status, professional and personal roles, titles, and more - we are all so complex. And, developing such awareness is very challenging work.

Much like we can choose to become more aware of and curious about possible connections between our personal experience of emotions and how they manifest in thoughts and behaviors, I believe we also can (over time) choose to become more aware of and curious about how we hold our racial identities, and the racial identities of other human beings. I am not sure that whiteness, in itself, limits this awareness and curiosity, although it certainly is one of many factors that does influence it.

It also seems important to admit up front that this subject pulls me off balance, in the same way that learning a new language necessarily reminds me that I am on the outside of something very large. It takes courage and heart to reflect on these issues authentically, in a way that is grounded in personal experience of connection and love, and I admit that one of my starting points involves continuing to wrestle with some of the deeply felt popular advice offered up to "white people." I find much of this advice contradictory. That is, while it makes sense, I experience it as being somewhat hard to digest and understand. While it seems designed to be helpful, there are ways in which it also feels unhelpful. While I think I understand where it is coming from, receiving it feels dislocating.

I submit these reflections from a place of curiosity and humility, in hopes that as we hold some of these considerations together, we can also actively learn together. I agree that it is time for "white people" to start actively carrying some greater share of the responsibility for addressing institutional racism, and it strikes me that if we are ever going to do that . . . we need to start by making sense of where and how we fit into a productive dialog from the start.

The first bit of advice I am actively wrestling with is "don't make it about you."  

I am not sure how the popular mantra “don’t make it about you” is intended, and find this advice a bit confusing and contradictory. Let me try to explain. I wrestle with this suggestion because it feels to me like there is part of seeing others more clearly that involves first doing the work necessary to see ourselves more clearly. So, part of me wonders, if I don't make this deeply about myself . . . how will I ever have a greater capacity to see and receive the experiences of others more fully, bravely, and compassionately?

As the great teacher Pema Ch?dr?n says: “When we become more insightful and compassionate about how we ourselves get hooked, we spontaneously feel more tenderness for the human race.  Knowing our own confusion, we are more willing and able to get our hands dirty and try to alleviate the confusion of others.  If we don’t look into hope and fear, seeing a thought arise, seeing the chain reaction that follows - if we don’t train in sitting in that energy without getting snared by the drama, then we are always going to be afraid.  The world we live in, the people we meet, the animals emerging from doorways - everything will become increasingly threatening.”  

When confronted by the brutality inherent within the structures of institutional racism - my advice to other white people is to make it deeply and compassionately about yourself.  I recommend that you sit within the emotions that arise in your own heart, whatever those might be.  Feel deeply into the center of those emotions and anxieties until you are sufficiently in touch with them to carry this suffering and passion everywhere you go - into all of the relationships and actions in your own life.   This will be uncomfortable, and I believe the discomfort is important.  

Passion and courage are the soil that new behaviors require for growth. That is, behaviors that are likely to have any chance of successfully working against the deeply rooted (and often hidden) structures of institutional racism must stem from a place of individual passion and courage.  The extent to which we, as individuals, will be capable of embracing new behaviors will partly be determined by how courageously we listen to our inner voices, and develop a capacity to touch into our own discomfort and suffering.  The current “black and white” dialog risks denying you your own suffering and pain as a white person - after all, how could you be suffering when you are the beneficiary of such privileges?  The reality is that as individuals alive on this planet, none of us escape without our own deep suffering and pain.  Buddhist teaching points us back to this suffering as a source of trust in oneself, sometimes referring to this process as getting in touch with the courageous and gentle heart of suffering.

As a white person trying to understand institutional racism, I believe that if you begin with the popular advice to “not make it about you,” and you do this by turning from or denying yourself, the most you will likely be able to offer to address the real problem will be a lifeless apology to those other people you are probably relying on to figure out a path forward while you excuse yourself.  You might apologize, and think that the work ends there.  This is not the response America needs from you, regardless of your skin color or background.  America desperately needs your courage and engagement with these problems.  So, please, make it about you. 

The second key piece of advice I am wrestling with is "don’t focus on or talk to me about your own goodness as a white person." 

We have all seen quite a few recommendations to the effect that the last thing white people should do is proclaim, focus on, or discuss their own "goodness." As in, don't tell me that you are one of the good white people . . . I'm not interested in hearing this, and it doesn't help. The first thing that emerges in my mind when I read this advice is: shouldn't all of us be working to get deeply in touch with our own goodness - no matter the color of our skin? This instruction to not claim, dwell in, or share our own goodness and positive intentions with others - including Blacks and other people of color - feels unsettling to me. I experience this advice itself as the product of a “black and white” paradigm that doesn’t allow you as a person to remain in touch with whatever goodness might be in your heart and actions.  

As a human being alive on this planet, as a father, a friend, a leader, and a coach invested in supporting others - I see how self-critical we can be of ourselves, so much of the time.   If we label ourselves as villains, we rob ourselves of the opportunity and the responsibility for learning from our own experiences and using such experiences as a stepping-stone to changing our behaviors.  

If we believe the message that there is something wrong with us, we are left with needing to look outside of ourselves for basic legitimacy.  Denying ourselves our own basic goodness tends to result in a kind of endless cycle of guilt, shame and self-criticism that makes positive action unlikely if not impossible.  Once we begin to look outside ourselves for basic goodness and legitimacy, that process can continue on and on and on without us realizing it. If we don't intentionally cultivate love in our own hearts, how can we share it with others?

In my experience, if you are deeply in touch with your own basic goodness, the need to promote or defend yourself greatly diminishes.  

Instead of basing your life and personal racial identity on the endless cycle of promoting or defending yourself, you can step more deeply into a profoundly more trustworthy sense of your own basic goodness.  You can rely on the humility and calm that lives within your own heart, no matter the color of your skin.