Disarming
I've just finished reading White Fragility and find it to be as important a book as I thought when I started and this morning I woke up with an insight from a recent interchange with a man over sexism that went badly, and delving into the notion of being triggered.
When I am triggered, a host of responses tangentially related to the initiating cause arise as weapons to use against the one who triggers the reaction. This is exactly what happens in racial interchange when the white person is confronted with a charge of racism resulting in blaming, defensiveness, judgment, self-pity, guilt, shame, etc. that are the weapons of defense of deep cultured norms.
And I saw this response of White Fragility as a triggering and there can be no conversation in this state, this is the reason that POC have no interest in engaging in these conversations which become set ups for white protection. The focus becomes the injured white person who can't endure the emotions.
Just as in a relationship, we need to see those weapons and put down those arms, surrender openly with a position of "not knowing" to what is before us before we can even begin to become available to another perspective.
This framing is feeling important to me. I want to use those weapons of Kali with wisdom, not in protecting the norms of division and inequality and not in fighting those same protections in another which is equally as futile, but rather in the efforts to tear down social structures that create the problems. I need to spend time looking at what makes up that toolkit.
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| Kali with weapons out |
And I saw this response of White Fragility as a triggering and there can be no conversation in this state, this is the reason that POC have no interest in engaging in these conversations which become set ups for white protection. The focus becomes the injured white person who can't endure the emotions.
Just as in a relationship, we need to see those weapons and put down those arms, surrender openly with a position of "not knowing" to what is before us before we can even begin to become available to another perspective.
This framing is feeling important to me. I want to use those weapons of Kali with wisdom, not in protecting the norms of division and inequality and not in fighting those same protections in another which is equally as futile, but rather in the efforts to tear down social structures that create the problems. I need to spend time looking at what makes up that toolkit.
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