Grieving About Racism

About being white and healing racism ~ the grieving process. Grieving our lost humanity.

The 5 stages of grief (no particular order, non-linear process) are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

I must have been in denial for quite a while, just to get on with a life I thought I was supposed to live, which, come to find out, wasn't really mine anyway.  I think I'm past denial now. It seems to have run its course, along with that prescribed version of my life,  So now what?
 
Depression. Self-defeating focus, embarrassed, burdened by things I couldn't do anything about. The depression part has holes in it now days. I get depressed for minutes, not days or years anymore.  I've learned that the only way honestly out of depression is to befriend myself while in it.  Maybe that's all depression is for, to get our attention back to ourselves.  To relearn kindness.

Lately, there's a back and forth between anger, bargaining and acceptance.  

At first as I started writing I didn't know what the bargaining could be about. How do I bargain with racism? I just realized bargaining has to do with trying to be nice, a good person... No wonder I didn't want to see that because trying to be nice and good is not actually nice and good, it’s an image that inevitably needs to be defended. Plus that's pretty much the crux of implicit racism. Being unknowingly insincere with a story to back up the insincerity. A BLM yard sign in a freshly gentrified neighborhood. (I'm not criticizing the signs, I'm just saying...)

The anger part is what got me to want to write this. Practicing anger is easy as eating delicious pie for me. I'm not against pure raw anger by any means. I'm learning to respect my emotions. I'm talking about when it's groomed and habitual toward no useful outcome. The epiphany has to do with seeing how MY anger about racism, as a white person, is indulgent and it's like an addictive replacement for what's being asked. I think that folds into the do-nothing system of implicit racism.

What's being asked is the healing of our humanity, through me, all the way through. It's very different from the paralysis of burdened weight related to depression. It's feeling and seeing genuinely and sincerely, in this real-world pain and letting myself become a vessel.

Our real world pain heals thru each human gut, heart, mind. All the way through. We become capable to walk and talk freely, the freedom of wisdom, not ignorant “freedom”. Also not hung up in criticism or unhelpful arguing. I’m not against criticism and arguing. It’s part of our process. I just feel something beyond that too. Embodiment of what’s being asked.

People who are hurting directly from racism don't have time for heady exercises or emotional grandstanding. The shit just needs to stop. Racist ideology is a lie and always has been. Everyone hurts from racism, we just don't all feel it in that direct way. White people don’t “have to” feel it because we're skin-tone privileged by a made up ideology to benefit us. Excruciatingly circular ignorance.

I know that racism, prejudice, bigotry of any sort is a soul wound of the world that starts in the broken heart of the one holding the views, then it slashes out, wounding and killing others' lives, bodies, dreams and generations. And I know that ignorance - limited experience defended by belief - is what we all go through. It's called being human. And that's not an excuse or permission to continue with ignorance, it's a call for acceptance that finally ignites real healing, deep and lasting.

The way we see our fellow humans is the way we see ourselves and our earth home. We need serious healing, now. To heal is to make whole.

We grow wiser and help each other. It has nothing to do with "being nice" but it has everything to do with being, humbled and sincere and embodying healing.

It's no wonder the strong resistance is happening. This maddening resurgence of white supremacy, false Christianity, false president. The disease of our culture is the commoditization of life, the branding, marketing, packaging, consuming, discarding. The lack of orienting to reality. The spiritual deficit that's being recognized. Paradoxically, there is no actual spiritual deficit. It’s impossible. Spirit is unchanging and always right here now. We just have a weird American-style mirage going on. So the shift could actually be simple. We could just fall forward into the path of our true truth.

There is plenty of room for everyone just as we are. It’s the nature of our world to diversify. That’s the health. Racism is literally a sin against nature, truth, God, reality, pick your word. The word sin means “to miss the mark”. And what is the mark? Let’s open up and feel it.