The gift of life was handed to me in a nice box. An invitation to enjoy the trees (which I do), to be cared for, and to love. Sure, the givers weren’t perfect: my parents and society. Rumor has it that every family is dysfunctional in their own way, and we know that “corrupt” and “politics” are usually paired like brownies and ice cream. More like velcro and every material it touches, actually.
As I’ve grown up, I’ve come to recognize my family’s dysfunction and deal with it as I can. This has felt like a journey into a black hole where most experiences lack language and leave me as if I haven’t made any progress. These same descriptions can be applied to the process of learning the injustice of society for the first (or third or fourtieth) time. Would you join me in a part of my journey to seeing my white privilege?
My quaint hometown in Iowa, cornfield U.S.A., is a lovely place to raise a family. It’s not only safe, but it also has a family fun three-day heritage festival every year to celebrate our Dutch Christian Reformed heritage.
When I was 9 or 10 I visited my friend’s home and was shocked. The house was not neatly organized, her grandma lived there, and their clothes were mismatched. I knew she was Asian, but I also knew that underneath she was actually white like the rest of us. So I took my role as the good friend and didn’t tell a single person about the differences I saw in that house. I had to protect her from people thinking she wasn’t actually normal.
When I was 16 my world started to expand beyond my hometown. A friend and I visited a mosque in DesMoines out of curiosity to understand and know how to pray for these people. That same year I started to learn about Burma. It took me by surprise how quickly the stories and culture came to find a place in my heart. I was learning that this box of life I was given could grow. This is beautiful. Truly.
And then at 18 it all got shaken.
“Band-aids come in your skin tone, not everyone else’s.”
Yeah. I’d never thought about that, but it didn’t seem to matter too much. Just interesting.
“I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.”
Right...but, “my racial group”? Why would I have to? That’s a weird statement.
And I read through the rest of Peggy McIntosh’s “Invisible Knapsack”.
Reading the list of markers for privilege felt disorienting. Starting to see myself as white was uncomfortable. And listening to stories other than my own was guilt-inducing. Maybe it was a combination of shock factor and my perfectionism that let me sit in the discomfort. And a lot of grace.
Friends, when life is turned upside-down, it is not easy. It means change, and usually it feels forced upon us. Maybe even suffocating a bit. Change, as Rob Bell puts it well, is a loss. And loss calls for grieving.
When I learned that I was white (not just “normal”), when I learned the complementary stories to the histories I studied, and when I learned the privilege I carry in my skin, I felt loss. And that’s okay.
The loss I experienced (and try to continually experience) is not oppression. It is not something to be fearful of. Not something to get up in arms about (I mean that literally). The loss of an easy life because of a new understanding of injustice is real. And it also needs to be put in the perspective of the hundreds of years worth of our country’s narratives where anyone not white was continually in a state of loss. This loss is called oppression.
And today the oppression continues in the seemingly cleaned-up version of oppression called systemic racism. We can watch cellphone videos of this: black man after black man losing their life at the hands of civil servants. The policeman probably does not think he is a bad person. But he is undoubtedly a part of a bad social system. That society is what helps give us our box of life. And maybe this is where the metaphor breaks down because what really happens is society and culture-- the good and the bad-- become somehow ingrained in our life. Until the box is shaken from its hold and able to be analyzed.
White friends, let your life be shaken. Listen to the chants repeating again and again “Black Lives Matter”. Join or continue the work of ungripping systemic racism’s hold on you. And realize that you’re not going to “finish” this work. It isn’t something you can master. For me, even (especially) as a white foreigner abroad, this is daily work of acknowledging my privilege and seeking to understand situations in the wholeness of context.
The end point with systemic racism is not when I, as a white person, see my privilege. It will be when I stand next to (behind, or in front of, when asked) black and brown brothers and sisters and systemic racism no longer has its suffocating grip around anyone’s life. May this day come to pass and may it come quickly.
Journey on! Keep listening, learning, and growing:
- "7 Stages of White Identity"
- "Listening Well As a Person of Privilege"
- "'That's Racist Against White People!' A Discussion on Power and Privilege"
- "29 Harmful Things White People Do and What We Can Do Instead"
- "Please Stop Telling Me That All Lives Matter"
