Self-Improvement
Awakening to Injustice
Our whiteness is dying
So here we are, firmly planted at a pivotal point in history. Sitting with the open shame and guilt of our white ancestors, unable to hide from what we are. Complicit, bloody hands and a fresh new fear to awakening from a generational, ancestral nightmare we have become so accustomed to.
Blurry Vision
Severe, violent, and inescapable injustice is the rule of whiteness. Some are beginning to awaken out of this. Your humanity is refusing to let you hide in your whiteness and the rest of the world is leaving us to be held accountable with a shattered mirror of our own making held firmly in our hands.
What is your reflection telling you?
We saw Elon Musk purposefully project a Nazi salute at the presidential inauguration. Donald Trump ran his campaign on his hatred for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. He spread the fear that everyone else but us as white people (European Americans) was the threat when we were the ones holding the smoking gun of privilege and power.
Many of us are having a moment where we see the blood on our hands. We see the oppression that we have created as a home for us and we are watching it suffocate the rest of the world. We want to walk away, but we feel stuck, unable to move out of fear of loss of identity and the fear of sacrificing something paralyzes us.
Fractured
Our ancestors carried out unspeakable crimes against humanity either by directly using their physical bodies to cause harm or by standing by and doing nothing. We begin to operate out of a freeze response the minute we begin to see an opening to walk out of whiteness. It is unfamiliar and uncharted territory to all of us as European Americans.
Everything we know is a lie. Every piece of historical information fed to us has been whitewashed. We were told the oppressive systems, such as the police, were heroes to us. We were taught to follow authority regardless of the cost. We were taught that legality and following the law was paramount…even when it was created to carry out constant violence against anyone who isn’t white.
The collective identity of whiteness is fracturing. The veil is dropping. The cracks in our foundation are too large to ignore. If you choose to accept this, we are coming face to face with our generational violence and our reflection is too grotesque to absorb, but we must. If we want to take a collective step into humanity, we must learn accountability and acceptance. There is no other option.
Learning to take accountability for the harm we have caused, be it conscious or subconscious, seems to be too great of a burden to bear for many European Americans. Constantly stuck in the psychological cycle of denial and grasping onto some element of moral authority or ethical standard that we thought we owned, yet we are not the standard. Everything, and I mean everything, you will find as a European American was sold to you as a lie, in the same way, our ancestors sold their souls for the price of carrying out unspeakable harm.
Hollow
The numbness no longer fits, yet many of you are trying to force yourself back to that state where you can move through life not looking at the world as it is in flames. Many of you want to blame those who are in flames and suffering while we collectively hold the matches that have caused such a blaze. The hollowness in our souls is now being consumed by a tidal wave of grief and shame, and many of you will choose to drown instead of reach out to other European Americans so we can grab each other and move to collective humanity and empathy.
Empathy for many European Americans is not a primary response when it should be the leading point of reference we should operate out of. We should care about every single community oppressed by our hands. It should drive us to action when we see the harm we are collectively causing through means of our whiteness. It should not be an option to stay silent, frozen, impotent, or scared. It simply cannot be.
Yet, we operate out of individualism and comfortability paired with White Racial Innocence as pointed out by one of the most influential Black historians and pro-humanity educators I have ever met in my lifetime, Kokayi Nosakhere.
The core tenets of white supremacy have become our Bible. It has become the only way we know how to operate life. It has become our guiding principle for every decision we make, and it has been ingrained in us since birth and is simultaneously grafted into our DNA through the means of our ancestors.
To step away from whiteness feels like a complete betrayal of self, and it feels that way because it is.
Falling Apart
The unraveling is here. For the first time, we, as European Americans, fit the description. Every single one of us is viewed, and rightfully so, as unsafe. It doesn't matter who we voted for or the self-perception that we are good people, the collective, group decision put Donald Trump and open, overt white supremacy into power. 3 out of 5 white men wanted it and 1 out of 2 white women wanted it.
We are dangerous. The impact of our choices and how we navigate the world far surpass any intention we have, every single time. Yet, it is hard to conceptualize that because it means we have to take accountability. This entire time we thought we were viewed as good people, and not oppressors to be navigated in survival mode when anyone that isn’t white is around us. We hold the power to call 911 and get any Black man, woman, or child killed by the police. For many, that is too great of a complicity to bear, yet it is the truth.
So, who are you outside of your whiteness? Do you know? Who are you apart from the system that defines us? What is your identity outside of violent white Christian nationalism?
Regardless of the label or spectrum of politics we land on, at the end of the day we operate the oppressor class. At what point is that going to be enough for us to violently shed that identity and choose to walk into humanity, compassion, justice, and healing? What will it take?
Sacrifice
Our physical bodies cannot operate in the constant state of anxiety and depression that we are currently in after this information and knowledge has been shown to us through our own choices. We are simply not built to withstand this pressure…a pressure that is self-manufactured and carried out by other European Americans. The collective psyche of white people is deeply sick, but it is by means of our own choices.
What are you willing to sacrifice?
Is the cost of our humanity too great a sacrifice to fight for? Is the empathy and compassion we must learn to embrace and carry out too great a price to be paid? Do you feel that we are too far gone?
We must learn to regulate our bodies and our minds. We must learn to choose to sit with our reflection. We must learn to take accountability and accept the truth of what our ancestors were a part of.
We are reactionary by nature. We have to learn to undo this. We have to learn to hear information, internalize the truth about ourselves, and reflect on it before we give a response. That means sitting with feelings we have generationally suppressed.
When communities outside of whiteness tell us we are dangerous regardless of who we are individually, how does that feel in your body?
The physical gut reaction, the adrenaline spike of defensiveness, and the anger, sadness, depression, or anxiety that comes with those responses are dangerous. We react and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color die due to our responses. Our oppression is a weapon. The willingness or unwillingness of that fact does not disregard the violence that it holds.
Healing
We have to learn to heal together as European Americans. We have to learn to have heavy conversations. We have to learn to lean into collective grieving together. We have to learn to keep each other in check and hold each other accountable for our reactions. We have to choose conflict resolution with each other.
We have to hold each other’s eyes open to our ancestral and generational violence.
You cannot be awake when you are forcefully and purposefully keeping your eyes shut.
We carry out violence against our own humanity and our own being. We are far more complex than what our whiteness wants us to believe. We do have a capacity for compassion and empathy, but it is a muscle we have not engaged in and for some of us, we haven’t used it our entire lives.
Healing isn’t linear. It is ugly, painful, exhausting, and necessary. It is possible. We cannot choose to ignore it anymore. We have to walk hand in hand with each other out of whiteness if we want to “create the new” as Matthew Reynolds talks about in his work.
Decolonizing our minds and our bodies must become a non-negotiable.
The time is now. We have stayed asleep for too long. We have shot blood-soaked bullets of bigotry and hatred out blindly toward anyone we cannot understand for centuries.
Put the gun down.
Open yourself up to the internal panic and struggle of walking away from whiteness. Accept yourself as human. We must choose to organize as Kokayi Nosakhere consistently points out. We have to create a community with other European Americans that are ready to move forward. White supremacy does not serve us. It is only used as a tool of control and destruction.
Let your foundation crumble. Let it all fall apart. Rebuild it with the solid building blocks of compassion, empathy, and humanity.
Awaken your soul right now in this moment, because staying asleep has only blinded us from the massive destruction we carry out against collective humanity.
