Walking With Whiteness Module 4 Self-Study

Walking with Whiteness Module Four: Confronting White Fragility

Is whiteness really fragile? Why do so many white folx become emotionally reactive when talking about race? How might this be a coping mechanism to prevent taking responsibility?

This module uses the concept of “white fragility” as a lens to look at reactive patterning and victimhood stories that white-bodied people often rely upon to avoid taking responsibility for oppressor lineage, arising from a lack of practice and accountability for showing up and staying with the “what is” in moments of racial conflict and tension.

Vocabulary: Bystander Effect Contact Zone Intergenerational Trauma Settler Colonialism Neutral Mind & The What Is White Fragility Willful Ignorance Somatic Practices Recordings: Reactivity Chain Somatic Practice Embodied Situational Assessment Concepts:

Victimhood Patterns: Each of us has our own ways of avoiding taking full responsibility for our actions and experiences in the world. These postures of victimhood keep us stuck in powerlessness leading to us not taking full accountability for the events in our lives and how we show up to meet them.

Around racial conflict there are a few primary victimhood patterns that emerge: o Fragility: Avoidance of responsibility, “Poor Me,” “I’m the real victim” (i.e. claims to “reverse racism” or “feeling attacked,” crying) o Denial of Responsibility: Blame, projection onto someone else (“It’s all your fault, I didn’t say/do anything,” “You’re just an angry Black woman”) o Martyr: Resentment, upset from lack of recognition (“I’m a good white person,” “After everything I’ve done”) When we become aware of what our victimhood patterns are around race we can begin to take deeper accountability for the ways in which we are showing up. Our work is to stay in our awareness body without dipping into self-judgement. Acceptance is much more productive than shame or guilt.

Neutral Mind: Neutral Mind allows us to bring awareness into our typical thought patterns and add some checks and balances, coming out of the work of Yogi Bhajan.

Coming to Neutral Mind doesn’t mean #bothsides. What it means is that we are looking through multiple perspectives to come to a clearer picture of the full “what is.” If our go to is “doom and gloom,” it helps us not to leap to the worst-case

scenario. If our go to is rainbows and butterflies, it allows us to stay out of illusion and acknowledge the less positive aspects of an experience.

As we connect deeper with the “what is,” we step out of illusion and closer to actual truth. This is a key component of stepping out of any intentional or unintentional bypassing, and engaging with the collective shadow, in order to come to a place of acceptance about the social histories and oppressions that bring us to our current cultural moment.

In José Medina’s language, this is what we need to cultivate a “kaleidoscopic consciousness” in which we can hold onto the epistemic friction of multiple worldviews, perspectives, and belief systems without needing an easy answer for “right” course of action for us to feel resourced and safe. The more we are able to sit with the complexity and multifacetedness of multiple worlds and realities, the more constructively resilient we become in staying in uncomfortable conversations and moments of tension.

Vocabulary: Bystander Effect: This refers to a passive stance in watching inequity or violence play out in front of us without using our voices, bodies, or influence to intervene.

Contact Zone: This refers to public or semi-public spaces (such as a classroom, public park, public transportation) where people from many different backgrounds and walks of life come to share space. This proximity and social intimacy can create both tension and potential openings in witnessing and being witnessed by each other, and in connecting across the social categories and lines that are used to play out divide and conquer strategies.

Intergenerational Trauma: Much of our traumas are inherited from our ancestral lineages and collective social histories. There is now scientific data that backs up longstanding Indigenous wisdom that trauma is passed on through the DNA, and that this becomes part of our unconscious individual and collective programming and experience.

Settler Colonialism: Colonialism refers to the forceful takeover of land and culture by an imperial power without consent or permission. Settler colonialism refers to the subsequent settling of this land with people from the colonizing country. In the context of Turtle Island (United States) this refers to the genocide of First Nations people by European settlers.

Neutral Mind & The What Is: Neutral Mind allows us to bring awareness into our typical thought patterns and add some checks and balances. Coming to Neutral Mind doesn’t mean #bothsides.

What it means is that we are looking through multiple angles and perspectives to come to a clearer picture of the full “what is.”

White Fragility: This is a term coined by Robin DiAngelo to address patterns of reactivity and a side-stepping of accountability by white-bodied people in conversations of race from a lack of practice and skill. This is due to the ways in which “white privilege” socially insulates white-bodied people from being confronted with the daily ways in which white supremacist culture structures the very foundations of our society. This is connected to the highly segregated nature of white supremacist societies, whether institutional, social, economic, personal, or spatial.

White fragility is connected to deep entitlement and coddling and

a lack of accountability in showing up with courage and emotional maturity around moments of racialized conflict.

Willful Ignorance: This is a term used by José Medina to address the ways in which we become accountable to each other on a social level for learning social truths and histories that our upbringing has not groomed us to know. It takes the perspective that as adults we become responsible for educating ourselves and that choosing not to do so is a willful choice that side-steps our social responsibility to learning how to care for each other at the level of the collective social contract.

Practices: Reactivity Chain: The Reactivity Chain is a tool used in Kimberly Beekman’s Inner Alignment Method to allow us to begin to piece together several of the tools and practices that we have been cultivating over the course of the program. They are an opportunity for us to map out our heightened responses when triggered and to recognize how we got there by breaking our response into smaller pieces in order to get the “data.” One of the things that happens to us when we are triggered is that everything speeds up and suddenly feels very urgent—that is one of the telltale giveaways that we are not in a fully present, conscious state. Reactivity Chains allow us to use these triggered experiences as material to heal and grow from.

For this practice consider a recent racialized event that left you triggered.

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What physical, emotional, mental vulnerability set you up for this reactivity?

What was the external happening that triggered the reactivity?

When did the seed of the issue begin? What was going on when it started?

What were you doing, thinking feeling before it all happened?

What is the vibration in your body as you think about the trigger?

Where do you feel it? What does it source down to?

What was your Fear Response? Fight, Flight, Fawn, Freeze?

How else could you have responded to the situation?

Were there any “check engine” lights that warned you your system was run down?

If it feels productive, spend some time doing Feel & Process with this Reactivity Chain. See if you can get underneath what was happening in the moment—what it was really about.

Then watch yourself making a different choice that is in more conscious alignment with what you needed and how you wished you had responded. Watch that alternate route play out in your mind’s eye. Working through the Reactivity Chain allow us to learn how to better set ourselves up for success.

*Remember: this work isn’t about being perfect. It’s about becoming more resilient and taking responsibility for our

part of an equation. Be gentle with yourself and to have a sense of humor! We all have our triggers, no matter how much work we do.

Journaling Personal Self-Reflection Prompts: o Take some of the Implicit Bias Tests. Note your somatic processes as you prepare to take the tests and find out your “results”: o What do you notice in your body? o What mind stories/fears come up for you? o What, if anything, are you afraid to learn about yourself? o How do you engage with the “results” of the test?

Are you able to accept them? Does your Ego mind want to rationalize them? o Do you notice any white fragility arising in you? If so, how? What forms? What do you learn about yourself? o In “Conflict Transformation” Sheri Mitchell invites us to examine our own personal understanding of “conflict,” and the ways in which conflict is often perceived as something “bad.” She suggests “our goal should not be to resolve it, but to transform it into a tool for changing our views, relationships, and sociopolitical structures. Conflict highlights the differences that exist between us in our perceptions, our beliefs, and our actions. It allows us to see more clearly the areas that need harmonizing in our lives, in our groups, and in our societies.” (75)

Take some time to consider your personal relationship with conflict: o What perceptions and associations does “conflict” carry for you? o Spend time sitting with your Victimhood Patterns, your Fear Responses, and your Reactivity Chains: o What do you learn about yourself your personal relationship with conflict? o What is your conflict style? o What is your conflict threshold? o What do you need to feel safe in conflict? o What are ways that you can self-soothe (tools/practices) in order to strengthen your ability to courageously navigating conflict without running away from it? o What are growth areas for you in your relationship with conflict? What are some goals that you can name and identify for yourself? o Take an honest look at how you are able to navigate conflict in your life around racial tension: o How does this compare to your threshold and skill for navigating conflict in other areas of your life? o What do you learn about yourself if you witness yourself without judgement? o How might you be able to draw upon the skill and tools you have in other life arenas for navigating conflict to take accountability for yourself when racial conflict presents itself?

Journaling on Module Three Material:

o Watch Joyner Lucas’s “I’m Not Racist” and notice your somatic responses: o What do you notice in your body? o What mind stories come up for you? o What, if anything, are you afraid to learn about yourself? o Do you notice any white fragility arising in you? If so, how? What forms? What do you learn about yourself? o What questions come up for you as you sit with this video? o How can we apply the principles of Sheri Mitchell’s “Conflict Transformation” to sit with the intensity of the different perspectives and worldviews expressed without needing to escape, fawn, or mitigate them?

What tools can you work with to simply witness and all these energies and perspectives to be expressed to be cleared? o In “An Uncomfortable But Meaningful Conversation About Race with Lama Rod,” Dan Harris uses himself to witness and name moments of his own “white fragility,” and the ways in which he is afraid of “saying the wrong thing,” his desire to stay comfortable in conversations of race, watching himself retreat to an intellectualizing of racism, his mistakes/failures/missteps, his discomfort with not knowing, and the avoidance of real, true vulnerability around discussions of race.

Sit with your responses to this podcast:

o How do you feel about Lama Rod’s suggestion of white folx’s avoidance of pain and bypassing the body? o How can we consider the dialogue between Lama Rod and Dan Harris as a modeling of “conflict transformation” and a working through of conflict and racial tension constructively, vulnerability, and openheartedly? How does it serve as a useful counterpoint to the ways in which the dialogue plays out in the Joyner Lucas “I’m not Racist” song? o What are some of the practices, words, and tools that Lama Rod and Dan Harris name and utilize in this dialogue that are useful for cultivating a practice for staying more open-hearted and courageous in crossracial conversations about race? o What are some of the intentional forms of consent and container setting to engage in these types of conversations without replicating white fragility and entitlement to comfort? What are some ways such containers can be co-created and cultivated? o In the excerpt from Between the World and Me, author TaNehesi Coates recaps his experience as a Black father attempting to protect the body of his 5-year old black son from a white woman who feels entitled to place her hands on him in a predominantly white, wealthy, public space.

Coates speaks to many truths here—the historicity of our bodies, the racialized class dimensions of space, questions of perception, the multi-layeredness of our interactions with each other, questions of social privilege and who is afforded the cultural right and space to make a mistake, as well as the

dangers of expressing anger and emotion—and protection—as a Black man and father in a white supremacist culture.

In this passage Coates reflects, “[t]his is the import of the history all around us, though very few people like to think about it. Had I informed this woman that when she pushed my son, she was acting according to a tradition that held black bodies as lesser, her response would likely have been, “I am not a racist.” Or maybe not. But my experience in this world has been that the people who believe themselves to be white are obsessed with the politics of personal exoneration. And the word racist, to them, conjures, if not a tobacco-spitting oaf, then something just as fantastic—an orc, troll, or gorgon. . . . There are no racists in America, or at least none that the people who need to be white know personally.” (97) Consider the texture of this scene that Coates has painted for the reader: o Who do you find yourself empathizing and/or identifying with in this situation? o Do you find yourself rationalizing why this woman felt entitled to place her hands on his son? o How would you respond to this woman’s actions if she placed her hands on your child? How might your social location impact your ability/willingness to express yourself? o Have you ever witnessed a racialized event like this? If so, what did you do? Did you participate as a bystander? A witness? An interrupter?

What do you think influenced how you chose to show up? o What do you make of Coates’ language “people who believe themselves to be white” and “people who need to be white”? o How does Coates’ reflection on white folx’s response, “I am not a racist,” connect with the idea of white fragility? What makes it so scary to identify and name the seeds of racism operating through us as white-bodied people without needing to run away from it? o In “Grief, Intimacy, Trauma,” Sheri Mitchell invites us to sit with the question, “How do you acknowledge the injustice of genocide, disruption of culture, and the destruction of a way of life when you’re living on the lands of those who have been victimized?” (57) She goes on to suggest,” It is hard for people to accept that horror and continue to live with the outcome, so they choose to ignore it or minimize the story. The simple truth is that this country was founded on genocide and slavery.

This is something that we are all going to have to acknowledge. Until we are able to discuss this honestly, there can be no healing. The first step in the reconciliation process is truth. If we hope to reconcile our path and move forward with any sense of hope, we must begin by telling the truth of our shared history.” (57) o How might we understand “white fragility” as a way of avoiding taking responsibility for this historical truth?

o What might open, honest conversations with each other about this truth look and feel like? What kinds of conversations and spaces need to happen exclusively between those of us with European and oppressor ancestry? What kinds of conversations and spaces need to be cultivated for cross-cultural healing? o What guiding principles, tools, and practices can we draw upon that will allow us to stay current in our bodies about the trauma, shame, guilt, blame, and fear that inevitably get stirred up by these conversations?

How might we be able to understand this emotional weather as a necessary step in what needs to be excavated and cleared in the collective? o Sheri Mitchell suggests that it takes “tremendous courage for us to meet ourselves and one another in truth, with unconditional openness and acceptance . . . [and that i]f we can create this safe place for one another, then we can remain together in the presence of our shadows without fear, and allow ourselves to fully emerge. . . .

[In other words, i]f we wish to have true intimacy in our lives, then we have to develop the courage and the spiritual and emotional maturity to remain fully present with all the discomfort that arises when we are exposed. We have to be able to manage the discomfort that arises within us and in the other person as well. We have to find a way to be at ease with the distress that this brings to us and not run away.

In order to do that, we have to know when to pause, and be content in the pause, so that we each have time to adjust.

We have to sit with the rejection that arises in each one of us and acknowledge the restriction that it presents. We have to

honor the spoken and unspoken cues that tell us when we need to stay away, and not come any closer, until we can both feel safe. . . .

This process teaches us that we are safe with one another, even in the midst of our fear and discomfort, and even when we have space between us.” (70-72) o Consider where and how you may already practice this in your daily life: o With whom? o With what material? o In what context? o What tools, skills, and strategies do you use to selfsoothe so you can stay open and present in these moments? o Where and how can you try on stretching these practices into the realm of racial and collective healing? What would it look like/feel like? With whom can you practice this? What ground rules and tools do you need to initiate these practices in a safe, consensual, semi-structured way?