What if We Weren't So White?

"What's the Women's March?" the man sitting next to me on the plan home to Anchorage asked on Monday.

Um...

"I mean was it for breast cancer or something?"

Yeah, that's our only issue, a sickness that manifests in our sumptuous bussoms is the only force strong enough to provoke us to speak out. We are flesh only, not intellect, compassion, action...

When I explained to him briefly, in my travel weary way, that it was about human rights, gender equality, ethical accountability and so much more, motivated by Trump's lies and actions leading up to his inauguration, it became quite obvious we voted for different teams. 

So I enjoyed answering his next question: "Well how was the turn out? Did people actually come?"

 

*********

I stand amidst a sea of pink pussy hats, farther than the eye can see, every direction I look a river of humanity pours into the heart of DC. Metro lines curl hundreds deep, trains offer no room to stretch, we are the people, pouring into the capital, we are women and men, young and old, of every ethnicity, class, religion, and region, queer and straight, with wheel chairs, walkers, canes, and prosthetic legs, we rise from the under ground and flood the streets with signs held high.

In the words of one worker, hired to take down the inauguration stage: “You all shut down the city today.”

“Were there more people here than yesterday?”

“Oh man, there’s no comparison.”

I wear a blue Alaskan flag as a cape, fucsia cat ears on my head, and walk alongside childhood friends, thousands of miles away from my home in Seward, Alaska, where, despite over two feet of snow that kept folks from attending the Anchorage march, an impromptu gathering forms along Resurrection Bay, where my seven-year-old daughter and friends lead the procession with signs that say: Fight like a girl.

My son and husband march behind her, with fifty-plus Alaskans who live in the small harbor town at the end of the road; two hours north, thousands gather in Anchorage despite a blizzard and temps in the teens; in Fairbanks, thousands more, at minus twenty; two plane rides away, on the arm of Cape Cod, my parents stand along Route 6, in Eastham Mass, with a party of ten to fifteen, organized the previous day, after a conversation at the gym. My Dad holds a sign that says, equal rights for all, and my mom dons a pink pussy hat, like the one I wear, in the shade of the national monuments in D.C.

This is happening in every state, in cities and small towns, and in countries all over the world, possibly the largest single day protest in US history, with more people in Washington to resist the authoritarian regime of Trump then those who came to celebrate the inauguration the day before— and not a single arrest.

In response, the president, who claims he wants to unite the country, sends his press secretary out with a script that attacks the media for falsely reporting his crowd size. He doesn't even acknowledge the millions of people who marched.

This is why we protest.

This and more reasons than can fit on a sign.

*******

 

One of my favorite moments, from my section of the rally, is when the police officer who earlier kicked us of the wall we climbed to get a better view, started dancing along the brick uprise; and before the rally ended, someone gave him a cardboard sign that he held with his fist in the air: This is what a feminist looks like.

According to reports from others across the city, the police and protesters high-fived and shared friendly banter throughout the day. I love this and could bathe endlessly in all the good feelings from participating in the Women's March.

But someone more aware than I asked: If we had been a million black men and women marching, would we have been received with such grace by police officers and city workers?

What about a million brown skinned immigrants and refugees? A million Native Americans representing every tribe?

I don't know.

And yes, the crowd in D.C. included a diverse spectrum of individuals, and issues, all threatened by our current administration. We weren't all white. But a lot of us were. Countless well-groomed white women, who society isn't taught to fear, who are expected to be polite and well-mannered. When middle class white women storm the city, the police and marshals don't greet us clad in full battle gear. I didn't see a single tank. We received smiles, nods, and fist bumps. Is this part of the reason the protests were so peaceful? Because we are not perceived as a threat? (Well, at least not yet. ) Or because our lives are considered more valuable? Hold the rubber bullets and pepper spray when the white ladies roll into town.

I want to say that the peace of the marches lies in a collection of diverse sisters leading a revolution without armarment, the power is in our collective pussies united against a man who brags about grabbing them without permission. I want to believe this, but I don't want to be blind to the plight of the peaceful black man who can't escape the stereotype of the thug. The unarmed native woman dragged behind a bush by her hair.

And I ponder these questions not to take away from the beauty of the day, but for my own reflection on the privilege I carry that is far more powerful than any slogan I could write on a sign.

One of my favorite signs of the day was a young man’s handwritten one that said something like: I was going to write my opinion but I thought it was about time white men shut up and listen.

Yes. He gets it.

If only the gray-haired gortex-clad white man, who I overheard at the end of the rally, understood the intent of the sign. This guy walked, I mean shuffled, behind me, as we all shuffled, with no space to march, the entire permitted area, and beyond, filled with people, and said something similar to: I come to events like these because I support gender equality but I’m not as interested in all those other issues. It would have been good if they had a scientist talk about climate change, something with more substance, instead of all those emotional speeches.

First off, yes, I worry about climate change too, and no amount of gas-lighting will tell me its not true; but the Women’s March can’t address every issue, at length, and it certainly didn't need more speakers, with a rally lasting over four hours, edging towards losing the audience, who started chanting, march march march, before the program's end— but even more importantly, underneath his words lay millions of people of color shaking their heads.

See this is what we've been talking about, its not the KKK we fear, but all the well-meaning white folks who fail to see the every day racism and privileges inherited by a culture that broadcasts their story as the only one, where they can pick and choose their issues to organize around, but ignore the ones that don't directly affect them. Where they can say: I support Planned Parenthood but not Black Lives Matter.

I know because I have been that well-meaning white person, passionate about women's rights in my early twenties, oblivious to issues of class and race, unaware of the assumptions I carried.

Back then I worked for a domestic violence program in Portland Maine and attended a one-day workshop on privilege. One of the activities began with a brainstorm of all the different groups in our society. We narrowed the list down by voting for two to three that were important to us. In pairs we were given a group we do not belong to and told to say the name and record our partner’s first thoughts. I censored the words that came to mind when my partner repeated, black, black, black, offering up words like: strong, proud, night.

After we shared our responses with the larger group, the only African American in the room, a woman twice my age, said she was disappointed with my answers.

I remember feeling misunderstood. But, but, I’m one of the good white folks…

But I get it now, I was so worried about proving to her that I wasn't racist, that I co-opted the point of the exercise and ignored the derogatory terms deep in my psyche that still come to mind: poor, violent, bad..

And if I’m not willing to unpack these derogatory words linked to “black”, then I will continue to interact with people of color in a more guarded way than with people who share my pigmentation-- and not even know I am doing so.

I’ve travelled far from that 25 year-old feminist who didn't see how poverty, racism, immigration, police brutality, accessibility were also feminist issues, not just my freedom to choose and to say "no" to a man without him claiming: No is really an alternative fact for yes because she was drunk and starting dancing with me first.

Yes, my lens has been widened since then, even if my work of unearthing biases feels at times like its only just begun. The commitment to recognize my own privilege is both communal and singular, active and reflective. It comes through relationships with people who don't look like me and through my own regular mining of my subconscious.

Its never comfortable.

My greatest teachers have been poets and children. When I first moved to Alaska, I had the honor of performing with The Black Feather Poets where I was always in the minority as a white woman on stage. And for the past eight years, I served as the counselor at the third most diverse elementary school in the country.  My son Elias, with his blond hair and blue eyes, was often one of two to three caucasian students in a room full of predominantly Alaska Native, Hmong, Samoan, Black, Hispanic, Phillipino, and Samoan children, the majority of whom lived below the poverty line, in a trailer park on the other side of the main road.

I sometimes questioned my decision to skip the alternative school route, that many of my my peers and neighbors chose, to keep my son enrolled in a Title One neighborhood school.  It could be rough at times— rough like real life. Elias saw more fights than he might have at another school, but he also saw that his differences, as a child who walked with canes, were just one of many. And I often wondered if he would have been more isolated, more of a target, in a school of middle class white kids. 

Almost everyday, I played soccer at recess with my students, fall, winter, and spring, in snow, on ice, in the rain, the mud, on blacktop, gravel, amidst the tress, around snowmen, and for a few lucky months, on a rocky field with patches of grass. I didn't always understand what the players said to each other as they yelled in their native languages, but I saw their characters, their grit, their challenges, their humor, their competitiveness, their comeradary, their sportsmanship, their resiliency, their hearts. We played the world’s game, and in so doing, they taught me to see the full humanity inherent in us all.

As I worked with their families, I began to see more and more clearly the privileges being caucasian and middle class gave me. And yet, just as racism runs deep, classism is ingrained in me as well, and I sometimes silently judged their parents for circumstances lack of money and power fosters, as if there was something missing in their character instead of generational poverty limiting their choices.

As a parent at the school, at family events, I gravitated to the few other middle class white moms and dads, the rare ones like me, from my side of the neighborhood, who gave up the privilege to choose a different educational opportunity for our kids; I didn't always make an effort to connect with the dads with the sagging pants or moms in traditional Samoan attire.

I still have so much work to do.  We all have work to do.

And I guess I want to ask my white middle class friends, myself included, with our comfortable homes and skin tones, to keep stretching. I want to remember not just the tears of inspiration I felt in that sea of pink hats, but the millions of men and women who were not free to march along with us, who could not leave their jobs, their houses, their neighborhoods, their hospital beds, their prison cells.

It is a privilege to march, even if we don't feel entitled due to our sex or identity, there are multiple steps on the ladder and we may not be on the top rung but there are people beneath us in this social hierarchy.

And please, lets extend this work beyond a day and into the way we interact with each other, across the very lines this new administration hopes to divide.

When a powerful earthquake shook Anchorage, knocking books off the shelf in my counseling office, I crawled under the table with a sixth grade boy, and as our alarmed eyes locked together the words that came to my lips were not part of any training I ever received as a counselor. 

"I love you," I told him, surprising myself with how strongly I meant it-- if this was the next big one, if the earth opened wide, we were not the color of our skin, or our status, or our religion, or our political views, but two scared souls intimately connected by time and circumstance.

Comments

[Toni]

Wow, this post gave me goosebumps! Thank you for sharing so much. I marched in our small town in Central Oregon, over 3000 turned out! It was amazing and inspiring on so many levels. You are so right, we have so much more work to do!

[Margaret]

This is beautiful, Christy. Your thoughts echo mine. White privilege is a tough to think about and accept. I like to think I got where I am by my hard work only, but can't be sure that is true. I really identified with the paragraph starting "And I guess I want to ask my white middle class friends..." It was wonderful and beautiful and empowering to watch those marches, but who was missing and why? Thank you for tackling the difficult subject, once again.

[Christy]

Thank you dear readers.. Honestly, if my friend Cat hadnt read me one of her friend's comments posing the idea that we were received so well by the police because we were mostly white, I dont know if I would have thought of it. Privilege can be so blinding-- so yes, we all need to keep opening our eyes wider and wider...

[Kristen H]

I loved marching in D.C. with my daughter and our diverse group of friends but I'm even prouder of the actions we have taken in the week since - calling our Senators and Representative, sending postcards to the President, donating to charities that work with the disenfranchised and vulnerable (and doing it in Mike Pence's honor). Your Senators (esp. Murkowski) will play an important role in the issues the marchers care about so I hope they are hearing your voice - esp about public education and Betsy DeVos since your background lends credence to your views. Keep on keepin' on!

[Christy]

Awesome Kristen! Yes, i have called Murkowski and spoke with a nice young staffer about all the reasons I oppose DeVos as both an educator and a parent. I love that you donated in Pence's name!

And one thing I didn't say in this post that gives me hope is that the March itself was organized by primarily young women of color.

March on, my fellow resisters, march on...

[CJ R]

Thank-you, again.