My White Friends – you are not listening.

I have been very tempted, to be boundaried enough, to share screenshots here of what goes on in my private messages. Because some of you are not getting it and you need to be told in a different way it seems.

And right now, I have to break it you: most of you are still being racist. I think I need to break it down for you more, what racism really means. It is not them over there, it's you and it's us right now, daily. Most of you are still using your White Privilege and upholding the White Supremacist structure. The fact that I am even spending my time having to write this, proves that fact.

But this will be one of the few times I will give you this education for free.

My main points are this:

• Stop centring yourselves and your Whiteness
• Stop stealing my time.  
• Stop taking up space where it is not wanted. Black & POC need safe spaces. Whiteness likes to invade all spaces. Whiteness assumes that it has access and should have access to all spaces. The fact that some of you do not even think if you “should” or if it is “appropriate” to message me is proof that you do not see your White Privilege and you centre yourself over my needs. (My needs right now are to rest and heal from this pain btw… )
• Stop Private Messaging me, DMing me, Whats-apping me, emailing me. (especially if I haven’t heard from you in a long time, and you chose now to message me).
• By asking if I am “ok”, or “did I do something to upset you?” or telling me you are thinking of me “at these times” after not speaking or messaging me for weeks/months/years.
• Asking me to do the work to make you feel ok in your whiteness. Wasting my precious time and my Blackness, to alleviate your guilt and uncomfortable feelings. (have you stopped to think about mine?)
• You are centring yourself by asking for me to attend to you right now. In the middle of Black Lives Matter, when I am dealing with so much community pain. YOU want attention, you want the cookie, you want to take my time.
• This is still racism – this is White People colonising/stealing (still) from Black people. Because none of you are paying me.

• Stop looking to me as the voice of all things "Black" in your lives.
• Stop reaching out to me as your one Black Friend to speak on these things
• Blackness is not a monolith. I do not speak for, nor can I answer for ALL of Blackness and the Black Community. I am not the spokesperson. And if I am your only voice, one of your few Black Friends, then you need to look at that too.
• Stop treating racism like some arbitrary debate. This is not something for you get together and “discuss over pizza or wine”. This is not up for debate… EVER. This is not a discussion on whether apples or oranges are best. This is about a world denying humanity to the majority world population. This is about people’s lives, their dignity, liberation and freedom.
• Stop expecting Black people to be nice to you. I am having some really shitty days right now and I do not have the fucking bandwidth to always be nice. Ps. Also, by expecting Black people to always be nice to you – that is racism. Research: the Mammy figure – how Whiteness expects to be coddled by Black Womxn.  
• Again here is the expectation that your discomfort takes precedence over my life/wellbeing. Again, this is racism/White Privilege
• If it wasn’t for racism, I could just get on with my life. I literally could have written that novel, or play I still dream of. I could have created the drama training school I dream of. I could have started the family I wanted to earlier, I could have been able to save for a house or a world wide adventure trip. Racism is a thief of time and energy. And the time you take from me is part of that racist White Supremacy structure.
• Stop sharing material without thought. The effects of racism are know to elicit PTSD/ CPTSD. PTSD is  chronic and debilitating mental illness. This is what racism does. This is what suffering from racism does. Sharing images and posts without real thought and reflection, is to reintroduce trauma to PTSD’s sufferers. Again, you are centring yourself with your empty performative attempts to look like and ally, and what you are actually doing is reinforcing the racism and trauma.
• Stop watching the Help.
• Stop watching 12 years a Slave.
• Stop watching The Butler.
• Stop perpetuating the narrative  of Black = trauma.
• Stop expecting Black and POC to do the work.
• Stop putting the onus on to us to serve you the answer. Us doing the work for you, for free… guess what that      sounds and looks like???
• Stop emailing them for reading lists, or advice, or research.
• Stop calling them into your work institutions to speak on their personal experiences to validate that racism exists. Why do you people to re-enact their trauma for you to believe racism exists? Talking about racist experiences are so painful. It can trigger PTSD. Why are you asking Black and POC to do this in work spaces?
• Stop asking Black people for the answers to “solve racism” when White People created it. Racism is a White problem.
• PAY PAY PAY for the work that you take from Black and POC  

Just so we are clear: every single thing above I have mentioned is STILL racist. Still perpetuates racism. Still keeps the White Supremacist Structure intact.

Genuinely, I am not excited at all about the current “tide of change”, because all I am seeing is racism showing up but with a different face. I would rather handle an out-and-out racist than the white Liberal shit I see right now, which is fucking deadly. (read MLK on the danger of the middle ground).

I don’t think people in the UK are really ready to face themselves. Because what we are going to see is fucking ugly. I don’t think you are all really ready to do the work. Because I don’t really see anyone really listening to Black people. I see a lot of performance, action without reflection and guilt.

Black and POC have been telling you for decades what we need. You may think you have woken up – maybe you have. But you are still not listening. Time and time again we are asking you to listen, banging our heads against a wall telling you to listen -  then watch as you post a Black Square, sing a song, post a few articles, wrote an email, made a statement of “solidarity”, then go back to your day and feel satisfied that you did enough.

So go back to my previous posts and read them while they are still there. Buy Layla F Saad as a starter. Then: Be quiet. Sit still. Be uncomfortable. Listen. Do the work you were asked to do. Don’t debate. Don’t ask for a cookie. Don’t look for validation. Get on with it…

Truth

Truth.

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“Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid”

~ Hardeep Matharu (from Double Down news article) .

Truth has been missing for a long time. It has gone into hiding.

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bell hooks speaks of the greatest part of love. And she means the practice of love, of love being the verb, love being in the doing. The greatest part of love is being truthful. Truth and honesty are the nuts and bolts that build the connections that show love in action. Love without action is nothing but a performance.

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Lies have taken over and infected so much of our modern lives. In the early histories of the 20th century American Dream, the cult of persona took over person-hood as part of a community. Born into this cult of persona both personally, politically and globally, we have all constructed a Wizard of Oz style mechanical glamour. One that we exhaustively push and pull buttons behind the scenes while trying to maintain this façade.

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What is it serving?

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Short term ego based self esteem. It eases the difficulty of painful conversations. It saves us from bruising to the ego’s extreme fragility. Rather than deal, experience and understand the hurt, connect, then heal; we obscure the truth. Bury it deep inside. Instead go back to pressing buttons and maintaining the façade. Conceal and spritz up the painful truths with white lies here and there. (Isn’t it a fascinating fact of English that the term “WHITE lie” is perceived as a “harmless lie”?) anyway I digress.

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Each lie we tell ourselves, tell others, and perpetuate, creates a debt to real love, real progress, real revolution. The quote above has been with me in my heart all week. As I look around at the mountain of debt we are accruing, it scares me. Terrifies me. I see nothing but debt that will need to be paid off at a severe cost.

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Personally I’ve been facing a few of my own in the last few weeks. Lockdown is asking us to face ourselves. And trust me, if you are offered the grace of space to do this right now, I would encourage you to use this time (if you are able) to do so.

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The hubris of those lies I tell myself comes from a deep seated inadequacy. An unshakeable sense that no matter what I do I am not good enough. I am facing the points in my life where I feel I haven’t lived up to what I had hoped for myself or where I have been educated to believe I should be. In each situation, the deep frustration, guilt, shame and anger, turn out to be where I haven’t been honest with myself. Then I look towards things I want to do with this deep seated inadequacy and I am immobilised with sheer panic that I’m not good enough to fulfil them and achieve them. Because I have begun to believe the lies told about me and that I have turned into believing myself without any outside influence or manipulation.

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White Supremacy creates a hierarchy. We have almost ALL lived with this since birth. It has infected almost all of us to a greater or lesser degree. It harms those most obviously and violently at the bottom of this created hierarchy. However those closer to the bottom are closer to the truth. Closer to reality. Closer to being outside this matrix of lies. I see no love at the top of the WS hierarchy, only lies and shame all cloaked behind a false ideal of success.

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Those further up/deeper within the hierarchy have been taught that any sense of inadequacy and raising the sense of self up “through the ranks” of WS is possible. Consciously or unconsciously through the stepping on or denigrating those “below”. Those lies have to be told to ourselves over and over again to mask the inadequacy with false superiority. The sense of self is built on lie after lie about ourselves and about others. Those lies, told over and over again throughout a lifetime drag us further away from reality. The definition of Psychosis is the loss of connection with reality. bell hooks speaks of real love and connection only through the telling of truths. If there is no truth telling. No honesty. There is no real love. Only a psychosis of lies told over and over again till all connection with love and humanity is lost.

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Those of us within the WS structure have greater truth telling work to do. And I mean with ourselves. I’m not wholly about people telling others about themselves. No until we have invested all the time teaching ourselves about ourselves. Most times, it’s being in that which teaches other people best. A truthful telling of ourselves looks like being honest about where the lies we tell or believe about ourselves have harm and cause violence, disparity, and disconnection with others. As a person of mixed heritage that includes Whiteness, I have seen and I live both sides. I have spent years (and will spend many more to come) dissecting the ways in which I am not part of the system, but also a part of that system. Lies I have taken into my heart to create some version of myself that attempts and desires to rank and rate me higher in the WS system than the reality, truth and love of who I really am. Lies that disconnect me from both the truth and love.

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Loving yourself. The practice of loving yourself. Is telling yourself the truth. Being honest with yourself.

(This is why I am not here for “self-care”. Self care speaks to caring about the self only in the way that you can then go and serve your capitalist function. Self care does not speak of revolution. Love and Truth are the only languages of revolutionary) 

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So take this time as an opportunity, to make the decision to take an honest truthful look at yourself.

I ask this, because right now I see a lot of hiding from our guilt and shame. Action and zero reflection on who we really are. If we really want to dismantle White Supremacy, we need so much more reflection than I am seeing right now. Reflection & understanding MUST come before action.  We MUST going and look within before we storm without. I started this type of therapy in 2016. I made a conscious and wilful decision to step into therapy that specifically looked at finding meaning (Logo-therapy). I still feel like I have only just started (and I have only just started). So a Black Square on one Tuesday or a week’s worth of hashtags, is just not even gonna cut the starting ribbon on this marathon that we are on.

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Real time needs to be taken to dismantle the parts within ourselves that fear the difficult and painful road of truth and love.

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For more reading:

The cult of persona “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking” – by Susan Cain 

“All about Love” bell hooks 

“The Art of Loving” Erich Fromm 

“Man’s Search for Meaning” Viktor E. Frankl