Finding my people and healing from white supremacy
[Music]
hi
my name is mandy and first and foremost
i want to thank
my friend and chosen family member dr
david and gweny for inviting me to this
platform
today i want to share some of my
learnings and stories about healing from
white supremacy
here’s part one who are your people ella
joe baker was a brilliant civil and
human rights organizer for more than
five decades
when meeting people she was fond of
asking the question who are your people
she meant where do you come from but
also who do you identify with
i want to start with this question
because when it was first shared with me
a couple years ago
i honestly didn’t know how to answer i
didn’t really remember which jumble of
european countries my ancestors came
from
i didn’t feel connected to methodism
which my mom practices
and didn’t really know if i should claim
my father’s jewish identity
religiously or culturally i didn’t want
to claim my whiteness
in fact i was actively judgmental of
other white people
i didn’t feel especially proud of my
hometown a wealthy white central new
jersey town a couple miles up the road
from trenton
but more like a world away from it
i’m queer and polyamorous but those
words can sometimes cause a reaction
that makes me feel more isolated than
connected
everything else felt trivial i’m a bread
baker
a gardener a vegan someone who loves
birds
and most everything in the natural world
james baldwin said the following
one of the things that most afflicts
this country is that white people don’t
know who they are
where they come from and that’s why you
think i’m a problem
but i am not the problem your history is
and as long as you pretend that you
don’t know your history you’re going to
be the prisoner of it
in the pursuit of being able to answer
ella baker’s question
i spent some time investigating my
ancestors
and myself i learned that i come from a
french cabinet maker
a german wagon maker and a carpenter
somehow acquired married into or were
born onto
family farms in settler communities in
wisconsin
i know of at least one ancestor living
in chicago who served in the civil war
for the union
there are stories of survivors of
shipwrecks in haiti
and a family member lost to yellow fever
while making the voyage
they had the means to hire domestic and
farm workers
and then during world war ii their land
was worked by german war prisoners
one of them saved the state’s cabbage
crop one year and had a local school
named after him
they were able to talk their way out of
bootlegging and train hopping
after being caught by the police
my grandmother grew up very fast when
her brother died in the war
and her mother passed shortly after
i also come from a norwegian and
englishman whose stories of emigration
are lost i come from a fire truck driver
and women who hosted borders
during the depression one of my
grandfather’s parents couldn’t afford to
keep him fed
and sent him away to his aunt’s home
i’m the descendant of russian and
ukrainian jews fleeing persecution in
the late 1800s
one line of these jewish ancestors last
name was lost
either due to error or assimilation
i come from polish jews who were
prominent fur traders in europe
extended family members were among those
murdered in the holocaust
including at auschwitz i come from
a pajama manufacturer real estate
investor
furniture wholesaler and an event
planner who all settled and thrived
among their family
and their jewish and eastern european
communities in philadelphia
all of my grandparents went to college
and were the first generation to do so
and both grandfathers served in world
war ii
i come from people who loved to collect
things rocks
dishware cars political memorabilia
tools antiques i’m the descendant of
journalists
salesmen cancer survivors people who
struggled with addiction
and mental health battles and people
committed to charitable and service work
i have ancestors who were in the united
states as slavery reached its peak
with nearly 4 million people enslaved
perhaps some of them had witnessed slave
trading
during stopovers in the caribbean and
the american south in the 1830s and 40s
i have ancestors who were in the united
states as the country was completing the
final displacement
of american indian people onto
reservations
and beginning to send their children to
schools intended to erase their cultural
traditions
the first ancestors of mine arriving to
the united states
lived on the stolen unseated land of the
kika poi
peoria kaskaskia miyamiya
ocheti shakowi patawaptami
sak and meskowaki winnebago
and leni lanave
have ancestors who wouldn’t have been
considered white until the end of world
war
ii as jews also became middle class
their neighborhoods in philadelphia
were redlined and disinvested as they
also became majority black
the gi bill arguably the most massive
affirmative action program in u.s
history
offered college and very cheap home
mortgages to my grandfathers
james baldwin also offered the following
white means that you are european still
and black means that i’m african
and we both know we’ve both been here
too long
you can’t go back to ireland or poland
or england and i can’t go back to africa
we will live here together or we will
die here together
my family has very very few cultural
traditions for my european ancestors
that persisted into my lifetime i do not
feel connected to france
germany poland norway england russia
or ukraine and yet
this exploration has helped me begin to
answer ella baker’s question
and james baldwin’s call for
accountability
i will assume complexity in the lives of
my ancestors
as i would wish anyone to assume
complexity about my life
looking at what i know about my
ancestors i see moments of poverty and
discrimination that could have linked
our lives to larger struggles
perhaps my ancestors would be dancing
for joy that me and many in my
generation are actively pursuing
anti-racist and anti-capitalist futures
nonetheless the family has histories
that i intend to reckon with
are those of race and class privilege
the disproportionate ability
to build generational wealth that makes
me upper class today
and the cycles of remaining comfortable
in our positions of power and
opportunity
okay here’s part two healing from white
supremacy
there’s something i need to remind
myself again and again
everyone raised in the united states is
raised within racist and oppressive
systems
i don’t believe that anyone is
inherently bad including white people
but all people have racism reinforced
into us
whether external or internalized racism
simply by living in the united states
we are born into systems much larger
than us
a toxic culture of whiteness that
conditions us
however we’re not powerless we can and
must intentionally walk ourselves
away from that socialization
it is vulnerable to confront and admit
to the lies we have believed
that white people are somehow superior
to others
it is safer and more emotionally secure
to take ourselves to be innocent
however white supremacy doesn’t only
cause hell for black folks
as princeton professor eddie claude
points out quote
it is literally deforming and
disfiguring the character
of the people who embrace it unquote
if we aren’t confronting the lies we
were taught we adjust ourselves to
injustice
the place where i grew up hopewell
valley in central new jersey
is largely a place of abundance
preserved green space
a topped ranked school district and a
median income of about 135 thousand
dollars
i was instilled with the belief that
hopewell is a progressive community
that lives out the values of
open-mindedness and open arms to the
diversity of the world around us
i saw the problems of the world
happening elsewhere
down the road in trenton or across the
global south
in so-called developing countries in
reality my hometown has been a place of
violence
direct and structural a neighbor
in my hometown renata barnes recently
wrote the following
in truth our own sourland mountains are
soaked in the tears
sweat and hopes of first generation
slaves
as their descendants drive the roads
that began as trails beaten back by
their ancestors
in my lifetime i went to schools and
lived in a neighborhood that was
deeply segregated from the majority
black
and latinx state capital trenton just a
few miles down the road
one of the things that i learned growing
up was a white savior complex
i was very subscribed to the idea that i
needed to help or fix
black communities near and far
my first significant experience within a
community of color
was traveling to kenya as a 15 year old
with my biology teacher
dr nguyen who took us around the country
and to his own hometown
i romanticized the ways of life i
observed in kenya
perhaps i was craving the aspects of
kenyan cultures that
white culture did not provide me but
simultaneous simultaneously i came home
and set upon essentially making
decisions about what is best for other
people
what food to buy for distributions in
trenton for example
or what projects to fundraise for in
rural kenya
flash forward to my first job after
college and i found myself having a
quarter life crisis
feeling like my job at a mainstream
environmental organization was
completely unfulfilling
but i couldn’t quite put my finger on
why this seemingly mission-driven place
was so disappointing and why i felt such
guilt about how i spent my days
i had a huge awakening when i first read
the characteristics of white supremacy
culture
the analysis of kenneth jones and tema
oaken
i could apply every single
characteristic to my workplace
paternalism perfectionism urgency
individualism objectivity
fear of open conflict defensiveness
a preference for quantity over quality
believing in only one right way to do
things
trying to simplify complex things
hoarding power and expecting a right to
comfort
i also realized that this culture was
one that i knew deeply
and had perpetuated throughout my own
life
i’ve been learning that guilt and shame
can be important for mobilizing people
with privilege
but they can also become toxic if we sit
in them
it does not serve anyone to allow these
feelings to drive you to anxiety
and depression that is debilitating
it does not serve anyone to allow these
feelings to drive you to anger
and hostility or self-righteousness and
elitism
towards people you love
for people like me people with race and
class privilege
to be in solidarity with people unlike
myself and
to be able to successfully call in other
people with privilege to hard
conversations
i believe we have to heal from our own
pain
from internalized white supremacy
i’m still learning how to pursue healing
but here’s what it’s looked like for me
so far in one instance where i caused
harm
to a black housemate she called in two
healers
to facilitate a dialogue though we
didn’t heal our relationship
in large part because of my own guilt
and shame that i trapped myself in
these healers were essential to
reframing my thinking
later sandra kim founder of everyday
feminism
and re-becoming human helped me
understand my own need to build
emotional capacity
to understand the realities of white
supremacy and how it to humiliate
dehumanizes white people to reconnect
with myself
reconnect with my lineages and reconnect
with nature
i found i needed therapy and medication
over time i began practicing getting
more rooted in my body
using breathing and meditative exercises
getting outside to walk every day and
dancing with my partner
i have found communities for healing
conversations with other white people
with wealth and class
privilege and other white people in my
neighborhood
i found healing in redistributing the
excess wealth and income
that i do not need i’ve slowly been
reconnecting with my jewish identity
through holidays
events hosted by a wonderful local group
and being in community
with my partner and another jewish
housemate
i have the honor to work at one of the
oldest and largest civil rights
organizations in the country
to organize with brilliant neighbors who
are defending public housing and
supporting
mutual aid during the pandemic and to
live
in a multi-racial and cross-class
intentional community
of artists and activists to show up in
these spaces as a white person
means constant self-reflection and
accountability
i think about ella baker’s wisdom for
how i participate in the movement for
collective
liberation she quote pushed
college students to see illiterate share
cop
sharecroppers as their people their
allies and their political mentors
she pushed northerners to embrace
southerners in principled solidarity
she organized back and forth across
various color and cultural lines
and across generational divides unquote
solidarity means finding my own stake in
racial justice
and slowly i think i’m getting there
along the way i’m finding that who i
consider my people
is growing and growing and i’m feeling
more and more myself thank you