Celebrate those Fuck – ups
I attend a couple of different ally-ship/anti-racism groups every month. Mostly these are helpful. On one of them last week we started to talk about accountability. “Good!” I thought. “Let’s declare what action we are going to take, where we see we can do more and aren’t, and hold each other accountable.” Instead, I found the conversation to steer more into a conversation of sorts around “how to be with ourselves when we fuck up and someone tells us we fucked up”. At least that’s what I heard. Mostly about how hard it is to be in the journey of undoing our white supremacy, how shameful and bad it can feel. And I get that. I do. It fucking sucks to say things that are so fucking white and normal for us we don’t even see the racism. It can feel bad but… it’s also fucking awesome. I mean, my whole fucking journey is trying to undo this shit that’s been done to me, to get rid of the illness and delusion that is White Supremacy. If someone generously tells me that I said or did something that was racist, I celebrate and express gratitude for the gift of knowledge and insight. And that gift inevitably leads to more insight and self awareness. This is the journey I choose. I choose to dismantle the delusion. Any help I can get along the way is welcomed.