becoming woke

Yesterday was a hard day. Not because my candidate didn’t win, although that does suck, my candidate didn’t win in 2004 either (I really love politics and cared far before I could vote) and I woke up the next day bummed but not in grief. Yesterday was hard because America was supposed to be further along than this. This election result brought to light how much work we still have to do to unify this country. That our efforts toward equality are working but we still have a long way to go. We knew this, but I think we thought we had made more progress. So, yes, yesterday and for a while about half of this country will be grieving. And that is okay. The other half of this country is excited and that is also okay. But there are a few things we need to talk about.

The reason I am grieving, the reason I’m afraid is not because Donald Trump has been elected President. I’m not afraid of him personally. I’m afraid of the people who voted for him based on his promises to do things like build a wall, ban Muslims, and overturn marriage equality. Because he spoke in debates about how great stop and frisk was and he has said that women who have abortions should be punished. What scares me is not his words, while they are awful and not representative of the country I love… they are just words. The actions those words have inspired though? The supporters of this white supremacist rhetoric are openly in broad daylight attacking people. They are tagging buildings with swastikas and n***** and they are yelling at people to “go back where you came from.” Children, elementary age children are chanting “build that wall” towards their Latina/o classmates and telling them to “go back to Mexico.” That’s not okay. That’s not the path my country should be going down. That is not how this goes.

I’m afraid for my friends. I’m afraid for their safety and for their futures. For their kids’ futures. I’m afraid for my coworkers and my community. I am a white female, I’m not afraid for me because the worst that can happen to me is that as a women I will continue to be one step behind men until I am not. Hillary Clinton becoming President wasn’t going to magically make everyone wake up and see women as equal contenders in society. But it was going to be a pretty major step in the right direction. Much like President Obama’s service has created a space to bring racial injustice to light and a space to start discussing our biases and how we can work towards solutions. That’s what I wanted for women’s rights. I wanted a space to honestly look at the facts. I wanted young girls to see a woman in the highest political office in the world. And I wanted 20 something year old women to see that too and be inspired to create change. I wanted the 30 somethings, 40 somethings, 50 somethings women to see a woman become president and know that their work and the work of everyone before them was not for nothing. I wanted to celebrate a victory in women’s rights. And then I wanted to get back to work on racial equality, naming and working against privilege, fixing the justice system, the wage gap and women’s education around the world, domestic violence and human trafficking. That work will still happen but the moment of victory would have been nice. So, I’m grieving. For the safety of my loved ones and for the moment to take a deep breath and let my soul smile.

As I have sifted through all the numbers from the election (seriously, I love politics, the numbers, the breakdown, the demographics) one thing became abundantly clear. The bridge that has been left undone is the one between the community and people I currently know and love and the community I come from. The predominately white middle America is where the message of equality hasn’t hit home yet. White people were overwhelmingly the demographic that voted for Trump and while there are various reasons as to why there’s one big reason why not. The things Trump has said, done and incites others to do were not terrible enough to deter a vote. His views of women, immigrants, minorities, people with disabilities and the LGBT+ community are apparently not egregious enough to give pause. What this tells me is my peers and I have done a pretty great job of existing in spaces that are open to diversity while ignoring the spaces that aren’t. That’s not the best way to say that. I mean, it’s easy to say everything will be okay and there isn’t a problem when the problem doesn’t affect you or anyone that looks like you or worships like you or loves like you. That’s where the term woke comes in.

Woke is a slang term that refers to a persons awareness of what’s going on in their community/country/world. It also refers to being aware of cultures and perspectives that are not your own. Being woke to something is to not be ignorant of it.

Becoming woke is a process. One that takes time and patience and very patient people who help you realize that the way you see the world and experience life is true and honest and real but it is not the only true, honest and real vantage point. And that, currently, in this country, there are entire groups of humans experiencing a vastly different reality than that of the majority. It is learning that privilege is real, White privilege is real. And, then asking yourself what the next steps are.

I have spent the last few days doing a lot of reading and listening. I have read as many social media posts, blogs and news releases as I could and I’ve sifted through the comment sections. I have read news sources with differing biases and Facebook posts I agree with as well as ones I don’t. I’ve been trying to take in all the opinions and thoughts because I am angry and sad, so sad, but I needed to take a pulse of my circles, of the circles of strangers to see what progress has been made. It has been 2 years, 3 months and 1 day since Michael Brown was shot and while he was not the first black man killed at the hand of the police, his death ignited a conversation in this country. A conversation around racial inequality, systemic racism and inherent bias. So in reading all the posts, comments, blogs and seeing the breakdown of the votes this election I have found that in all reality the amount of progress I see is barely measurable at best. 2 years. Of anger, hurt, agony, misunderstanding, ignorance, prejudice, racism, exhaustion, apathy, sympathy, blame, and more killing. And after two days, the questions I can’t kick are: What we’ve been doing isn’t working, so what can I do differently? What audience does my voice reach? What is my roll supposed to be? What’s my most effective next step?

Which brings me to the idea of becoming woke. I am a middle class white female who truly grew up in a bubble. I spent most of college and the few years after realizing not only was my reality not the only reality, my reality isn’t even the majority. I’ve lived white privilege to a pretty textbook degree in a part of the Midwest that is protected from the rest of the world. I played outside until the streetlights came on. I ran all over town with my friends and the lock on the front door of my parents house was broken for the better part of my high school career. We didn’t lock our car doors, we left sun tea on the sidewalk all afternoon, my bike and toys laid in the front yard when they weren’t in use and walking to the babysitters as a kindergartner only required a buddy that was a couple years older than me. It was perfect and I wouldn’t change a thing about my childhood, but that did mean I had some culture shock upon leaving my hometown. And what it means now is I have a whole piece of my life full of people I love dearly that have experienced differing degrees of life outside of that community. And I sit reading post after post of responses to the fear of being deported or violently targeted, sexual assault and rape, athletes taking a knee during the national anthem and black men being shot by police officers and I see anger and confusion because their perspective doesn’t fit with the reality being presented on a national scale. And it breaks my heart because I love my friends and my home but I do not love the ugly, dismissive, unwilling, privileged words I’ve seen from some of them.

And so my question shifts… How do I connect the life and perspective I knew to the awareness I now know? How do I convince people with that shared perspective that it is not the only reality and that people are dying while we, the demographic that holds the power to quickly affect change, are unwilling to see the need for it? And we really do hold that power. We, white people, elected Trump. We hold the majority of the electorate and we hold the majority of the power because the modern world was conquered and created by us. Which also means we hold a majority of the responsibility for how things are going.

Statistics have been presented before, there is video footage of deaths at the hands of police that are hard to watch. It’s hard to watch another human be killed. There are accounts of women in Hijab being targeted and assaulted. There are police reports being filed because people are being attacked for being Hispanic or Asian and told to “go home.” It’s not just a couple people in a couple places, it’s a trend. I feel like the facts aren’t going to do much to further progress because the issue is not with the facts, the issue is with the perception of reality. The issue is with how easy it is to make excuses or water down the intensity of what is really happening. The issue is that a black man is shot and the first thing we are told is how long of a record he had, or a Latino man is arrested and we are sure to be told his legal status, an Asian man starts talking and we are shocked by their mastery of English which might just be their first language, or a woman runs for President and is called a bitch and a cunt simply because she is a woman who’s also a leader, but when a white man is very clearly a criminal… I’m talking shooting 9 people in a church, raping a women behind a dumpster kind of criminal- we hear all about how they are mentally unstable or how they are so young and have so much to offer the world. The issue is that we find ways to dismiss the mistreatment and killing of minorities because they already had warrants out for their arrest but when a man with suspected ties to terrorism that is accused of planting multiple explosives across New York City is found and detained, he is brought in alive… bloody, but alive. When that same young white man that shot up a church is caught no one touches a hair on his head while they bring him in and when a white college student sexually assaults a woman behind a dumpster he serves 30 days in jail. 30. Because we don’t want to hurt his chances at a future. What about all the non white futures?

So how do I approach a perspective shift? That’s pretty daunting. I’m not totally sure anyone has the answer to that yet because if we did we’d be better at having these conversations by now. But I can say that listening to each other, truly listening is gonna be a major key. Listening to understand not to counter with a different opinion, it’s a pretty humbling place to put yourself. To hear things about other peoples’ lives that will make you angry and sad and defensive is tough but it is so important. Listen, I understand all the anger and discomfort, the feeling that I shouldn’t be held responsible for the actions of other white people, that it’s not my fault because I’m not a racist and my family isn’t racist. I know that feeling. But consider for a second that we are asking people of color to see us as individuals to not see us as a collective “white people” but we hold minority groups responsible for everyone that looks like them. We ask people from the middle east to denounce terrorism simply because the Boston Marathon bombers were of middle eastern decent. We ask black people as a whole to denounce rioting because other black people are shutting down highways and demanding to be heard. We ask black and hispanic people to denounce gang violence because young minorities in urban areas are obviously all gang initiated. We ask women to shut down the “extreme feminism” because it’s offensive and all women must be stopped. Can you see how there’s maybe a double standard there? How we can’t ask to be seen as a singular human when we are refusing to extend that courtesy to the rest of the world?

But I want to be really honest, I want to share some instances from when I was becoming woke because I will never portray myself as perfect. I am just a couple chapters farther in the reading than some of my racial demographic. The first time I remember being hyperaware of my whiteness was in college. I started to realize that most of my friends were going to school on some kind of substantial scholarship and that I as a middle class white female didn’t have as many scholarships available to me. At first I was frustrated. My parents, according to FAFSA, were affluent enough that I didn’t need a ton of help getting through college. At least not the kind of help that doesn’t have to be paid back. So I was mad that I was going to graduate with far more student loan debt than some of my friends because I was white and of average intelligence. And then the conversations continued and I learned that many of my friends were going the be some of the first in their families to ever graduate from undergrad. That college was not just a big deal to them but something that they hadn’t always considered a possibility. I on the other hand knew I was going to college from the jump. It was just what came after high school. College wasn’t a privilege it was an expectation. And so was graduation. I come from a family full of college grads… this milestone was never in question for me.

Then I learned the difference between how I viewed my daily safety, how I still view it, and how some of my friends walked through life. Maybe this is a product of the different parts of the country they grew up in but maybe it is also a product of being hyper aware of their skin color. I have never once thought twice about walking alone anywhere, at anytime of day or night. Admittedly I am somewhat careless, I fell asleep on the train a couple weeks ago and wasn’t robbed because a kind man sitting behind me stopped the thieves (sorry mom) But I also am generally unafraid of being physically harmed at any point in time. Like when I lived in Minneapolis and found out two weeks after a flyer was posted that the Spanish words were telling me that there were people being robbed at knife point in my neighborhood at night. I walked all over my neighborhood at night, on my phone, unaware of my surroundings because why should I be. People are inherently good and I am a relatively un-intimidating white girl. No one is going to hurt me. And thus far no one has. But I have friends that carry knifes or tasers at all times. That are hyper aware of who is around them and who has been following them because they have been threatened. They have been physically unsafe while trying to walk down the street…. And I’m over here scrolling through Instagram and sipping on my coffee.

Each time a person of color is killed at the hands of police my social media feeds are full of my friends asking why their white friends are silent. And each time I feel a twinge of pain and defensiveness because I am not silent. I am speaking up. Why do you have to say all white people? Why do I have to be grouped into that? And then after about 30 seconds of a pity party I pull it together. I am just one person and the majority of my white peers are silent. It’s not about me. It’s not about any individual. And it is my privilege that allows me to think that way, even for just a second.

Lastly, at the mall I used to work at (Mall of America, that’s where I used to work) we were required to have mall ID badges to be allowed access before and after hours and to be allowed in the basement of the mall. I literally never wore that badge. Sometimes I remembered to bring it sometimes I left it in my car. For like two months I left it in a purse I stopped using and kept forgetting to get it out. I walked past mall security numerous times a day, sometimes after I called and made them open the doors after they were late, and I was asked for my mall badge one time. One time in 3 years. My minority coworkers though? They were asked consistently. When they didn’t have their badges they were brought back to the store so I could confirm that they worked there. I looked like I worked there like I belonged, while my coworkers looked suspicious. I didn’t realize discrimination still existed like that. Especially not in Minnesota. I thought we were more evolved than that.

My view of the world isn’t the only view. Your view is just as right and valid and if that means you have never encountered racism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia, anti-semitism, etc. than I am happy for you. But other people, lots of people, have witnessed it, experienced it, and dealt with it for years. And silencing them by invalidating their stories, their feelings, or their emotions is not how we solve this problem. Telling people everything will be okay even though the man we elected to the Presidency has given confidence to the people who unashamedly discriminate and seek to harm people who aren’t like us is like telling people on the West Coast that we will all be totally fine even though we are well over due for an earthquake that may put some of us on an island. You don’t know that they will be okay. You don’t know how things will turn out. You will probably be okay but your safety and well being was never in question to begin with.

Today was still a hard day. But a new thing happened today. Today white people regardless of geographical region were overwhelmingly and unapologetically stereotyped. And people were mad and hurt and confused and frustrated. White people woke up to find that all of us are being labeled as uneducated, racist, sexist, bigots. We woke up to find ourselves in the very situation we have spent centuries putting others in. And for my peers who weren’t ready, my peers who aren’t woke… today was a pretty terrible day. It doesn’t feel good does it? To be asked to answer for an entire demographic of humans simply because they look like you. And honestly, I know that my friends and family that voted for Trump aren’t racist, sexist, bigots and they have varying degrees of post secondary education. So not every person that voted for Trump is a bigot, but every bigot voted for Trump and by the logic that we, the majority, have created in this country the rest of us have to answer for the actions of some.

So I’m grieving. My soul is tired. My heart is tired. And if I am feeling this as a member of the majority? A human who has chosen to opt in to the conversation? I can’t imagine the pain and exhaustion of my peers in the minority. Like I stated on Facebook Tuesday night, I will respect the electoral college because I respect this country. I will not be protesting the electoral votes or the inauguration of President Trump. But I understand the and empathize with those who are. And I will also still be fighting for equality and safety and rest for every single human in this country/world. Regardless of race, gender, birthplace, ability or choice of significant other. That’s what love does. So let me have a moment to grieve and maybe take a moment to pause and try to see a different perspective than your own. And then let’s all get ready to keep working and fighting for the things we were working and fighting for on Monday.