The past few weeks have felt like a whirlwind of anger, guilt, learning, shame, hope, action, listening, thinking, and hard conversations. It’s June 19th (Juneteenth) and 25 days ago George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police, igniting a surge in civil rights activism and social media campaigns. As a white woman from small town New Hampshire, I began to pay attention and speak out in a way I never had before, in a way I should have long before. Many other white Americans found their way to a similar new-found sense of responsibility. Professor Bryan Monroe of Temple University writes, “Black people have lived with this kind of treatment every day for years. For centuries. But now more white people are paying attention. As Will Smith said: ‘Racism is not getting worse. It's getting filmed’.” (2020) I have seen many social media posts expressing fear that the white reaction to this very public episode of police brutality will eventually subside. They are right to be weary of the trending support, as we have not shown up as reliable allies in the past.
I always identified as “not racist”. I caused family rifts by calling out racist jokes. I featured black artists like Alma Woodsey Thomas and Amy Sherald in my art classes and engaged my mostly white students in discussions of why their work and experiences were important. I’m learning now, though, that by denying racism in myself, I was missing the point. In sharing my experience of the last three weeks, I hope it inspires others to consider how they are confronting racism in their own lives and how we can continue to show up as respectful allies. We can be--need to be--uncomfortable. We are ashamed that we did not show up as allies earlier, but we can not let that shame pin us to silence. In Daring Greatly Brené Brown writes, “Shame derives its power from being unspeakable. . . If we cultivate enough awareness about shame to name it and speak to it, we’ve basically cut it off at the knees.” (2015) Swallow the shame and let’s speak about racism.
My therapist is black. I started seeing her for anxiety last October, and she’s enabled me to do a lot of hard work. I always feel safe bringing her honesty and vulnerability, but I felt pause about sharing my grief after George Floyd’s murder. I recognized that she must have experienced this grief so many times before, and I worried that bringing mine to her would be selfish. I was worried about entering a space of grief I didn’t belong. It was the first time I felt like I needed to filter myself with her. When we met, however, my tears put pressure on that self-imposed filter and out spilled all of my feelings. I felt ridiculous sharing my pain with her, because I knew that I was experiencing only a fraction of the grief felt by people of color. She paused before speaking with thoughtfulness and compassion. She thanked me for recognizing that our experiences of these events differed, and for the remaining 40 minutes of the session we talk about white guilt, family dynamics strained by confronting racism, and the many ways to be an ally. She supported, but didn’t coddle me. She welcomed me to share in her grief. It was a privilege.
I began to consume black writing and perspectives as fast as I could. Donate. Read. Cry. Listen. Call it out. Don’t, however, think that a few weeks of work is going to eliminate learned racism accumulated over a lifetime. This is not work that ends.
I started reading How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi about an hour after I hung up with my therapist. I’m still working my way through it, stopping frequently to re-read and reflect. Kendi’s work shows us how silence is a powerful pillar of the racist institutions of our country. There is no such thing as not racist--only racist and antiracist. If we are not speaking out and taking action against racism, then we are enabling racism. Kendi writes, “The good news is that racist and antiracist are not fixed identities. We can be a racist one minute and an antiracist the next. What we say about race, what we do about race, in each moment, determines what -- not who -- we are.” (Kendi, 2019) To me, this comes right back to the issue of shame. We need to overcome the shame of our own racism so that we can identify and address it. Calling out racism is not a personal attack, it is an opportunity for growth. I’m learning to reflect on my missteps and share them. It is a privilege to do so.
About a week into this journey as an antiracist, a friend and colleague messaged me on Instagram. Call her “S”.
S: Hi Bri, I am interested in connecting with you and your art circle to discover new to me local artists who are also people of color? Using black out Tuesday to learn and amplify black voices
Me: It's funny, a lot of the artists I follow, I don't know what they look like. And I graduated from UNH with an all white group of art majors. I'd love to do some research and send you a list!
I look back at this and cringe. “I don’t know what they look like”!? White. THEY’RE 98% WHITE! And I shouldn’t have used UNH as an excuse for that. I did not want to admit that I followed a white-washed list of artists besides internationally famous names like Amy Sherald and Kehinde Wiley. I was ashamed. After sitting with this for a day, this was my response:
Me: I am embarrassed to say that I am not following enough black artists. I had trouble thinking of who to share with you. I'm wondering WHY. I feel myself wanting to blame it on "the algorithm", but I really think it's because of my own gravitational pull toward certain types of art. I feel like we look to see ourselves in art, and I wonder if I have inadvertently been curating an extremely whitewashed feed. A lot of galleries I follow do feature black artists so I went through, investigated, and started following a whole bunch of bad ass artists who are also people of color. I'm excited to have their perspectives. Here's my start: @calidagarciarawles @kaylamay_art @ninachanel @lornasimpson @iamsibbotery
It’s only a start. These artists are not local to me, and I’m finding that there is extremely limited representation in New Hampshire. Part of my work going forward is to actively seek out artists of color, especially locally. I’ve seen artists rightly frustrated with white people following them solely for being black, and it’s important to note that support should come from a place of genuine admiration and not just to alleviate white guilt over an unbalanced social media feed. That being said, we live in a world where black voices are frequently suppressed and gravely underrepresented in the art world. According to an estimate published Art Net News, “85% of artists represented across 18 museums in the US are white. . . This is, notably, significantly out of step with the US population at large, which is 61 percent white and 50.2 percent male, according to census data.” (Kinsella, 2019) We need to do the work to make sure we are finding and supporting black artists because their art, voices, and stories matter. It is a privilege to do so.
Our society is feeling a shift. I’m feeling a shift. I hope that white people continue showing up and speaking out in a sustainable way. People of color have been carrying the weight alone for far too long. I worry about using the right words and doing the right things, and avoiding self righteousness. We can’t fight racism by marking off check boxes on a to-do list. It’s a daily, conscious practice, and we’re going to get a lot wrong as we try to be better. If I took a misstep in this piece of writing or if there are resources you’d like to share, please let me know. It’s important that we swallow our shame and make daily commitments to being better.
References
Brown, B. (2015). Daring greatly: How the courage to be vulnerable transforms the way we live, love, parent
and lead. New York, NY: Avery.
Kendi, Ibram X. (2019). How to be an antiracist. Random House Publishing Group.
Kinsella, E. (2019, February 19). An Estimated 85 Percent of Artists Represented in US Museum Collections Are
White, a New Study Claims. Retrieved from https://news.artnet.com/market/new-study-shows-us-
art-museums-grappling-with-diversity-1467256
Monroe, B. (2020, June 06). America needs white people to step up. Retrieved
from https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/06/opinions/george-floyd-ahmaud-arbery-breonna-taylor-
white-allies-step-up-monroe/index.html