Personal Transformation

So as we've moved away from the really painful histories of oppression and towards more practical sides of doing anti-racist liberationist work, it's been easier to step away from the emotional aspects. Today's session really asked us to move deep into ourselves and get in touch with our most personal fears and motivations. So I'm going to get really personal in this blog (though I'm already pushing to intellectualize it and get away from the emotions) - and I ask that if you want to read that, that you do it when you have some emotional space.

Idealized Self-Image
We did a lot of work around "idealized self-image"which is essentially the person we want people to see us as. We looked at it specifically around the theme of being a white anti-racist activist. So I was asked to describe the person I wanted everyone to think I was, and I include it here not only to expose my psyche, but to help describe the idealized self-image:

• An activist with burning passion
• A go-to resource for advice on political issues
• Someone who knows my place/role within multiracial settings/movements
• Someone who can always take criticism or being called out really constructively and never be hurt or defensive about it
  
• Someone who always calls out/critiques others in the most loving, supportive way possible

Our facilitators asked to focus on how demanding our idealized self-images are - requiring us to be awesome all-the-time, perfect, not make mistakes, etc... I know that we all say that no one is perfect, but really, sometimes it's hard to believe that people will really love you (personally or politically or ideally both) through your mistakes. As a side note (or not so side), one big transformation we need to make is creating a culture that really allows mistakes and has protocol for dealing with them loving, constructively, and supportingly. I lately feel like I've been taking a lot of risks and making a lot of mistakes which have hurt people and in turn become really painful for myself.

Fears, Doubts, and Negativity
Then we looked at the fears, doubts, and negativity inside ourselves that the idealized self image sets out to protect. For me a really serious thing is racial inferiority - that as a white person who recognizes the slant of racial supremacy over many centuries - I will never be as valuable as a person of color; that because being white is my "original sin", I am inferior to non-white people, and can only be valuable insomuch as a I contribute to the struggle for racial justice. My work is valuable, not my person. Someone in the group talked about similar feelings, and looked at how ingrained capitalism is into ourselves that we think we are only worth as much as we can produce. Yes, that feeling is really ingrained, and it's hard for me to imagine a living society where people value each other just 'cause. I know I strive for that, I long for that, and I believe a lot of time I love my friends not because of what they do, but because of who they are. But I oftentimes don't believe people will love me that way.

I also worry that I have no real place in the struggle for racial justice, or not a place that will feel good to me - and as much as I want to have something important to contribute, that I am only useful as a shuttle of resources and support to people of color who are the real activists and organizers. This is a distortion of white anti-racist analysis that says that I need to be supporting people of color led organization. One of the Catalyst staff referred to a conversation he had with a black organizer who said that he was tired of really powerful white organizers going to anti-racist trainings, getting an over-inflated sense of the negative impact of their actions on people of color, and essentially dropping out of the movement because they felt like they had no place. (this also replicates white supremacy by saying that white people's actions can make or break people of color's movements) Yes, we need to be conscientious of things, yes we need to be accountable to people of color, but we need to be doing things to be conscientious of and accountable for. I don't know if I am recreating this sentiment fully enough, it's something I'm still struggling with.

core strengths, values, and motivations
Then we were asked to look deep into ourselves with a loving lens and look at what our core strengths, values, and motivations were. This got real intense as the facilitators would ask people to step up and actually announce one of their own strengths, and then asked the rest of the participants to reflect back to them a moment when they noticed that person exhibiting that strength. For me, a lot of my motivations and values boils down to straight up love and a belief that anything is possible if we want it. That's what moves me. The love part is also a vulnerability for me because I'm real in touch with love, and crave more of it than I think I get.


Impacts
We then looked at how the idealized self-image impacted our anti-racist work and our relationship with other whites and people of color. One person brought up that she was projecting her idealized self-image so well that people believed she was all those things, got intimidated by her, and then pulled away. Another thought is that having unrealistically high expectations of ourselves then leads to others feeling that if they don't meet the same standard, they shouldn't be participating in the movement. That we often set the bar too high for ourselves or others to be able to participate.

The exercise we did at the end was joining in a circle and holding hands, then one at a time, turning to the person on your right, calling them out by name, and saying "Your leadership is needed,". Then the person on your left says that to you. It's a little hard to take seriously because the person is saying it because they're supposed to, but it's amazing how vulnerably I need to hear that from someone who I admire and believe. How do I balance believing that I am my leadership is needed and also believing that leadership by people of color is primary?