When did you consider, know, feel…?
Photo taken during the pandemic of a powerful Ijeoma Oluo quote muralized at the corner of Magazine and Erato streets in New Orleans.
Happy Tuesday! It’s Tax Day here in the US - a day that I’m sure many of us have strong, not so positive feelings about, but I’m writing today with some good news.
If you’ve had a chance to check out the previous week’s blog posts, I went through pondering and answering the interrogatory questions - who, what, when, where, how. The last one of the bunch is when? And I’m going to approach that question related to one’s journey away from whyte supremacy culture and towards allyship and accomplyship-ship.
When did you realize that something’s off with how our society is structured? When did you realize that race plays a critical role in every part of society - no matter how polite that society is - in modern day America?
If you’re reading this as a PGM* you probably have very early recollections of knowing and feeling this.
If you are a whyte bodied person, I’m guessing it may not have been quite as early - unless perhaps you grew up in a racially segregated or integrated place.
Maybe the early Obama years started you thinking?
Maybe Trayyvon Martin’s murder in 2012? Or Mike Brown’s murder in 2014? And subsequent uprisings in 2014 - also when BLM gained household name status?
Maybe it was the summer of 2020 with more Black bodies murdered in very public and callous ways, many by police?
Maybe it was Jan 6, 2021?
Maybe it was this most recent election?
Maybe it was this inauguration day?
Maybe it’s been in the past few months?
Whenever you’re when was - now is such an important time for us whyte bodied people to do something - to move the needle for ourselves and for our fellow humans towards liberation for all, which means we take our desire and learn some sh*t about history, our own internal biases (we all have them), and how impact and intention are both powerful. Then we turn that into action - there are things we can do! It’s not hopeless!
And, we can compost any whyte guilt and shame we have for ourselves and our ancestors, for our skin-folk into an allyship journey that moves towards compassion, repair, and a deep sense of care.
In writing this, I’ve reflected on when my when was and I can’t point to a specific moment. I do know that Trayyvon Martin’s murder was 2012, when I was in law school, after learning deeply about Constitutional Law, much of which I read as ways in which the state and people in power and society justified racism and the unequal distribution of human rights. I remember being particularly frustrated in that time and having deep and powerful conversations with many of my Black friends about how this could be a turning point moment.
And, here we are over a decade later grappling again with many of the same questions.
I have an offering to help us on that journey to allyship - Liberation 101: The Crossroads of Desire, Knowledge, and Action. It’s a 6 week-self-paced online course for cis/het whyte women hungry to do more. The Spring Cohort launches May 12th. Make sure you get all the news - like early bird discounts - by signing up here to receive messages about the course.
Feel free to reach out to me with any questions or reflections - andrea@andreacameron.co ; I’d love to hear from you!
*I use PGM (people of the global majority) interchangeably with BIPOC - Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.
