Make no mistake that many racialized people who are sensitive to the reality of White Supremacy are in deep pain today, consciously or unconsciously.
For those of us who are unconsciously in pain, I pray for an awakening to the pain, so that the necessary treatment can begin.
For those of us who are consciously in pain I pray for support through the pain and sadness, and hope that treatment is close at hand.
Today, some people will be celebrating and others will be sitting in disappointed disbelief.
And I guarantee that we think that here in Canada, and wherever you read from in this world today we are better, or you may think that we are doing just fine.
And in the midst of all of that I just want to say that I can so clearly see that we are not okay.
We are not okay.
White supremacy and its pillars patriarchy, racism, and xenophobia are being given new life because we are choosing to pretend that it is not a virus which is deeply embedded in us. We keep blaming “those people” without stopping to look at ourselves. If we could see the disease in ourselves, we would work towards healing, and then we would be more compassionate and less contemptuous, and there would be change as we worked together to build a better world NOW on Earth as it is in heaven.
In 2020, we watched the horrific personification of White Supremacy as Derek Chauvin kept his knee on George Floyd’s neck refusing to believe that he was robbing a human being of life.
We blamed the police as if the police were not living by the same policies which run the whole world. I did too. Until I recognized that I was blaming and scapegoating which meant that I was not really looking at the truth.
We flocked together to create scapegoats of police, and Derek Chauvin. We othered and othered instead of looking at ourselves to try to understand how this injustice could continue to be perpetuated.
We continue to turn our faces away in shame from the traumatic core injuries that allow the every day racist abuses that deplete our mental and emotional health and rob us all of healthy neighbourly connection.
I know that what we really want is to be in kind loving neighbourly connection with each other.
I wish that when we saw an ill in others we would pause to check in to see if that ill is also present in us. I wish that we would get curious about why.
I am still hopeful as I observe exactly what I expected to be. I am also sad that what I expected to happen has happened.
Contempt has never elevated our world.
I hope that this time around we will humanize and analyze, instead of demonize so that we can get to the path of healing which we so deeply need, so that we can have the energy and focus to be a part of the power that smashes the poisonous thrones of supremacy to bits, to create a new and loving world together.
The creator of the content in the link above did a great job of showcasing the absurdity of forceful guidance. And this is what many think great leadership looks like.
Our world is in trauma expecting freedom to come through violence.
This shows why we think that name-calling is effective therapy.
This shows why we lean towards harsh coaching and think that it is effective.
This is how we think God is.
This is sad.
We deeply underestimate how much power God has packed into the rare moments of connection to counteract our deeply flawed harsh ways.
Can we even fathom how much more effective healing spaces would be if we intentionally incorporated gentleness?
I’m so grateful that God sees our hearts and compassionately brings Their glory to the room even when we think that barbarous rivers of blood literally or figuratively are what we need to be successful.
From Solomon’s forced labour and barbarous sacrifice, to parents fear tactics to force good behaviour, to hell-fire threatening religious beliefs, to neutral disconnecting aloofness, we are deeply misinformed about how to work together to mine for the gold of love.
But God shows up anyway and magnifies our 30% best.
What if we consciously moved through the struggle to get to gentleness the other 70% of the time?
Black lives cannot matter as long as the lives are Black.
Whiteness will always wield a colonizer’s whip and carry the harshness of supremacy.
BIPOC will be inferior as long as they are BIPOC.
Because there is great power in names.
When we become people again we will rise.
When we grow into being our real selves, just beautiful people, we will collectively finally be free.
This might seem like an obvious or a foolish statement depending on who reads and their perspective or experience.
Nevertheless let me also state that in order for us to become simply people again we will individually and collectively have to face and weed out the racist supremacist ideas that have been planted in us which have made us take on the functional identity of White and then other – BIPOC.
Good day, family. May peace, health, and every branch of lovingkindness be known to be ours.
Let me clearly state that in order for us to become simply people again we will individually and collectively have to face and weed out the racist supremacist ideas that have been planted in us which have made us ALL take on the unconsciously functional identity of White and then other – BIPOC.
When we begin to see each other as PEOPLE there will be zero concern about being minority or majority. We will finally be able to work together without anxiety.
I will continue to speak and work FOR this to become reality.
A public speaker once invited anyone who wanted to engage in conversation about racism in North America to converse with them. They were focused on sharing the idea that Euro-descended people were in danger of being marginalized because of Affirmative Action, and social justice movements for equity.
They became very angry when I insisted that Western wealth was built on the backs of Afro-descended people. They were happy to hear that I did not support Affirmative Action although we had different reasons for not supporting Affirmative Action. I believe that it is a policy which whitewashes the reality of ongoing inequity. He believed that it was putting Euro-descended people at a disadvantage which was jeopardizing his children’s future.
Another person associated with them suggested that it was their experience that Afro-descended people could not be trusted to manage funding in their communities because they misused and misappropriated funds.
When I was operating a nonprofit organization on my own and seeking funding they continued to suggest that I was failing to live within my means because I was looking for funding to operate.
They remain staunch in these beliefs even though the nonprofit work to which they are connected operated by seeking funding through donations to function while I was raising all my funding by working WHILE operating.
Although in many ways they were kind and neighbourly and once considered friends they fail to see how their various beliefs informed our interactions, their idea of whom I SHOULD be, and how they could save me.
We need to understand that the sick system of White Supremacy feeds this fear and hero mentality because they do not see us all as equals who are equally capable of living well when investments are made in us all.
The paternalism of White Supremacy sees Whites as providers and managers and stewards while the rest of us are labourers to support the system.
Therefore in relationships with non-Whites there is huge fear of being unable to provide which creates perpetual anxiety, fear, and a deeply held unconscious scarcity mindset.
This all creates significant barriers to being consistently good neighbours and friends with the ability to see each other as just people working together to build and maintain a thriving ecosystem.
It is even worse when immersed in Christianity in the Western World which is also deeply rooted in paternalism and supremacy.
In addition to clearly naming intimate partner violence we need to be clear that this is FEMICIDE.
Femicide has increased in Canada since 2020. We know this because a group of women became curious as they observed the happenings in the world and began to track and do research to find out if their observations had value. What they discovered is disturbing and is the reason that feminism is important and essential work. It frees women from the harmful ideas attached to womanhood that rob women of the right to exist and to LIVE as autonomous free beings who bring equitable value to the world as WOMEN.
The femicide watch does not include the data for women who continue to live with intimate partner violence. Each victim named is a woman who was murdered by their partner or another male because of our systemic unhealthy ideas of women’s obligation to submit to male rulership which is subliminally translated as ownership.
I love it when the Spirit of God blows my mind, as He breathes life into my character with simple words through someone else. We all matter. God loves when His community of believers grow together, with authenticity.
On April 5, she paused during a meeting, looked me in the eyes, and said, “Don’t throw your pearls before swine.” I heard her. You know, the kind of hearing where time seems suspended as rainbows, stars, and love-tinged promises bathe your mind. I heard her. I heard Him. My Father spoke through her, and when later I would tell her how that the third yime that she had unknowingly profoundly affected my thought process, my outlook, and my character, she was in awe of how our Father loves His daughters.
“Don’t throw your pearls before swine.” Jesus first said those words thousands of years ago. In that moment, when she spoke those words, He was advising me to be careful with whom I shared my dreams and my vision. Not everyone has an eye for pearls of great price. I heard Him, and right there in that space, and in other spheres, some minor clouds were lifted. I saw what He needed me to see, and my heart rested.
But somehow it rested with a tinge of arrogance. Because of course, I was not “the swine”. And so He took me in hand again. One day, I expressed a thought out loud, fortunately, only to myself, and immediately felt as I imagine Peter might have felt as the rooster crowed, and his eyes met Jesus’ knowing compassionate gaze. Oh the shame. Yes child, sometimes we each are “the swine”. We don’t see the value in the person in front of us, and we therefore miss the opportunity to make connections, to build community, to show love, that could literally be world-changing.
So while you must be careful not to throw your pearls to swine, check your nose, and be sure that it’s not a snout. Love wins.
https://youtu.be/IG6QIoF3Frc?si=1lM-UhCo0kcV1Gu0 God recently reminded me that I have always continued to try to show up as a neighbour even while wrestling with the wounds inflicted and wielding weapons of destruction in this experience of good and evil.
Often rearranging our home and life to make space for someone, investing in equipment to make their stay as comfortable as possible, sleep-deprived nights supporting people in and outside of our home, showing up when they needed help, adjusting our days to support them, jumping into their vehicle or taking mine for the ride into the city, or to some appointment so that they would have company and extra hands and eyes to handle their little people, and extra ears to hear, interpret, and advocate while continuing to work on my handy dandy little pocket warrior which the rest of the world calls a phone, listening to hopes and fears, celebrating wins and being available to listen to fears and anxieties day and night, sometimes very late at night, investing time and money in challenging my norms and moving towards healing etc. etc. etc.
Because when a barrage of major storms hit our family back to back and I had to ask for help it cut me so very deeply that some people expected an apology because they showed up for us and I was so battered while trying to keep our ship afloat that I did not do things exactly as they wanted or expected.
It’s been eye-opening to see how many people have been willing to take liberally while seemingly counting and keeping a tally of every second that they give.
It’s been incredible to see how many people think that giving means that the receiver has no right to use their voice to express their perspective about the experience.
It’s been more incredible and deeply saddening to see how many of us don’t even know that we have received, because we so misguidedly use money as the measure of giving.
God needed to remind me that I am a good neighbour because I was really struggling with depression at losing whom I thought were friends, and depressed with the thought that I must really not have much to offer at all.
God needed to remind me that I am a good neighbour because I have been unapologetically fighting this fight as a human being living in the experience of good and evil, consistently fighting to love through the experience of good and evil, continuing to seek to honour freedom in this experience of good and evil, consistently sharing the message that we win when we wrestle with openness and honesty to feel and heal the wounds made in this experience of good and evil.
God needed to remind me so that I could keep being a good neighbour who was open to having God scold me when I was forgetting to show up with love.
God needed to remind me that there were periods of my life where I enjoyed pinning a fellow wrestler mercilessly to the wall with my tongue and relished keeping them pinned to that wall in my mind.
God needed to remind me of all of this so that I could keep loving people since we are all wrestling to figure out how to consistently be neighbours, because we are all people worth fighting for.
And while I strive to be a good neighbour, I get to be human worth fighting for too.
“I am a safe person” is a false statement which is a product of shame, and prevents true healing and growth.
What Moms Against Racism says in response to this declaration of safety is the very reason that I feel a strong need to encourage us to challenge the shame attached to racism so that we can accept that we ALL have to dismantle the roots of White Supremacy/racism within us.
We tend to become very attached to the idea that we are safe people because of the pain that we have experienced when we have felt unsafe. Emotional pain is as palpable as physical pain. That pain connected to resentment and unforgiveness as life preservers creates a layer of shame which we throw on the person whom we feel has hurt us. That layer of shame marks them as bad people whom we should avoid so that we can survive.
The cognitive dissonance associated with racism creates deep emotional pain. Instead of looking inward to challenge and resolve the dissonance, we turn our resentment and unforgiveness outward towards the subject whom we are struggling to honour, and make them a bad person, because shame makes us feel that we must find a source of pain outside of ourselves in order to survive. Our pain then becomes the fault of the person against whom we are racist. If we acknowledge that our own dissonance is ultimately the source of our pain then we would have to acknowledge that we have been shaming ourselves. If we have been shaming ourselves then that would make us individually bad and unsafe for ourselves and if we are bad and unsafe for ourselves it is impossible to survive.
Until we face this truth we exist in the intense pain of survival mode using immense amounts of energy just to fight to stay alive.
What we truly mean in our hearts is that SOMETIMES we are safe people AND we continue to be open to dismantling racist/supremacist roots that exist in us from more than 500 years of conditioning.
That openness and compassion towards ourselves creates peace which gives us the energy that we need to wrestle to heal and soothe ourselves. We can then extend that compassion outside of us and we struggle less to survive. We become more able to turn our energy towards thriving in the chaos of the process of creating beautiful monuments of love together.
Regarding racism: recently I excitedly shared that I was challenging the whiteness in me – whiteness IS supremacy. No people are white. The designation of Whiteness caused some people to think it okay to take sexual power away from their enslaved people, and either breed them, rape them, or have a sexual or platonic relationship with an imbalance of power.
Anyone offended by the reality that as a descendant of enslaved people I have had to fight with the whiteness which was forced into me, AND also fight with external whiteness which seeks to keep me subordinate, is either unconsciously maintaining or consciously choosing to maintain the roots of supremacy.
That struggle to maintain supremacy comes through in relationships, and ignored it breeds resentment and supports a continued imbalance which means that people in such relationships may be neighbours and CANNOT be friends.
Friends are equals. Friends can freely live with equal power. Friends are heard. Friends are known. Friends understand the struggle and mutually support each other through it.
Everything else is at best neighbourly acquaintanceship and at least tentative untrusting toleration.
If we are to love our neighbours as we love ourselves then we need to listen as openly and as generously as we want others to listen to us.
Where there is an imbalance of power in a system of oppression, if those who are unjustly designated as dominant want to create a safe environment they need to create equity by centering those who are oppressed, consciously shifting a portion of their power on to the side of the oppressed.
The oppressive system of White Supremacy has conditioned those designated as White to believe that they naturally know more, and are naturally more competent than those who are not White.
Therefore until they persistently invest in eradicating the virus of supremacy so-called White people (WP) will always unconsciously struggle to relate as equals to so-called Coloured people (CP). When they are faced with competence in so-called CP’s, WP’s naturally unconsciously assume that such competence best serves to generate the WP’s profit. They cannot see the CP’s competence as equal, with the capability and the right to generate profit of its own. Therefore CP’s competence is seen as a gift to the WP’s system.
When there is a crack in the system which allows WP’s to be faced with the wounds which CP’s bear as a result of oppression under White Supremacy, White Saviour complex is activated. White Saviour complex distorts CP’s wounding and relays it as incompetence.
White Saviour complex is a function of cognitive dissonance where the reality of innate equality battles the fallacy of innate superiority, which results in WP’s needing to create a plan to save CP’s for clout, in order to preserve White sanity, which is White psychological profit at the expense of CP equity and agency.
That is not safety.
A person is always safe when they can consistently set aside defensiveness, and slow down to listen to AND believe a person’s lived experience without elevating their ideas and plan for success as the center of the relational experience. A person is always safe when they can always discuss and plan together with openness and flexibility. A person is always safe when they can hear the reality of another’s experience without feeling a crack in their identity.
Defensiveness or apathy from a person in a position of power who is perceived to have done harm is received as oppression.
Intention does not matter when experience is ignored.
No human being becomes unconsciously competent at being consistently safe without repeatedly consciously engaging in being challenged on the obstacle course of relationship in THIS world which is littered with mounds of supremacy.
Pushing away listening to the experience of microaggressions/unconscious racial abuse means that the White Saviour is repeatedly centering themselves and steamrolling over CP’s thereby maintaining the system of White Supremacy.
This holds true for all systems of supremacy: parental supremacy, religious supremacy, ableist supremacy, gender supremacy, educator supremacy etc. etc. etc.
I had this very experience with a mother who was a client.
I intended to be safe, I was trying to be safe, AND because I felt a sense of urgency to achieve success to prove that my ideas around fixing the cracks in the child protection system were valid, I did not take the time to LISTEN to her continuously express that she was hurting deeply from being misunderstood and oppressed, and needed to heal.
So although I was successful in advocating for her to have much increased time with her children, and although her social worker accepted that some of the system’s concerns were not valid, and so moved forward with a plan to help mom transition to reunification, mom did not, and still does not feel safe with me.
Although the social worker extended mom’s grace period by two to three years before beginning permanency planning, mom still felt that I was a part of the system – and although I functionally was not, I essentially was no different to the system, because I failed to listen.
I learned a lot from that. As a parent, I’ve also learned a lot in that regard. Safety is not a reality unless there is freedom to be heard and shifts made in equitable discussion.
Living equitably does not mean living without boundaries. Finding boundaries with equity is a complementary challenge because we can only really know the difference between boundaries and controlling manipulatively when we truly feel personally unoffendably safe.
Tupac was a lyrical genius and a very deep thinker. Life was rough in many ways for him and so he was also deeply wounded.
Recently I listened to an interview with Dave Chapelle. Dave was asked if he had a close relationship with Tupac. Chapelle asked one question: have you ever felt the energy in a gathering where Pac was?
Pac had really close and dear friends AND sometimes the wounded part of his energy was difficult for those who were very sensitive to it, and who had not yet learnt to be safe no matter what.
I can almost absolutely guarantee that Dave Chapelle today would have been good friends with Tupac whether Pac was able to heal or not. Well not necessarily good friends but at least good neighbours.
That’s because personal healing is the determining factor in the enjoyment of safety and freedom anywhere.
This is a core part of the truth in Aunty Maya Angelou’s statement that we belong everywhere when we first belong to ourselves.
I needed that reminder today as I continue to move towards belonging to myself, and therefore become an actual part of everything in the truth of the oneness of us all.
This does not negate the need to maintain sensible boundaries, and does not remove the need for accountability and integrity in relationships.
Boundaries, accountability, and integrity are supporting pillars in the oneness of us all.
As an Afro-descended woman living in North America, I speak for love and freedom. I speak from God’s gift of sensitivity to White Supremacy with the birthright of divine authority passed down through my enslaved African ancestors who continued to be free though exploited, and who did the hard work of healing so that they did not wreak vengeance on their enslavers.
I stand on their hope-filled shoulders with the clear power to see the evil which continues to shape shift in an effort to maintain the system of White Supremacy in order to keep us divided in fear and scarcity as enslaver and enslaved.
I am not casting stones, because I heard Jesus when He said, “Whomever is without sin, cast the first stone”.
I heard my mother deliver the message from my maternal ancestors that I must speak as they did for love and freedom even while I wrestle to love and be free.
I heard my father deliver the message from my paternal ancestors that I am a grace-full queen who must wrestle with God for my inheritance of forgiveness.
I chose to feel the pain of White Supremacy so that our world could have the opportunity to heal, so that we could choose to turn to our merciful Creator God who wishes to lift the evil one’s burden of shame in exchange for freedom in love for a thousand generations, through forgiveness.
And so today I speak these words for all and not against other.
The modern system of White Supremacy has been elevated among us from the 1400’s when Prince Henry of Portugal was influenced by forces that he did not understand to begin a war against freedom in order to feel significant.
The “explorers” brutality towards Indigenous people in the Caribbean, and African people in Africa is well documented. They stole land, enslaved natives for forced labour, and used them inhumanely for sport, with the blessing and encouragement of the country’s religious leaders.
Henry was deceived into believing that he would be more powerful if he could conquer and rule others. The deceiver devised a plan that would not just be restricted to geographic land squabbles. In order to divide and conquer all of humanity the deceiver planted seeds that would reap a harvest worldwide. If war on Earth was tied to survival by amassing riches, and if the enemy was identified not by geography but by the colour of skin, then humans would forever be at war. There would never be peace.
And there began the expansion of war to a global battle. No matter what geographic squabbles rose and fell, this global battle was created to last, through the deadly pandemic spread of the virus of White Supremacy. Religious Supremacy is a tool of White Supremacy.
It affects us all. It infects us all. Healing will only come when we acknowledge that we are all infected by this iteration of the original sin of supremacy, and its by-product shame, which propels us to run away to hide ourselves with whatever defensive leaves we can gather, and to blame each other.
There is no white, or black, or red, or yellow among us. We are humans.
The shame and division created by Supremacy robs us of vulnerability. It robs us of the freedom of being confidently naked with each other.
We crave the leaves of apologies and restitution instead of embracing the nakedness of forgiveness and vulnerability.
Arguing about the reality of the various strains of Supremacy is as foolish as arguing about whether or not COVID-19 is a real disease while millions die and others suffer varying long term effects of the virus.
As surely as all of us, and every child born hereafter will be exposed to COVID just so it is with White Supremacy.
It was a disease that first infected us in the 1400’s. The cure is love, compassion is the vaccine, and forgiveness is the oxygen used for healing.
We were not gifted with a sensitivity to Supremacy to feel superior to others. We were gifted with a sensitivity to Supremacy so that we could compassionately offer each other the opportunity to turn to love for the oxygen of forgiveness, so that we could return to the confident unmasked nakedness of vulnerability.
I hope that we choose love, forgiveness and the vaccine of compassion. None of these is passively received, all are freely available, and require action and commitment to the process of healing.
And so when we find ourselves clearly seeing Supremacy of any sort in the world, if we do not see our own struggle reflected therein may we recognize that this means that we are still actively infected, and need to turn to receive the cure of love, the oxygen of forgiveness, and regular boosters of compassion.
If we continue to deny the existence of Supremacy in us we are sentencing ourselves to death be it slow and steady or swift.
Nurturing Kindred 