The Bridge: A White Man’s Place in the Post Pandemic Anti-Racism Movement
By: Marty Wilder
Tags: Post Pandemic, White Supremacy, Activism, Anti Racism, White Privilege

The Bridge: A White Man’s Place in the Post Pandemic Anti-Racism Movement

If you have a Black Lives Matter sign up but you are looking for a way to be more active, I challenge you to go to a browser right now and enter the name of your town and “city council” Marty Wilder Follow Jun 8 · 12 min read

Photo by kyler trautner on Unsplash

Being a Dad has really taught me to be humble. Every time a child of mine was “in trouble” it eventually came back on me in some form or another. Whether it was an example I set or mixed messages I put out or a conflict I was having that my children mirrored in their own errant behavior, I always found a place where the thing that I needed to change was me. This is not to say that I was the cause of every bad thing that happened or that my kids are not responsible for what they do. It’s just the humbling recognition that I’m not perfect, that what I do has an impact on what happens around me, and that although ultimately, I can’t change others, what I can do is change myself.

I’m finding now as I am emerging fully vaccinated from over a year at home that this life lesson I got from parenting is in full effect. I am finding that my society is “in trouble” and the errant behavior of the world is in some ways reflected in me. If I really want the world around me to be good, my part in it is to look at what I can, and what I need to, change.

I see three major “bad things” that my world is mired in: climate disaster, racism, and the pandemic. Each of these are global and potentially devastating. Of the three, the pandemic is the easiest for me to address. There is a pretty straightforward science for how to deal with it. Heck, I even own a board game of the same name that lays out the rules for winning this game and the main strategy is cooperation. Climate disaster is the most difficult for me to fathom. Despite Al Gore trumpeting the “inconvenient truth” of it 15 years ago and Jane Fonda writing a book about what I can do, I still don’t really see a clear path for my feet to follow that makes a huge difference. I continue to examine my lifestyle and try to mitigate my dependence on fossil fuels and reduce my carbon footprint, but I gotta admit, I feel out of my league. But racism is something I have contended with consciously for 35 years now. I have examined, witnessed, protested, and challenged it along with the other interrelated social injustices like sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism for long enough now that this is something I feel like I can do something about.

My strategy was to get involved in my local city government. It wasn’t hard to find a place where I was needed. The momentum to address racism is strong right now. I happened to focus on police brutality, but racism can be found in any aspect of local governance: climate justice, public health, zoning, and many others. I’m sure if you look, you can find ways to plug in at your community as well. The biggest hurdle was figuring out how to navigate the bureaucracy. (See Robert’s Rules Suck). The system of governance is clearly designed for white dominant culture and there is an expectation that anyone who wants to play has to conform. I think many well intentioned “liberal” white folks don’t recognize this and don’t realize how much of a barrier it creates for BIPOC and other marginalized voices to find a way in. The bottom line is that the establishment will not listen to what you have to say unless you follow the unspoken rules: speak calmly, don’t use “foul” language, and don’t make people in power uncomfortable.

I am finding myself in a unique position. Who I happen to be and the experiences I happen to have had place me on something of a bridge between worlds. The first thing people see about me is that I am a white man. It is important for me to recognize the privilege that affords me from the get go. This is all the more apparent to me because I used to be a woman, and I still recall the drastic difference in the ways the world received me after my transition. Because I am open about my identity, the second thing people know about me is that I am trans. Then the third and least known thing about who I am is that I grew up hard of hearing. Unlike others my age who have recently begun to wear hearing aids, I have a long history of reckoning with my disability in a world that is uncomfortable with being disabled.

Then there are the experiences I had that influence my perspective. As a military BRAT, I moved around from one subculture to another. I went to a prestigious private college in Los Angeles, which is where I was sifted down into my “place” below the wealthy class and forged my alliances with Black, Latina, feminist, disabled, and queer marginalized groups. Coming of age as a lesbian during the dawn of the AIDS pandemic also had a huge influence on me. After college, I took a circuitous career path. Burning out on social service work after only one year as a counselor in a group home, I joined the carpenter’s union. Then at the beginning of the internet boom, I got into the tech industry and database design. I later moved to an intentional community to dedicate myself to sustainable living, but ultimately did not find it sustaining. So, I went back to school to get a Master’s in Education and have spent the last ten years as a high school educator. This summary of five decades helps paint the backdrop for the current scene.

The bridge I find myself on is between the people who are being directly hurt and oppressed by the way things are and the people who are in the positions of power to make a change. At times, I feel pushed more to one side of the bridge than the other. At those times, people on the other end of the bridge begin to lose faith in me. It goes back and forth. I find myself talking to people individually who won’t listen to each other. Throughout it all, I am striving to stay in my integrity and act from my best self. I ask myself guiding questions. Do I need to say this now or can it wait? Am I the one who should speak to this or should I give someone else the floor? Am I listening to what is being said and who is saying it?

It’s humbling. There are real problems we are wrestling with. Police shoot people. People who are hurting are being kicked around by the legal system. People with privilege who conform take it all in stride and seem stunned when the system is challenged. Yet, as I meet with others and chase down the solutions to these problems, it all comes back home. For example, if we start with police brutality and look at the context, we find that the police are often responding to calls they are not trained to address. So then we propose that instead of sending police to respond to calls triggered by mental health, addiction, or homelessness we should send a civilian team of first responders who are skilled medics and mental health workers. But those people would need facilities to back them up. They would need shelters, detox facilities, and crisis centers. Our local and state governments have cut these services over the years in favor of funding more police and more jail beds. While we are waiting for the city to reverse that trend, we say that we need more prevention and intervention to address issues of poverty, health care, domestic violence, and addiction before they reach a point of crisis. And suddenly, we are looking at our own communities. What are we doing to address these issues in our cultural centers, our places of worship, our neighborhoods, and even within our own homes? It’s easy to point fingers at city councilors or mayors and blame them for things that go wrong. But it is better to propose solutions and support them. Again, I look inward. Am I just complaining, or am I coming up with a proposal? Is there something I can be doing right now to make things better?

I don’t have all the solutions. But I can see when something is wrong. I can hear the truth in what someone is saying even when they do not conform to the rules of dominant white culture. I have witnessed leaders, even the more progressive ones, in my city write off the whole police abolitionist movement simply because they say things like “Fuck 12.” There is a real danger in doing that, in refusing to hear what is important because you don’t like the way it is presented. I think it is also dangerous for activists to write off civil authorities or “the system” because they didn’t do exactly what you demanded right away. Instead, I feel like it is important to keep the dialog open and persist. I can’t give up and say, “Nothing’s going to change.” Nor can I rely on goodwill alone to make things happen.

I do struggle with knowing when to stand up and when to sit it out. That is why I haven’t posted anything here in over four months. I became unsure of my place as a white guy. Aren’t there enough white guys out there mansplaining everything? Sometimes I think I am reaching out to a white audience, folks like me who want to do the right thing and are struggling to find their way. If we all just sit it out, then it puts the burden of eradicating racism wholly onto the shoulders of those who are being oppressed by it. Besides, it’s white folks who need to change ultimately. So we need to stand up. But we also need to stop centering ourselves and hand over the mic to BIPOC leaders. So that means stepping back. I guess stepping back needs to be somewhere in between standing up and sitting it out. Still being active and involved, but not on center stage.

I recently heard a Black leader in my city who I really respect telling people to slow down and take time to do the work. She was speaking mostly to Black and brown folks who are being picked up and dropped into DEI roles for corporations or put into advisory boards for organizations. They are being selected based on the melanin in their skin and not based on qualifications and training. But she was also speaking to white allies who jump into action and make all the mistakes we white folks are prone to make: protesting in ways that harm the movement more than help it, making it about ourselves and distracting from the mission, inadvertently overriding Black and brown voices. She spoke time and again to the slow job of “doing the work,” coming to terms with the racism that is embedded in our psyches, learning to recognize racist origins, and building the very elusive skill of being able to translate institutionalized biases into policy change. I ask myself whether or not I am moving too fast.

I come back to my bridge and try to find that balance between temperance and urgency. Temperance allows for folks from different perspectives and world views to feel safe enough to consider the other’s position and actually contemplate shifts in their own perspective. But without urgency, complacency sets in and nothing happens. The sluggish dominant culture never shifts without urgency. How do I find the time and place for each? I believe the answer lies in my role as an individual versus my role as part of a collective. As an individual, I should focus on temperance, but when the collective rises up, I should go with urgency. White dominant culture values individualism. When people form collectives and rise up to speak out against injustice, it threatens the dominant culture. But we are so many cultures, each with its own beauty, joy, and wisdoms. Collectives are also coalitions. My advice to other white activists is to get connected to the collectives that you are aligned with. When I feel a knee jerk reaction to an article I read or something that was said in City Council, I need to temper myself and reflect on what I want to say, getting feedback from others. But when the collective puts out a call for action, I can be ready to give my support.

Sometimes responding to collective urgency can be uncomfortable. It can mean saying unpopular things or challenging the status quo. It can mean putting yourself out there in ways that raise eyebrows, even the eyebrows of some of your friends and family. It can mean marching alongside people who carry signs that say things more “rudely” than you would. It can mean being arrested for practicing free speech. White people in this country are accustomed to comfort, and when things get ugly, we have a quick impulse to say “OK, this is too much.” We tend to retreat back into our comfort zones. (Recognize that this is a privilege many people of color don’t have). Those are the times that I check my impulses and listen more openly. I understand pain and the anger of being completely discredited. What is the underlying message of the angry chants? Do I agree with it and support these people’s right to be heard? I personally will not participate in the destruction of property or throwing things at anyone. But I will march and lend my voice. I will speak uncomfortable truths without concern about my reputation.

My vulnerability lies in my desire to be recognized. When people tell me I am good at something, praise my wording, value my perspective, or tell me they think I should be on City Council, I feel that familiar tug towards individualism. I need to remind myself that this work is not about me. Again, I go back to my parenting analogy. I put my energy and efforts into my children’s growth and development so that they can fly, not to grab the credit. I don’t mean to imply that the marginalized communities I align myself with are like children. Again, there is a careful balance between being a supporter and being patronizing. There is a love there, though, and a behind-the-scenes role that parallels family. The same is true for being an educator. It’s not about power over, it’s about caring and support. That love is vulnerable. And just as in fatherhood, I am bound to make mistakes. I will sometimes overstep or misquote or say something I need to recant. I can’t let my fear of failure prevent me from taking action. I need to be humble and ask forgiveness and, most importantly, learn from my mistakes and move on. But ultimately, I do this work because I believe in it. I can’t be in this for approval or for some SJW scorecard.

If you have a Black Lives Matter sign up and have bantered back and forth on social media, but you are looking for a way to be more active, I challenge you to go to a browser right now and enter the name of your town and “city council.” Find the agenda for the next public meeting. Skim through it and become familiar with what is going on locally. Most meetings are online and available for public viewing. Listen to the public comments. If you hear something that interests you, write down that person’s name. See if you can contact the person or the organization they represent and follow up. Tell them you heard what they said to city council and you’d like to know how you can get involved. I chose to dedicate some hours of my weekly schedule to “activism.” That helps me both to stay at it without fading out and to set limits on how much I can do. For example, I only do “actions” on the weekends and I reserve Monday and Wednesday evenings as these align with my city’s meeting schedules. This is important because it doesn’t help much in the long run for you to get swept in over your head only to burn out.

The fact is that change doesn’t happen on its own. If you don’t like what you see and you want something different, you should do something about it. What you do depends on who you are, where you are at, and what you have to offer. We’re all familiar with the bumper sticker that says “Be the change you want to see in the world.” We can all take positive steps towards positive change. But what might not be apparent in that catchy line is that we also need to unravel the complicit bad stuff within us to put an end to the things we don’t want to see in the world. I think that’s the turn off for many white allies. But it’s so critically important, especially when it comes to eradicating racism.