Witnessing Whiteness - a Must Reading for Caring White People
It was a crowd of primarily Black
spectators that first brought my racial being to consciousness. I will never forget the pointing, laughter,
and yells: “Look at the white girl!” As
a sophomore in high school in the mid-1980s, I was the different one for the
first time, the minority within a group.
Eight Black girls and I competed to go to the California State track
meet in the 400-meter race. (xi)
So begins the Introduction of a most interesting book,
Shelly Tochluk’s: Witnessing Whiteness: The Need to Talk About Race and How
to Do It. (Edition three is
scheduled to come out in August, 2022, two months from now.)
Tochluk is very direct, often with personal examples
of the importance of white people focusing upon their own complicity in racism,
and their need to proactively learn and become as active as possible at
dismantling structural racism. She talks
clearly of how we live in multicultural settings, yet understand so little of
the daily experiences of BIPOC. The
author further makes very clear how we resist thinking and talking about race,
except in limited distant ways.
When we say that we do
not see another person’s color, what we essentially are saying is that we do
not see a person’s racial placement as meaningful. Basically, we are saying that we do not see
the ways that a person of color experiences the world differently than does a
white-appearing person. (p.27)
Since that time, I have
learned that at the same time that I experienced a lack of attendance, there
were teachers of color at the same school who did not
experience the same issues I did. These
teachers of color went to the homes.
They overcame their own fears and anxieties. They created parent-teacher events. The parents came. They reached out respectfully before trouble
emerged. Their students achieved more
than mine. (p,43)
(regarding being a white
Abolitionist) Unfortunately, becoming aware of, and
resisting, skin privilege is an incomplete strategy. Practically, resisting the benefits of skin privilege
does nothing to stop others from perceiving us and treating us preferentially
in ways we cannot control. We also can
only resist something that we consciously recognize. This model can allow powerful unconscious
elements to slip by undetected and remain unworked. (p.46-7)
Witnessing involves creating
sufficient insight to imagine and support becoming active in racial justice
efforts both within and outside of our school, work, and social settings. Witnessing means knowing that we remain
unhealthy as long as we are unconscious perpetrators and bystanders to racial
injustice. Ultimately, witnessing
requires us to know that our society remains unhealthy as long as we do not
recognize our privilege and do not give voice to the ways that racial injustice
continues to create dis-ease and distress in all of us. (p.49-50)
Choosing to stay within a
heated, conflict-filled dialogue regarding race that at times might appear to
be overly harsh or incorrectly managed is something that white people generally
avoid. Our sense of ourselves as
individuals, not marked by race, preempts our ability to really listen to someone
who challenges us regarding issues of subtle racism, especially our own. (p.167)
Doors swung open for me. Beyond my parents, there were many individuals
who helped me get to where I now stand.
My coaches, teachers, mentors, and friends at various times, and in
various ways, helped ensure that hard work did not go without reward. At times, benefits came from those who mentioned
that I reminded them of themselves in their younger days. Other times, benefits
came from open doors bred from social connections to which many would not have
had access.
Further, benefits came
from the fact that my entire racial/ socioeconomic/ cultural background was
similar to many of the decision makers in my life, such that I could easily inspire
ease and a sense of camaraderie in an interview setting. (p.207)
First, we do a better job
witnessing if we accept responsibility for triggering emotional upset. Exactly what pulled the trigger is not as important
as how we respond. … In essence, we
should take up our responsibility, the ability to respond, by
sitting in the fires we set for ourselves without either (1) judging the person
reacting as “overly emotional,” which white people tend to do, or (2) expecting
to be rescued from the fiery heat. (p.228-9)
(referring to white –
support group space in her case with AWARE-LA) We work to heal ourselves. We admit our
resistances, question our actions, support each other’s growth, and challenge
each other to desegregate our lives. (p.235)
I have given a limited
sampling of some of Shelly Tochluk’s wisdom one can learn from reading this
book. There is much, much more!
The primary limitations
of the book are that some of the “recent history” and movement from it, is
dated. This will undoubtedly be eliminated
through reading the 3rd Edition of the book, which should be out in
August, 2022.
I highly recommend that
concerned, activist, or potentially activist, white people, as well as others,
who simply want to work on their own internalized racism, read this book. Others may also find value in it.
I would note that I am no
longer an “innocent bystander” in reviewing this book. I am helping co-create a
four hour (final hour is optional q&a) free Zoom Workshop on August 14, 2022
– from: 2:00 – 6:00 pm (Eastern Time) .
It will help white people work through some of our denial of our own racism,
and work to be more effective trying to reach other white people effectively. We will actively learn much more in multiple three
person breakout groups where we will work through Dr. Tochluk’s ideas, based
upon how
to communicate for each of the stages of Janet Helms’ white racial identity
model. If interested in attending, please email me at: CallingInBuildingAllies(at)
gmail(dot)com.
Thanks!
The opening words of this book helped me start another
personal journey!
When white people go into communities of
color without sufficient awareness, we can fall into three interrelated traps:
we take on a savior complex, enact a superiority complex, and feel sorry for
those with whom we work. (p.39)
I was the white woman who would single-handedly
lift up the students and offer them what their community did not. …
Seeing the racism in those ideas took
awhile. (p.40)
Even though I had some lovely
relationships with my students’ parents, I had very low attendance rates on
conference day overall. (p.42) …
I told parents what they ought to do if
their children did not complete homework, and so on. I did this without asking the parents how
they felt we could be partners…
Since that time, I have learned that at the same time
that I experienced a lack of attendance, there were teachers of color at
the same school who did not experience the same issues I did. These teachers of color went to the
homes. The overcame their own fears and
anxieties. They created parent-teacher
events. The parents came. They reached out respectfully before trouble
emerged. Their students achieved more than
mine. (p.43)
White people need a positive, supportive
foundation if we are going to collectively investigate our own whiteness. We need a model dedicated to inner psychological
work leading to altered behavior. We need
a model that starts with the development of a racial identity oriented toward
equity and justice that helps us increase our perception.
The model of witnessing
proposed and described in this book is just such a model. (p.49)
Reviewing this history astounded me. My education left me woefully ignorant as to
how the legal system helped shape our understanding of whom we consider white,
who could be naturalized as an American citizen, and how those decisions were
made. …
From 1790 until 1952, U.S. naturalized citizenship
was restricted to white. (p.70)
(Note: 1924) This law set aside 50 percent
of available slots for British citizens, excluded Asian immigrants, and heavily
restricted Jewish immigrants. (p.73)
Narrowing our vision just a bit is Dr.
Shirley Better, an African American author.
… She said:
“Whiteness is a culture just like African
American is a culture. I don’t have to
think about it a lot because everybody is raised in white culture, whether you’re
white or not. Everybody is raised within
white culture because it’s the dominant culture. … (p.116)
This elder, white woman recounted a time
when she and a Black girlfriend were fooling around decades prior. This white woman had dressed up as a Black person,
including black makeup and an Afro wig, to accompany her friend out
shopping. The two young women did not
intend to run a social experiment.
According to the story, they were simply out having fund, dressing to
avoid display of an interracial friendship during a time in our history when
that was not yet the norm.
Within moments of the pair entering a
store, the white woman (in disguise) noticed she was being followed around the
store. As she proceeded to the rear of
the store where knives and other arms were sold, she noticed glaring looks on
the faces of store clerks and she began to be spoken to gruffly. She found herself glaring back, even
overplaying her interest in those items as she recognized the anxiety and upset
it was creating in the store clerks. She
did it purposely, recognizing how angry she was at the treatment she was
experiencing. …
Decades later while telling this tale, the
woman remained amazed at deep level of anger she had experienced, and how it
was her Black friend who calmed her and got her to leave the situation without
provoking the clerks further. Can we
imagine how we’d respond if we were treated this poorly on a daily basis? What if that level of insufferable rudeness were
the norm? Worse, what if each time we
tried to call attention to it, the experience was dismissed as our imagination? (p.122-3)
(Quoting a Black [male physician] interviewee ) I
think if you put … two teachers in a room and one was white and one was African
American, and they taught the same thing.
I think if you polled the class[es], I think the class here…would
believe more in the veracity of the words [of the white teacher], whereas here [students
with the African American teacher] they would be either questioning more, try
to assert themselves more, trying to challenge more. The first time I eve had an African American
science teacher was at CSUN and this guy was just hammered all the time, just
questioned all the time. And it wasn’t
that he was a bad teacher. He was a good
teacher. I mean, they just peppered him
compared to the other professors we had.
Same kids, same class. They
wouldn’t pepper these [white]… teachers at all.
And then I experienced that when I student taught later on when I was a
resident as well too. (p.127)
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