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“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.” -Angela Davis
*This post is dedicated to my sister, Keli Rankin
Today, as part of celebrating Juneteenth, I wanted to take a moment to reflect back to four years ago, in the Summer of 2020, during the height of the pandemic, when George Floyd’s murder was videoed and viewed by millions of people, including many white people. Black Lives Matter protests erupted around the country, activating cries of injustice from people of all colors. Growing up as the sister of an adopted BIPOC woman, I’ve viewed Civil Rights issues in my country differently than those who are BIPOC themselves or those who come from an all white American family. As a white woman with every privilege you can have except for being male, I certainly can’t claim to understand the Black female experience. But growing up in proximity to a BIPOC woman, I witnessed, up close and personal, how unjust this country is and how cruel people can be simply because of the pigmentocracy we live in.
As a young girl, I was very protective of my little sis. We grew up in the South, and the white supremacy and outright, unapologetic bigotry aimed at her was extreme. These days, when I recount the blatant prejudices she suffered through at the hands of mostly racist white men but also racist white women, other white people are often shocked. But we should not be. BIPOC Americans just nod their heads. Her experiences were nothing special for BIPOC women, in spite of the degree of horror they often contained.
But the white people I knew growing up didn’t seem phased by what my sister went through. The lack of empathy was startling to my young self, enough so that I majored in African American Women’s Literature and studied the likes of Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker under the tutelage of professors like Henry Louis “Skip” Gates and Toni Morrison. My first book, written in college, was about my sister.
I joined my first political campaign when I was in college at Duke in North Carolina, rallying to get the Black Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt into the Senate to get absurdly racist Jesse Helms out. We failed miserably, and I left North Carolina for good- in protest.
But in Summer 2020, for the first time in my lifetime, I witnessed my white neighbors holding picket signs on Highway 1 every day for months. My daughter and I participated in these protests, along with many other neighbors, and I was very active on social media and even wrote a book LOVE BIGGER: An Exploration of Spirituality Without Spiritual Bypassing, in response to the racist micro and macro aggressions built into a lot of spiritual teachings. (I’m now releasing that content on my Substack. Subscribe here.)
Now, here we are. Four years later, on Juneteenth. And after the initial hopeful rise in awareness, activism, and enthusiastic push for racial reckoning, we now lie in the aftermath of it all. Black Harvard President Claudine Gay rose to the pinnacle of one of the top universities in the world and then resigned amidst scandal. Ibram X. Kendi, the author of How To Be An Antiracist was recently profiled in the New York Times as an example of a meteoric rise and then fall from backlash. Black lives are being uplifted, and then Black lives are being taken down.
And here in mostly white Marin County, there’s still some evidence of the enthusiasm for Civil Rights and doing our anti-racist inner and outer work, more so than before Summer 2020. But at my 18 year old daughter’s high school graduation this week, those of us in the audience had the experience of a record needle screeching across the record when the graduation began with a land acknowledgement for the Coastal Miwok Indigenous Native Americans who originally settled the colonized land the seniors were graduating on. And one second later, the National Anthem played “bombs bursting in air,” as if we were suddenly supposed to feel a swell of patriotic pride. I wanted to fall to one knee, but instead, my oh-so-silent protest was just not putting my hand over my heart, because my heart was breaking.
And here were are on Juneteenth, this 19th day of June, commemorating the end of slavery in the United States and marking the day in 1865 when Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced that all enslaved people were free, in accordance with President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which had been issued more than two years earlier, on January 1, 1863.
The delayed enforcement of the proclamation in Texas, due to the minimal presence of Union troops to enforce the order, meant that slavery continued there until Granger’s arrival. His announcement brought freedom to approximately 250,000 enslaved people in Texas, marking the true end of chattel slavery in the Confederacy, over two year too late.
My partner Jeff and I celebrate “Cafe Time” every morning, inspired by Shiloh and Jonathan McCloud. We read things we’re both interested in or listen to music or share poetry. So today, we had a conversation about white male privilege, and I asked if he’d listen while I read out loud the book I’ve read twice so far- Layla Saad’s Me & White Supremacy. I’ve done this work a few times on my own, and I’ve struggled to find many white men interested in discussing it with me. But Jeff and I wiil be honoring Juneteenth for 28 days as we work through that book as a couple.
Still, as a white woman, Juneteenth and the memory of Summer 2020 makes me feel sad. I know it’s a day of celebration for the emancipation of BIPOC slaves, but it’s hard to celebrate something so horrific in the first place. And it’s hard to reckon with how little some people care about Black Lives Matters, even still, even now. The lack of empathy among white people- and the lack of true caring, the lack of activism, the privilege of being able to get away with not caring enough- still stuns me.
I’m sure I still have a long way to go in my own anti-racism work, and I’m sure I’ll never be “done” or “get it right.” It’s a humbling journey to stay in the inquiry of white supremacy and how we are complicit with it, benefit from it, and even still are blind to it. It continues to cook in me since those days of carrying picket signs on the side of Highway 1.
Today, we are going to Oakland for the Juneteenth Cookout at the Oakland Museum of Art, but I’m aware that me and my white daughter are really just bystanders. It’s hard to be truly an ally when we’re so removed from the BIPOC experience, here in our Marin County bubble, where we rarely even cross the Richmond Bridge. So I will sit in that discomfort and show up anyway. Because really- today is NOT about us white people or what we think or feel about white supremacy on Juneteenth. It’s a good time to center Black voices, Black lives, Black experiences.
So I’ll end with the words of some wonderful BIPOC voices.
“Here is a radical idea that I would like you to understand: white silence is violence. It actively protects the system. It says I am okay with the way things are because they do not negatively affect me and because I enjoy the benefits I receive with white privilege. ― Layla F. Saad
“Your desire to be seen as good can actually prevent you from doing good, because if you do not see yourself as part of the problem, you cannot be part of the solution.” ― Layla F. Saad
“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” ― Layla F. Saad
“Juneteenth has never been a celebration of victory or an acceptance of the way things are. It’s a celebration of progress. It’s an affirmation that despite the most painful parts of our history, change is possible—and there is still so much work to do.”
– Barack Obama | 44th President of the United States
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