Day 10: How Shame Hurts our Movements

Hey there my friends,

We’re actually talking about shame for a second day—the reflections and invitation to an action step build on yesterday’s conversation. The activist Richie Reseda calls shame a “neurotoxin.” He says we actually reproduce the same patterns that systems of supremacy and oppression use when we use shame in our social justice movements. By “using shame,” he means shaming one other when we make mistakes or cause harm instead of finding ways to hold each another accountable when we (we! because we all make mistakes and we all cause harm!) in a model that aims for transformative justice. 

Phew! This is important. Not only do I see social justice movements falling into the trap of weaponizing shame in lots of ways right now. But those of us who are white are particularly tempted to wield shame against one another. 

Here’s the equation. I see that white person over there, doing something racially ignorant and/or harmful. Because I have deep sense that perhaps I am myself innately unworthy (because I have unmetabolized shame), part of me begins to panic that that proximity with this person is contagious. That my unworthiness (which, I secretly think is true) will end up exposed! 

And so, I create as much distance from that person as I can. Perhaps I even publicly shame them—call them out, say how problematic they are—for their ways in order to protect the mirage that somehow I am pure and untainted.

This is no way for white folks to create spaces where we are walking with inviting, challenging, supporting and insisting that other white folks—and we ourselves, if we’re honest—can grow, learn and change!

When we distance ourselves and weaponize shame against other white people we become unable to do the work we’ve repeatedly been told by Black and Brown people is ours. Namely, work with other white folks, take responsibility for that part of the multi-racial justice moving.

Friends, shaming other white people is not a justice strategy. 

In recent years, activists like Richie Reseda, Prentis Hemphill and Alicia Garza all asked versions of the question “do we believe in transformation?” “Do we believe people can change?” If we don’t, we may as well quite working for justice. So, surely we must believe that. Yes?

But, if we’re weaponizing and wielding shame against others in our justice work, we’re demonstrating that we think some people are innately unworthy, and thus cannot change, and thus can just thrown away.

(To be clear: these activists are clear—as am I—that refusing to weaponize shame is not the same thing as not holding people accountable. We all need to be held accountable and hold one another accountable! But we need to do it in ways that are rooted in a sense that we all cause harm, we all have the capacity for transformation, and all of us are necessary in this collective journey.)

Here's your action for today. Subscribe and listen to Prentis Hemphill’s last podcast Finding Our Way as well as their new one Becoming the People, which is just dropping now!  Pick up their new book What it Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World. We need to listen and walk with the knowledge and wisdom of leaders (like Hemphill) who are rooted in radical justice, as well as humanizing, liberating, transformative ways of being with and seeing ourselves and one another. Added bonus? If you start to regularly to Prentis Hemphill, you’ll you’ll get to know other incredible leaders too because they are constantly in dialogue with such folks! 

This shame stuff is long haul work, my beloveds. Well, antiracism itself is long haul work too—life long, generations long. (Most work worth doing is.) 

That’s just one more reason to be at it in some way, shape, or form every. dingle. day. of our lives.

See you tomorrow.

Jen

Day 1: Make a list of at least three specific ways you want to grow your lived commitment to antiracism.

Day 2: Talk with two people about what you need to do to interrupt, intervene or challenge a racist dynamic or situation and get their support in envisioning how to do it.

Day 3: Explore through the work of these projects (read about them, watch the videos) Acts of Reparation and the Community Remembrance Project as a way to contemplate generational legacies, learn about current efforts for remembrance and repair, nourish your own moral imagination for where you may be called to plug in.

Day 4: Find one question or one family story and decide to ask it or ask about it, to create “productive instability.”

Day 5: Try one of Chanté Griffin’s “tips” as a way of practice interracial relationship-building.

Day 6: Do an audit of where you spend your time and where you spend your money. Identify specific choices you could make to shift where spend your time and your resources from mostly white spaces into Black- and Brown-owned, run or majority spaces.

Day 7: “Spark a conversation with your child or students that inspires and liberates them to be more curious about how they can help dismantle racism” (thank you, Dr. Berry!). If you don’t have a child or students, connect with a friend or loved one who does—share what Dr. Berry got you thinking about and ask them about what they do.

Day 8: Identify at least one racial dynamic that exists in your familial relationship where you haven’t fully “gone home with your antiracist values on your sleeve.” Make a plan for how you’re going to lean in with some kind of interruption (a question? a curiosity? a response that disrupts but strives to stay in connection).

Day 9: Sit down for 5 minutes, take a deep breath, and imagine (maybe write about!) a time you experienced shame related to race. Then go to look White Awake: Waking Ourselves for the Benefit of All. Mark a time you can take one of their courses! They make them time flexible, they’re so so so good, and everything they do is on a sliding scale (we need this kind of approach and we need community—just like Chris Crass talked about on Day 1!).

P.S. Save the date: Join me and others who took part in this experience for a live conversation on Tuesday, July 9th at 5:00 PST/6:00 MST/7:00 CST/8:00 EST as a way to wrap up and reflect on our 12 Days of Action. Register here.

P.P.S. It’s not too late to sign up for 12 Days of Antiracist Action! Share this sign up link with your friends and we’ll help them get caught up: https://mailchi.mp/10b7b14d2037/murwtz2krf