Day 12:Your Next Daily Practice
Hey there my beloveds,
First, I hope, I hope, I hope, you’ll be able to zoom in and show up on Tuesday, July 9th. I want us to talk together about what we’ve learned and struggled with in the last 12 days as we’ve engaged in this journey. I also can meet the many of you who have showed up for this journey!
Second, I’m reluctant to “close” this experience at all. The path of antiracism is never done and it’s never over. This is a life-long walk and an ongoing commitment. And so, as we close, I find myself just wanting to drop into your “idea landscape” the many practices all of us can continually return to every single day. Practices I am trying, every day, to be accountable to and continually show up for. And, of course, this is not an exhaustive list!
When I was writing Antiracism as Daily Practice: Refuse Shame, Change White Communities, and Help Create a Just World, here were just a few practices I came up with (and the book not only has a whole lot more, it has pages of resources to identify people and initiatives where we can more powerfully do these things):
Transfer a majority of the time you spend reading and engaging with various forms of media to engaging with feminists of color—this includes feminist men and other genders of color, too. We can access multimedia that present a vision of a just multiracial democracy where all thrive. A digital media platform like Colorlines is a great place to start. Read current events through the analytical framework of BIPOC intellectuals—doing so will not only keep you up-to-date on the news. Over time, you’ll ever more deeply grow more racially aware frameworks that will shape how you see and understand other issues on your own.
Take a family inventory and audit, again (this is a throwback to Day 6—but segregated patterns will continually pressure and shape our lives, so we need to grow the practice of intentionality around how we expend our time, resources and energy).
Bumping into racism and experiencing our own growth edges or missteps in antiracism, can elicit a lot of feelings. Don’t (ever) only sit there with your feelings. Yes—feelings are important. Pay attention to them. Process them. But take concrete actions, with others, out in the world, even while you’re having feelings! Notice how your feelings shift and change when you’re in action with others.
Learn about who is leading and what they are focused on in your local context. Our neighbors deserve and need us to plug in with them. Change at the local level is vital! Make a list of who is working on what issues. Consider what your skills and gifts are and where those might make the greatest impact brought to amplify and support the leadership of people of color. Figure out what you can commit and do it; reliably, consistently and for a significant period of time.
Never stop actively leaning in for more learning about the history and contemporary realities of racism and white supremacy. And, share with others in your life you’re learning. Practice breaking white silence every single day—in ways small and large. Notice how you feel when you do it. Notice how you feel when you don’t do it. Notice what you wish you had done more capably—and practice so you’ll do so next time.
Make your own list of what practices you learn from people of color, identify for yourself, learn as you engage in multi-racial spaces (and share that list with others in your life).
That’s it for now, my friends. Again, no words to fully articulate my gratitude to you. Thanks.
With a longing for real justice and a desire for just peace in our collective lives,
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!).
Day 10: 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. Take note of—and start to listen to, read and follow—the other incredible leaders Prentis Hemphill is constantly in dialogue with.
Day 11: Here’s your action for today. Take stock of whether or where the issue of Christianity and civic life is percolating around you (in your extended family, school board, city) and determine a way you can take a step to engage. Write down three questions or ideas about how you might focus (for example, “Is Interfaith Alliance taking on Christian nationalism locally? When’s their next forum” “Is my church actively talking about this? if now how might we start?” “What’s my version of speaking up the way Rev. Rucker did?”
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.
