White Privilege: Reflections after the George Zimmerman verdict

I’ve been thinking a lot about racism and white privilege since the George Zimmerman verdict. (I’m not going to call it the “Trayvon Martin” verdict, because Trayvon Martin wasn’t on trial.) I’ve been having lots of conversations about race issues on facebook, some of these conversations haven’t gone very well. But these have been some of my thoughts…

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Some people have tried to make the point that because Zimmerman is Latino and not white, race wasn’t a factor in the trial.

Let me be brutally honest here. People don’t like to think of themselves as racists, so let me clear the air a bit.

I am racist. When I see a black man or teenager, for a split second, I’m suspicious. Then I become aware of that irrational suspicion and I let it go. In today’s America, where most of our arrested criminals are black (because most of the people arrested are black), it’s very hard not to be a racist. It takes a lot of effort and work.

We’re culturally trained to associate criminal behavior with black men.

If I saw George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin, instinctively I would be suspicious of Trayvon first.

Look deeply and honestly within yourselves. Can you honestly say your first impression would be different?

And if not, then how can you claim this trial had nothing to do with race?

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The term “privilege” has always bothered me, even though the ideas behind the terms like white privilege, ableist privilege, etc., make sense. And I just figured out why.

Privileges are something extra you get, like when you’re a kid and your parents tell you you can earn a privilege by doing a chore. And when we talk about white privilege, we’re talking about unearned privilege. We make our “privileges” a source of guilt. In other words, the fact that I can walk down a street alone at night without being shot for having my skin color making me appear “suspicious” is something I should feel bad about, that other people don’t have the same safe experiences.

But being able to walk down a street at night without being shot because your skin color makes you appear “suspicious” shouldn’t be a privilege. It should be the norm.

Being able to walk into a store and not having the manager tail you should be the norm. Being able to get a job based on your qualifications and not your skin color or sex or etc. should be the norm. Being able to live in any neighborhood you can afford without being given sham excuses about why you can’t live there should be the norm.

Everyone should be able to live the life a male, straight, white, able-bodied, etc. American can live.

The guilt involved in the discussions on white privilege I’ve read implies that the privilege itself–our experiences as white Americans–is the problem. We need to give up some of our privileges so those without them can live like we do.

No. I don’t want to walk down the street and be judged as if I were black. I want everyone to be able to walk down the street and not be judged because of their skin tone.

The goal is to improve people’s lives, not lessen some to improve others.

My “privileges” aren’t the problem. The problem is that they have somehow become extra benefits and not the normal experience of just being HUMAN.

So, white Americans, don’t feel guilty that you can walk home and not get shot like Trayvon. Don’t feel guilty for getting into that college or getting that job.

Feel empowered to work so that people who are being denied their human rights can have the same opportunities at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that you do.

Because ultimately, what we’re talking about are rights, not privileges.

Emptiness and Compassion

The Tibetan Buddhist practice of tonglen is perhaps one of my favorite Buddhist practices, and one of the first Buddhist practices I incorporated into my daily life. This practice is an act of breathing in someone else’s pain or suffering and then breathing out the remedy or relief of that pain or suffering. I’ve often thought of this process as a way of opening oneself to the potential everyone has for reducing suffering in others. The idea is that you open yourself to another’s suffering and share what you can to reduce suffering. Taken more broadly, the practice encourages one to reduce suffering in the world by practicing non-attachment to one’s own joys.

This morning, as I was practicing tonglen, I let images of those who were suffering rise up. First on my mind was those who are suffering from the oil spill, especially those beings who live in the water.

“Oil,” I thought as I breathed in deeply. Then, “water” as I breathed out.

Then on to more general suffering: “Suffering” breathe in; “Peace” breathe out.

Then I thought of a dear friend of mine who is recovering from a painful surgery and whose daily life is filled with pain: “Pain” breathe in; “Relief” breathe out. I let my own pains act as a way of empathizing with hers.

Then I felt my stomach growl with hunger, and I thought of all those in the world who suffer from hunger: “Hunger” breathe in; “Food” breathe out.

As I alternated between these 4, I began seeing a connection between the last 3. Instead of imagining that I was transforming suffering into peace through breathing (what I consider a metaphor for actions), etc., I began to see how suffering pointed or led to peace. For example, when one is suffering, one becomes drawn to end that suffering. And the lack of suffering feels most potent when one has experienced suffering in the past. Pain always leads to relief, one way or another. No pain is permanent. Any pain will either end on its own, or the person with the pain will find some way of relieving the pain, or, in the worst case scenario, the pain will stop when the person dies. When one is hungry, one seeks food. If one does not find food and one dies of hunger, one’s body becomes food.

I used to have a concern that the practice of tonglen encouraged dualistic thinking, which is contrary to the Buddhist philosophy of emptiness. But now I see that tonglen is not only a practice in developing compassion, but also a practice in understanding emptiness. The relief of suffering is bound up in the experience of suffering. They cannot be separated.

“Form is emptiness; emptiness is form.”

(You may have noticed I was unable to see this kind of connection in the first formulation of breathing in oil and breathing out water. But perhaps the oil spill will lead us to take better care of our ocean’s and the water resources on this planet.)

Compassion for Enemies

The acronym SPICE was brought up in today’s Meeting for Worship, with each letter explained: S for Simplicity, P for Peace, I for Integrity, C for Community, and E for Equality. I wondered, why couldn’t the C stand for Compassion instead? And my thoughts swam backwards towards a subject I’ve been thinking about for a while: the Armenian Genocide and the role of Ottomon Turkey in the genocide (and modern-day Turkey in its denial).

Since some of you don’t know me personally and don’t read my livejournal, you may not know that my dad’s family is ethnically Armenian. They lived in Lebanon for a number of years before relocating to America in 1965. We are proud to be Armenian. I’m proud to be Armenian. But part of being Armenian is knowing about what’s been called the “first modern genocide”, that of the Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915, where over a million Armenians, including pregnant mothers, elderly men and women, infants, children… everyone, were killed by various horrific ways. But it didn’t start then, not really. The first massacres started in 1896, when hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed.

Turkey has denied that the slaughter of Armenians in 1915 was a genocide, calling it “civil unrest”, etc. No one except Turks and those paid off by Turkey believes this. But because modern-day Turkey denies the Armenian Genocide, there’s a lot of anger between modern-day Armenians and modern-day Turks. It’s part of being Armenian today, knowing that you’ve lost relatives in the Genocide and knowing that there’s a possibility Turkey will never accept it as genocide, much less apologize.

I’m reading a book now that gives me hope. It’s called “A Shameful Act”, and it’s written by a Turk (who is now barred from Turkey, of course). Most books about the Armenian Genocide focus on the slaughter, the brutality, the sadness, and the official decisions that led to them. This book focuses on the history that made the Genocide possible, what was actually going on in the Ottoman Empire such that the conditions were there for a genocide to happen.

And reading about how scared the Ottoman Turkish government was of losing everything: country, identity, religion, I’ve come to understand that it was fear, not hate, that led to the genocide. And as I was sitting in Meeting for Worship this morning, a wave of compassion swept over me and I found myself thinking, “I forgive you. I forgive you for what you did to my ancestors and what you are still doing by denial. I forgive you.”

Even more than that, I found myself imagining how soul-destroying it must be to be so consumed by fear that one thinks genocide is the only way. Can any of you imagine what that must feel like? To be so afraid of something, of your identity being swallowed by Others, that killing those Others is the only solution?

I can’t imagine that kind of fear.

And then, an uncomfortable thought rose in me, spurned by a message in Meeting: what if we Armenians hadn’t been so Other? I’m not in any way blaming the Armenian Genocide on Armenians. The Ottomon Turks were responsible for how they reacted to their fear, not the Armenians. But I do wonder: if we hadn’t been so intent on maintaining our ethnic and cultural integrity, if we had intermingled more with the Muslims and the Turks, maybe we wouldn’t have been so Other.

There’s no way to know, of course. And intermingling would have required the cooperation of the Muslims and Turks of the time as well: it’s a two-way street, not a one-way.

But what about those of us today? Not just Armenians, but all of us in our cultural or ethnic groups, who worry about losing our integrity by intermingling with the dominant culture? What about Quakers, who worry about losing our cultural integrity if we stop numbering the days of the week instead of using their normal names? What about LGBTQ folks who stick together in one big group where anyone S is made to feel uncomfortable or unwelcome? What about ethnic groups in the US who refuse to learn English to any degree past “Thank you”, etc., and instead go on speaking their native language? (And I’m not talking here about people in ethnic groups who speak their native language when they’re gathered together at family functions, but those who speak their native language all the time.)

Let’s go back to Quakers. What about our Quakerese? What about our sacred peculiarities?

There’s value in cultural integrity. I love being with my Armenian family at parties, hearing four languages (French, Arabic, Armenian, English), the music, the food, the dancing! I’m not in any way saying those things should be less valued or diminished.

What I am saying is that we need to reach out to each other. We need to reach out to people who consider us Other and invite them in, not by forcing them to learn our language, but by showing them our own culture in ways they can understand: why these things are important to us, what we love about our language and our customs.

Most of all, we need compassion for those who consider us Other and whose lives are ruled by fear. We need a great deal of compassion for those who persecute us because they are afraid. And we need to recognize that we have a responsibility to those people, that it is just as much our job to make them unafraid of us as it is theirs. And, of course, we need to be aware of those Others we are afraid of, and reach out to them as well.

“Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.”

He wasn’t kidding.

(x-posted to Friends of Color and Quaker Queeries.)

Eyes Only Opened for Americans

In an article in this month’s Friends Journal called “A Peace Perspective” is the following statement:

“… Eyes Wide Open exhibit, which memorializes the dead of the Iraq War.”

No, it doesn’t. That exhibit only memorializes the American deaths and shows nothing of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis — be they terrorists, police, soldiers, civilians, families — who have lost their lives in this war.

Maybe I expect too much of Quakers. Maybe our Testimony of Equality is too hard to follow today. Maybe AFSC made a conscious, financially-responsible decision to focus on the deaths that would affect the “average American” the most. But when we expect so little of our fellow Americans, how can we encourage their growth? How can we self-centered Americans ever change if even the Quakers give in to our self-centeredness?

How much more powerful would the “Eyes Wide Open” exhibit be if it also included one pair of leather sandals for each Iraqi death?