I Don’t Understand

If your thoughts, words, or writing include the phrase “I don’t understand” in response to the protests and rioting in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, I invite you to read on.

That statement ~I don’t understand~ speaks volumes.

No, you don’t understand.

And that is the problem.

You don’t understand.

And yet you move forward, you speak, you write, you weigh in, as though you do understand.

When we admit that we don’t understand something; when we actually hear ourselves say those words: “I don’t understand”; When we fully comprehend what that statement literally means: “I don’t understand”, “I’m confused”, “I’m struggling to make sense of this”, it’s an opportunity.

An opportunity to learn.

The flip-side? The path of pretending that we do understand?

There’s a word for that.

Ignorance.

Educate yourself. Stop talking and start listening, reading, and watching.

What we are seeing, what we have seen repeatedly over these many decades, is a response to trauma and oppression. It’s a response to inequities that have existed throughout the entirety of our nation’s history.

Be very clear: Racism is alive and well. The foundations of our country were built on racism. To pretend otherwise is delusional.

If you believe you can imagine what it’s like to be a Black, Indigenous, or any Person of Color in the USA, think again. Pick up a book. Watch a documentary.

If you haven’t experienced trauma, if you don’t understand trauma, have the humility to say: I need to learn more.

If you, nor your ancestors, have experienced oppression, persecution, abuse, suppression, inequity, subjugation, or enslavement, have the humility to say “I really don’t understand, and I need to learn more.”

As a white woman writer I have hesitated in my inclination to add my voice to the growing list of white folks speaking on this subject. But I am appalled at the complacency on the part of white folks living comfortable, threat-free lives whilst simultaneously sitting in judgment of others, over whose lives you have little to no understanding.

Instead, I invite you to start engaging with reality.

Understand this: we, white people, took control of land that was already inhabited by indigenous people, murdering millions. We kidnapped human beings from another continent, caged and chained them and transported them under vile conditions to another continent, and indentured them as slaves, beating and murdering them into submission.

We, the People, have murdered in the pursuit of happiness, in the name of “progress”. And that incarceration, that enslavement, and that murder, continue today.

When white people assume that we understand what this kind of trauma feels like, how one should move forward from it, and what healing from this systemic, generational trauma should look like, we perpetuate oppression.

When we stipulate under what conditions, circumstances, and manner Black, Indigenous, and People of Color should protest, we perpetuate oppression.

To not understand the plight of our BIPOC brothers and sisters belies your ignorance.
To choose not to learn, illuminates your white privilege.
To insist Black, Indigenous, and People of Color do things ‘your’ way is to perpetuate white supremacy.

Educate yourself.

If you insist that you aren’t racist, that you support the protestors “if” they don’t resort to violence, you are dictating the ways in which others should express their pain and suffering.

It’s not easy, or pretty. Or Instagram worthy. It’s messy. It’s frightening. It’s shocking.

And we don’t like those sensations. They make us uncomfortable. So we avoid them and instead have another gin and tonic, another cookie, another episode of our favorite show, to drown the acute pain we feel in connection to our collusion of an unjust system.

Learn to sit with your discomfort, pain, and fear without succumbing to your addictions. Be compassionate and spacious. Sit for a moment in agony and let your passion steer you to righteousness.

Then take the step of actively fighting against racism. For it is a fight. We want peaceful; we want love-rainbows-unicorns-and-all-that-shit. We (particularly white women) like the world to feel safe, attractive, calm, and peaceful. Who doesn’t?

Guess what? We’ve had peaceful. We’ve had love and unity. It has been tried over and over again. As just one of many examples, there was once an extraordinary man named Martin Luther King Jr.

He promoted ‘peaceful’.

Anyone remember what happened to him?

We must understand that the fabric of our country is so interwoven with racism, that the process of culling it will be formidable. The hardened hearts of our white friends and family, who hold extreme white supremacist beliefs are not easy to sway. But sway them, we must.

We must make it shameful to believe in white supremacy. We must make it indecent to believe in any type of racial dominance. We must make it reprehensible and heinous to think race determines status or rank. We must make it illegal in every sense of the word, to promote this terrorism against Black, Indigenous, and People of Color everywhere.

We must listen to our BIPOC brothers and sisters. We must let them lead, while we protect, support, and empower them. We need to listen.

We may be afraid, but we must find the courage to fight for truth and justice. If we want peace, we will have to fight for it, because the other side has been fighting for centuries in favor of oppression and suppression.

Know this: the kind of inner peace you have been searching for your entire life will be elusive until you realize this fight is at the heart of it all.

The Black Lives Matter, and other movements dedicated to justice and equity, are movements that must include all people versus racism.

I’ll say it again for the people in the back:

All People Against Racism.

Racism as a system. Racism as a structure. Racism as tyranny.

Engage, my white friends.

When we remain silent, when we allow undercurrents of racism to promulgate within our families and communities. When we laugh off grandpa’s use of the ’n-word’ or actively ignore ‘cousin Bob’s’ overt racist comments, we perpetuate racism and violence within those spaces, reverberating outward into the world, unchecked.

When we say “I don’t understand” while simultaneously refusing to try and comprehend, we perpetuate our ignorance. We leave the oppressed to fight for themselves.

Alone.

On the ground.

Under a white man’s knee.

George Floyd’s blood is on all of our hands.

If you find yourself saying “I don’t understand”, try.
If trying gets you nowhere, pick up a book.
If you still don’t get it, talk with someone who does.
If they can’t explain it to you, keep on looking.
Because lives are at stake.

People are being murdered.

If that fact alone doesn’t move you, doesn’t help you understand the anger, then your white privilege has utterly choked your vision.