What conversation are you in?

On privilege, race, color and choice

Current media is filled with Nazis in Charlottesville, stories of KKK women, Trump’s ill-willed games and raging debates about racism and white privilege across the globe. In my attempt to find my footing and heart in this climate, I want to try to understand the conversation we’re having, where it lands me and maybe us, anno August 2017.

History can of course be perceived and seen from as many vantage points and places as we are peoples, yet, I think it’s safe to say:

Our world is built on subjugation,
slavery, genocides and exploitation.

Is the desire for power a natural human trait? Survival, territory, tribe, belonging, security we all seek, and tend to self-identify against something or another. Hierarchies of superiority, segregation and separation have existed within and between nations, tribes and people of all races, colors, kin, for as long as we can trace back. Hierarchies express subtly within any relationship — be it between lovers, friends, in family structures, in schools, companies, religious sects, gangs, castes, communities, interest groups, political parties, prisons, between those who create and those who criticize, predators and prey. It’s everywhere I turn my head. In the best of situations it creates a dynamic exchange and natural evolution. In the worst of situations, it fosters power struggles and violence.

Some of us benefit from what’s being created
in our world, more than others.

In every country I have traveled, worked or lived, I see the same exploitation, segregation and tendency towards hierarchy — from Indonesia, to Nepal, to Denmark, to America. Rich and poor. In power without power. Tribe against tribe. Region against region. Religion against religion. Gender against gender. Those proclaiming “in the know”, those clearly not.

All of us tend to seek polarity and position to define ourselves, to fight for position, value, and reason to exist. Us and them. Not this but that. Othering.

Yes. I’m white. I’m western. I’m a woman. Albeit born into working class in the wake of feminist movement in Denmark in the 70s I’ve grown up with some privilege: Education. Some equality between the sexes although at times hardwon.. Social-democratic values. I’ve had a world of opportunity open to me and been able to travel and work in other countries. I’ve been protected from direct violence and hate. I’ve neither experienced extreme poverty nor extreme wealth. Though it hasn’t been easy, it’s fairly safe to say for my first 30 years on this planet, I’ve lived a life of ‘lightness’ and whiteness.

Does it make me bad? Complicit? Compliant?
How do I unpack my whiteness?
What do I really ‘know’?

Having lived in America for a long time, the unease between white and black Americans is palpable in certain areas, even inside black communities themselves. However, without a first person experience of being black in America, I cannot fully comprehend the roots of this tension, let alone how it lives inside a person and between people. Growing up in a small Danish town with one African Danish boy, my exposure to racism were primarily through literature, film, history and language. Surely, the tension resides deep inside my white skin, but I wouldn’t know to locate it, until I encountered reverse racism.

Once, in an online thread, an African American woman attacked me for being blind to my privilege, and like a bee swarm her and her cohorts went through all my old photos on facebook searching for evidence. They found a ten year old photo of me trying to channel a kalieseque energy with black, white and red paint in my face, and posted it in the thread: “Look, she is a racist.” Hung out for public stoning, I felt shame and anger. The photo was pulled out of context, and had they known anything about me and my life, they’d probably not call me a racist. Even so, the cultural appropriation’ were becoming a thing I needed to consider. The fierceness of their attack made dialogue impossible, and so I pulled back, all my photos, my hurt, my shame. This was not my battle, but this did not mean, I could look away.

During my years in Nepal, working as a development associate for CARE International to help strengthen local community organizations, I could approach the culture on surface level, but would never know what it was like to be, for instance, an untouchable, a daughter sold for a goat, or a woman married to an upper caste man. Despite its unjust class systems and poverty, I loved Nepal and really wanted to help them ‘change.’ Naive perhaps, and my lofty ideas of development were of course tested against the reality of existence there. What did I know? I was the one being changed.

Opinion is not experience

Having an opinion about race, privilege and power is different than having the experience. Rationalizing, analyzing and conceptualizing a situation
is different from ‘knowing it’ in your body and soul.

What I do know is, what it’s like to grow up in patriarchal Danish society and family in the wake of the feminist upheaval in the 70s, and come of age in the 80s and 90s overtly masculine “put-on-your-shoulder-pads and go-forge-your-own-success” mentality. I know what it’s like to both benefit from, but also suffocate in the arms of an conforming and controlling welfare state. I know what it is like to feel alienated in a material world and unable to live up to the superficial success standards of the west. I know what it’s like to grow up with a strong desire
to know what it means to be a liberated woman.

I remember, what it is like to grow up with a nuclear disaster nearby. I know how Danes identify in relation to WWII and the nazis occupation of Denmark.And what it was like when the Berlin Wall fell and freedom swept across lands. I know life before internet and mobile phones, and how the world felt open and benevolent for a single white female traveler.

I know what it is like — in lieu of my global life — to clash with other cultures and have my ‘surety’ and righteousness, prejudices and perspectives shattered and unraveled by another truth, another story, another perception.

During my travels in Asia, I have been self-conscious about my whiteness, and felt judged as a ‘dirty’ blond Scandinavian woman. In my American life, my Danish values of solidarity and community often clashed with my ex-husband’s deep-seated individualism—for him it was natural to think “me, before we”.

I know what it is like to touch the skin of men of all colors. Navigating the terrain of love, sex, power, values, language and justice in the intimate meeting with someone from another culture demands the willingness to constantly build bridges across divides. To find common ground and grow trust enough to reveal your innermost self with all your flaws, hangups, insecurities and ideas, is not easy.

My lineage is traditionally Danish, and yet, our family today have become a multi-cultural family. When we meet for Christmas, we enjoy meals and conversations in Danish, American, Thai, Indonesian and “bondsk” (hillbilly). The challenge of finding common ground requires curiosity and presence and humor. When we fall short, misunderstand and become frustrated, we try to laugh at our differences.

Growing up and growing older, I’ve become more aware of how being white and western has given me privilege, but also caged me within a mindset and a system that exploits and commodifies thet LIFE and the wondrous living planet that I love.

I don’t know how to come to terms with this paradox and potential delusions, but this world IS me. My world view has been shaped by my varied encounters, clashes and communions with the ‘other.’ As such, becoming aware of our perspective and naming the context is crucial, if we are to bridge the divide and come together.

What do you know about your world view? In conversations about race, privilege and power, try to ask yourself: What do I know? What don’t I know? What are my explicit and implicit references and preferences? What is the context for this conversation? Who’s in it? Who’s not in it?

What if we start close in, with nothing to defend?

I refuse to let ‘the fear machine’ destroy my love of this world and its tremendous diversity of people, places, languages, biosystems, multi-species and treasures of beauty, eros and experience. Exactly this makes us who are. Without this, we are nobody. Nothing. Think about it. To the root of it. Who are you without the other?

There are many things I don’t understand about you, or them, what shaped you and what you go through today. To not understand, doesn’t mean not caring.

My reflections here offer no answers to the big questions of our times with racism, violence, poverty and eco-collapse are looming above and beyond our sense of safety and sanity. Change won’t happen overnight. But we must begin.

To excavate—and face—all the ways in which we are blind and tend to jump to conclusions, take sides and make grand sweeping statements about right and wrong; all the ways in which we play into and uphold a society built on exploitation, violence and power hierarchies.

We educate ourselves. We invite open inquiry. We humble ourselves to the complexity. To the not knowing. We show up for another conversation.