White Fragility - second half of review

[Amy]

Not for points - meant to be the second half of my review

Anyway, being White and Jewish. No one ever talked to Jewish kids about White. It never came up in Hebrew School or in families I knew of. We spent a lot of time on what it meant to be Jewish, but almost never on what it meant to be White. And its profoundly complex. I remember taking a multi-cultural psychology class at Amherst in the early 2000’s, maybe the late 90’s, and it was the first time I learned about Whiteness. Truly. For a kid from the Northeast, that seems late to me. I knew all about Jewish. That’s when I began to understand that some but not all Jews and Gays “pass” and their minority inclusion isn’t salient for the world to see. Prejudice isn’t automatic, and embedded on sight. It was then that I learned that the Jews and the Gays and the Asians were minorities, but highly successful ones, and didn’t have the same history of oppression that was still going on. It was then that I learned the concepts in this book, that we are all racist. That no one hits level five. And the fours are folks who are aware and who probably think they have “arrived.” There was no woke back then. But the concept was the same. We are all unconsciously racist, and we have to challenge these assumptions all the time. None of us are as woke as we think we are, and if you think you have arrived, you are in deep trouble. The teacher was biracial and she was beautiful. And tough and compassionate and amazing and vulnerable. And this is a weird thing to say, but in 1998, or 1997, biracial was rare. You knew very very few people who were. There were fewer, much fewer interracial couples, therefore far fewer biracial children. She was fascinating to listen to but also to look at. She was breathtaking, and the combination of her features was stunning. But matched by her personality. I don’t even remember her name, but I never forgot her. Or what I learned in that class. We had to write reaction papers each week. I wrote ten or eleven of them. And eventually I printed and bound them, and they still sit in my living room open bookshelf, next to my dissertation and four doctoral qualifying papers. They felt important to keep. Although I have never looked at them again either. But although those concepts stayed with me, not as a living breathing daily thing. When recent events propelled so many to learn and educate, it took me a few weeks. I admit that I coasted. I had the thought that I am doing the work by listening to others who are doing the work, and to families of all kinds and holding their experiences. That’s my education. I don’t need to do more. It took me a couple to realize that was a cop out. That I was not exempt, that’s the whole point. That I too needed to get uncomfortable. That’s why I thought it was important to join others who are reading together, and I wanted to start with this book. It felt to me to be the logical entry point.

One last story about White and Jewish. At 16 or 17, I never had to check a box to define myself. But when hit with college applications, it felt then, and still feels now in a way to be a serious identity crisis. Caucasian technically. But really I felt Semitic. Caucasian and Semitic. I wasn’t an “other”, but I felt other. So that’s how I defined myself; Caucasian and Semitic. Do you know, I’m not even sure all college folks at that time would have understood Semitic. Maybe for some they would have thought it a Native American Tribe. But the colleges I applied to would have. It was important to me to apply to schools with a high Jewish population. I wanted to feel at home for the first time. I knew my experiences were starkly different, and I wanted to be where I felt liked and connected with. I applied to Brandeis early decision and was the third kid in my grade to get into college, and I never looked back.

So themes from the book. So many. But I want to share that the most important theme is this continued idea that we need to continue looking at our own unconscious and inherent racism. That none of us has arrived. That we all need to continue looking at how our races and cultures and implicit assumptions shape us. I actually took over six pages of notes, writing and thinking, while I read this book on my computer in Apple Books. I have so many things to say about the actual book, and now I feel like I got lost on Marijka and College Boxes, and the idea that no one ever made me think about my Whiteness, and that in itself is part of the problem we face today. That example after example shows us Race is everywhere and we need to be thinking about it. And that there is a difference between overt racism, and the do-gooders, like the lawyer Kennedy in Small Great Things by Jodi Piccoult, when very well intentioned people completely have missed the point. A lot of my notes makes reference not just to the Gay or Jewish perspective or lens, but to the psychotherapeutic one, about what it means to truly hear what it means to be in another’s shoes and the lenses we come and operate from. And what we can never know. There is a lot of psychodynamic references and thoughts in there about trauma, and rupture and repair. I liked the part about needing to heal in conversation with receptivity about the gaffes we inadvertently make, and there is so much in there that relates to psychotherapy as well as to race. I appreciated the part about how much it means to a person of color, that you own what you have inadvertently done, seen it, seen the harm, want to repair it, and grow from it and do better. And the same of course is true in psychotherapy. Psychoanalytic concept of rupture and repair. Same with parenting and marriage and life. The idea that one needs to gain resilience and trust and strength from owning the harm, and repairing it. That kind of striving makes the most sense to me in the world. We are imperfect and we have made all kinds of mistakes. So there is striving to be the best person you can be, and then there is the healing that comes from ownership and honesty. I believe that is what I am taking from the book. Maybe it comes full circle after all. Maybe that’s why I wanted to write about that last lunch (The Last Supper?) with Marijka. Because that’s when it all made sense. And felt like a beginning.

[Joanne]

Your last line here says it all