"ORDER MY STEPS"

“ORDER MY STEPS”

            A couple of weeks ago, my entry “No Excuses, No Exceptions,” was about metaphors for talking about our captivity to white supremacy.  Though disease and demonic possession are potent metaphors for our captivity, I prefer the metaphor  of “addiction” as the most apt approach in our post-modern world, though I am very drawn to the biblical model of demonic possession. In a later blog,  I will address this biblical model using the passage from Luke 8:26-39.  If you want to try it out before I do that,  check out the passage, seeing the man possessed with demons as a modern person classified as “white.”  It is a difficult and costly healing, as you will see.

I prefer addiction as the model for white supremacy because it acknowledges the difficulty of diminishing the power of white supremacy in our lives.  Using that model, in the chapter “Order My Steps,” from “Passionate for Justice,” I list seven steps that white people must work in order to begin to find some liberation from our captivity to racism and the white supremacy that undergirds it.  Because our addiction is so strong, these seven steps are not linear or hierarchical – rather they are like a spiral that must be continuously worked.  And, in using the addiction model, I am indicating that those of us classified as “white” will always be in recovery – there won’t be a time when we are free of our addiction.  These steps can be used for seeking liberation from other forms of captivity, like sexism and homophobia, but I am intending them for those captured by white supremacy. 

Here are the seven steps for seeking liberation from our captivity to white supremacy:  recognition, repentance, resistance, resilience, reparations, reconciliation, and recovery.  I’ll list some of them briefly today and expand on them later.  The first and perhaps most vital step is recognition – recognition that we are captive to the power of racism and white supremacy.  This is often the most difficult step because most of us who are classified as “white” do all that we can to deny that we are captives to the idea of race.  As my longtime friend, David Billings, put it in the title of his powerful book on white supremacy, we are in “deep denial.”  For many of us “whites” who are moderate or liberal or progressive, it is often more important to us to be seen as non-racist than it is to acknowledge the power of that race has in us.

This is the difficult fact of American history – all of us classified as “white” are under the power of white supremacy and racism – there are no exceptions.   Because of the modern use of media that records police brutality, because of the courageous organizers and protestors, because of voting power -we are seeing individuals and some institutions begin to come to recognition of this terrible captivity:  white supremacy is woven through us as individuals, institutions, and structures.  This is terrible and difficult news: we are captured by the power of white supremacy.  There is no way around this truth of American history and current American society.

“Recognition” is the beginning of the process where we move to healing.  It is an acknowledgment, to ourselves as “white” individuals and institutions, that we are captive to the power of race.  We do this, not to make ourselves feel guilty (though there is plenty of that to go around), but rather to acknowledge what is obvious to those who are classified as “other” in this twisted system of race.  In this sense, the metaphor of addiction is right on target:  to ourselves, and in community, we must acknowledge:  “I am a racist.”  Harsh language, to be sure, but we must start here, or we will never get anywhere meaningful.  We’ll always be playing the game of “They are racist, but I am not,”  or “I am a bit racist, but I’m not as bad as others are.” 

            We who are classified as “white” must begin where we are, and that is a recognition of our captivity to the system of race, a system designed not to classify the wide and diverse family of humanity.  Rather it is a system designed to indicate that humanity is a hierarchy, with those classified as “white” designated to be at the top of the ladder of humanity.