White supremacy killed Sandra Bland no matter how she died.

First, because I am writing and thinking about people I do not know I want to acknowledge what is stolen and never forget- I am talking about real people and their families immense loss.      

So much of the media conversation is centering on the idea that Sandra Bland committed suicide while being held in jail and was not murdered.  Of course it matters if she was physically murdered by someone or if she took her own life or even if she was denied proper medical care after her assault.  And  I want to state here that it is not at all clear that she did kill herself and people have every justifiable reason to suspect she was murdered or died from being denied proper treatment in jail. 

Denial of medical care is another form of murder as in the devastating case of 24-year-old Sarah Lee Circle Bear who was jailed on a bond violation and was found unconscious in her cell on July 6 after pleading for medical help.  In Circle Bear's case the autopsy claims she died of a meth overdose. Again, even if that is true, having drugs in your system or a drug addiction does not mean you should be left to die in your cell for a minor offense.  Read more about her case. 

thttp://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/07/28/manning-sarah-lee-circle-bear-died-while-police-custody-family-seeks-justice-161204

It’s important to articulate that however Sandra Bland died, the man that stopped her for failing to signal a lane change and then on camera antagonizes and proceeds to brutalize her is to blame for her death.  As is the system of white supremacy that is the police system that arrested her and the jail system that held her.

I don’t mean this as a metaphor.  Even if every single thing the sheriff’s office is throwing out there turns out to be true in some form or another the real truth remains...If Sandra Bland had not been stopped by this man and physically assaulted and then arrested and held in jail she would not be dead right now. No matter what her personal struggles were in life she would be alive, starting a new job and dealing with those struggles. Take a moment and think about what this kind of assault and imprisonment would do to you? The sheriff wants people to think if he proves she killed herself while under his control some how that lets them off the hook and turns this into just an unfortunate incident.    

To add to this ridiculous assertion, The Waller County sheriff, R. Glenn Smith releases the toxicology report that shows elevated THC in Sandra Bland’s body after her death.  This has no bearing on the case.  The ridiculous assertion that some how marijuana use prior (or some how during) her imprisonment is an explanation for what they claim is her suicide but the physical assault and wrongful imprisonment would not be a factor is ludicrous. 

White supremacy is a killing force in our society.  Whether Sandra Bland was straight up murdered or brutalized and terrorized in a way that caused her to harm herself the responsibility falls on the people and institution that used their authority to stop her, assault her, imprison her.  Let me just name that one more time- Stop her.  Assault her.  Imprison her.  She died under their authority.  

It matters to nuance this conversation even if it turns out that Sandra Bland did some how take her own life.  Because what we are really confronting is that white supremacy is terrorism and it does just what terrorism is supposed to do.  

From the FBI website:Domestic terrorism" means activities with the following three characteristics:

• Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law
• Appear intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population (or governments)
• Occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S.

The seemingly endless videos of Black, Brown and Indigenous men, women and children being terrorized, punched, kicked, tackled, choked and outright shot down by police all over this country is the context in which to examine how a woman driving down a residential road, minding her own business could end up dead after forgetting to signal a lane change.  

It is horrifying to face the outright murder of human beings and it is equally horrifying to face the terrorizing of people to the point that they harm themselves.  Either way the system of white supremacy and the people that hold authority in that system are responsible for this woman’s life being stolen from her and from those that loved her just as it is responsible for stealing Sarah Lee Circle Bear from her children and family.  These stories are just two of too many to count and each life stolen by white supremacy breaks the hearts of so many and continues to terrorize whole communities in our country.    

There is no right way to be in white supremacy.

I am thinking of Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco, their work “Couple in a Cage”.  They toured museums in a cage as the last known primitives.  You could “observe” them in their cage or for a dollar they would perform a tribal dance, tell a traditional story or you could have your picture taken with them.  

The Couple in a Cage


Everywhere they went white people either:

Didn’t get it was satire and thought they were real. Some of these white people were fascinated and marveled at how they had never seen a TV before or were upset by the fact that in the 1990’s people were being toured around in cages. 

or

They “got it” and assumed they were in on the joke.  They paid for the dances and stories and to have their picture taken with the savages, laughing the whole time.   Or they “got it” and were upset by the responses of other white people acting in all of the above ways.   

I did not see the work in person but I did see a later piece at The Evergreen State College with Guirromo and another collaborator Roberto Sifuentes which had a similar idea but invited the audience to dress the artists up with various stereotypical outfits like living dolls.  This time no one thought it was “real” but white people’s responses fell into the “I’m in on the joke.”  or “The joke isn’t funny.” category. 

For white people this work speaks deeply to the experience of whiteness in a white supremacy.  In the face of history, racism, whiteness there is no “right way to be”  and that is a very uncomfortable space to be in.  Often those that think they are most in the know or in on the joke can act out the most racist behavior which proved true at both of these performances.  

Another truth is that the behaviors of white people in that space can cause people of color pain and anger. And people of color will have different and to be clear many differing experiences with being there.  I attended the Evergreen performance with several friends that were not white.  One of them left she was so upset by the racism being displayed in the space, another woman was playing with the dynamic, laughing and egging on the white people who were so sure they were “in on the joke” while dressing up the men in racist costumes.  

So there was no right way to interact with “Couples in a Cage.”  or the other work by Gomez-Pena because there is nothing right about it and the bloody history it draws from.  Messy, painful, confusing.  That is the reality when confronting white supremacy.  The work white people need to do is not going to be neat or easy and often that work can be painful to people of color to witness. 

But to figure out what to do next is going to require some real thinking, some real daring.  And this process is not one that many People of Color are going to enjoy witnessing because it is confusing and messy.  We as white people are behind in many ways and as painful as it is to deal with that it is time now to do the real thinking and from that thinking the real work.    But we need to do that work not to be liked by anyone, or to be the good white people or the white people who get it or thinking there is a right way to act within white supremacy but to figure out how to rejoin humanity in the struggle to transform and heal our world from white supremacy. 

Why no one not even the Klan seems to want to be called racist.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:

“He called me a racist.”

MATT LAUER:
“Well, what he said, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:
“That’s — “he’s a racist.” And I didn’t appreciate it then. I don’t appreciate it now. It’s one thing to say, “I don’t appreciate the way he’s handled his business.” It’s another thing to say, “This man’s a racist.” I resent it, it’s not true, and it was one of the most disgusting moments in my Presidency.”

Whenever Rush Limbaugh or the like are called out directly for being racist or fueling racism with their comments they always respond in the same way, they deny they are racist and then often accuse their accusers of being the ones who are racist.  They treat the naming of racism as the ultimate crime as when George W. Bush who was president during 9/11, Katrina and the invasions of two countries calls the moment when Kanye West named his lack of response to Katrina as not caring about Black people one of the most disgusting of his presidency.

I think it has less to do with the idea that no white person wants to be called racist in 2014 and more to do with racism itself.  Yes in 2014 there are a lot of white people that balk at the idea of being called on their racism or being labeled as racist.  This is for the most part white people that truly do not want to be racist and may not have the tools or the ability yet to confront their own learned racist behavior.  But the folks that I writing about here and their followers don’t shy away from inflammatory comments about race.  So why do they constantly deny the label racist and act as if the very accusation is itself the worst possible of actions?

It is not because these folks are merely uninformed or making a thoughtless comment or assumption, these folks are true white supremacist and they know what they are saying and why.  White supremacists actually believe (or are willing to align themselves with the belief for their own benefit) that white people are some how genetically superior just for being born white and that it is white people that are under attack.  Furthermore the white supremacist believes it is not the history and reality of white supremacy that has caused the bulk of suffering for people of color it is their own savagery and inferiority that has brought it about.  Or as equally prevalent the idea that people of color have not suffered at all from racism and merely play the race card and sit back while the money and power roll in. 

“You’re dealing with people who are professional race baiters, who make a very good living off this kind of thing. They make more money off of race than any slave trader ever. It’s time groups like the NAACP went to the trash heap of history where they belong with all the other vile racist groups that emerged in our history.”  - Mark Williams president of Tea Party Express

One of the most insidious parts of this is to deny that you are racist and then accuse your accusers of being racist.  This plays directly into the white supremacist ideology that white people, the so called “white race” are under direct attack by people of color and that it is actually white people that suffer at the hands of racism. 

It is part of the white supremacist belief system that when people of color (and to a lesser extent race traitor whites) name your racism they are merely crying out against the true and the natural order of things.  Of course you ridicule their audacious attempts at naming for themselves what is happening.   Naming is power.  You can study the history of our country from colonization and slavery through the attempted genocide of Native Americans, forced relocation and boarding schools, lynchings, segregation, denial of voting rights, internment of Japanese Americans during world war two, the on going attack against recent immigrants, the war on drugs and prison industrial complex and the death squad mentality of so many police departments towards communities of color.   You will see again and again how necessary it has always been for white supremacy to deny people the ability to name what is happening to them.  

This brings to mind the term gaslighting which is defined in Wikipedia as a form of mental abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making victims doubt their own memory, perception, and sanity. Instances may range simply from the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred, up to the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim. The term owes its origin to the play/film Gas Light that show a woman purposely driven mad by her husband. 

In these cases of racist gaslighting it’s not really about getting people to admit their racism.  That is a waste of time and actually a fight most of these folks want to have especially folks like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck who profit from their white supremacy.  It is really about supporting the people who have the courage and clarity especially in a public venue to name white supremacy when they see it.  Because as we witness time and again folks that name this behavior especially People of Color, are often met with incredible backlash.  

Race is a very complex subject but white men and women who are pursuing a white supremacist agenda in this country will always deny they are being racist because that is part of the very agenda of white supremacy; to deny, ridicule and dismiss anyone who attempts to name their behavior and to name an intricate part of our national history for what it is.  So keep naming, resisting and staying clear about the agenda of those who play this game. 

I wrote this poem ten years ago and it resonates tonight...

The Way Forward is with a Broken Heart
(for Henry and Eleanor at 2 years)

1. It all comes at once the ever breaking and mending of the heart.  I was dreaming and then I woke to the sun in the sky and a bus full of people heading to D.C. to say no to war.  We were driving so close to the place of my birth, the only land my little heart and fists ever knew.  Born into exile on tribal land, the makers of the Serpent Mound, the People of the Valley.  My own tribes destroyed long ago into states and a history of brutality offering only this lethal legacy of white supremacy.

And yet I can still kiss the Ohio sky and the city, Dayton, only my arms width wide.  You know how you can love a place for the geography of how you survived?  The girl in me alive again, expect good things from people like you do from trees and rocks and the beloved dandelions of childhood alleys. Dandelions, they insist on calling weeds.  Weeds that can make wine and nourish and crowns for the heads of city kids, that deserve beauty. 

Always the babies are the back beat to my heart.  Even sleeping on this bus going 70 across Ohio I know the weight of them, slung on my hip with great care.  They are all heartbeats and openings, soft breath and delicate bones and something of stars that floods them and they shimmer.  Effortlessly they re-knit my spirit back into the universe as over and over it is torn from the very fabric of what it means to be human.

In turn I am all mama bear protective, wanting to shield them,  realizing with the force of breath knocked out of me, that I would die for these children.  I want to keep the world gone mad from their door, from their beauty and souls.  I know I can’t and it breaks my heart again and again and gives me the reason to go on.

And to feel how much we need children to be wanted, not had like car accidents or accessories. This society rides it’s indifference towards children with poverty and bombs and a sick disneyfied morality full of toys that beep and flash and will talk to your children so you don’t have to.  As if some piece of plastic crap can hold them, when they are still so much stars and deep roots that shudder under the bones of knowing. The true names of things written in a language beyond words on the back of their lids, a map to another world.


2. It all comes at once, the ever breaking and mending of the heart.  It is easy to have fun in America, entertainment is cheap and plentiful like gasoline and Big Macs we consume endlessly, on the pay later plan.  I tell you almost everyone that has ever been my teacher in life was a drunk once, had to be.  Walked closely, the razor edge of self-destruction, wandered lost in America with one more round to take the edge off civilization.  One more round to take the edge off remembering.  Empty for the promise of a good time to fill you up.  Too hungry to ever be fed.

This is the dream.  You wake from the troubled sweat of sleep, the blur of lights you navigate by are gone, only the darkness cradling you.  Run now from quiet stars into frozen fields, beat cracked hands till earth opens like steaming bread.  Go all the way in.  Emerge small and newly afraid but clear-eyed. You have to survive America to have something to teach.

And in that is the real lion’s share of joy, because the people who can really party in the scared sense of the word are the people who know surviving is worthy of celebration.  Anyone who has ever danced with a room full of people to Stevie Wonder’s You Haven’t Done Nothing or Spearhead’s People in The Middle or screamed along to Bikini Kill’s, Rebel Girl or the drums or the fiddle or whatever gets you off- you know what I mean. Singing and dancing are your birthright.  Joy, a commonly held need like clean water and the air we breathe.
                                                        
Sing now the praises of men that write sexy songs without the tired old hatred of women in the beat.  They gave me back a freedom to shake my ass, without feeling shame or dirty. Taj Mahal, I would name a son for you.  Sing now the praises of women that  never gave up their sexuality  though it was bought and sold, loped off by the church and slavery,  packaged as Jeans!  Beer!  Get some!  To know true pleasure in a society that wouldn’t know sexy if Aphrodite herself rose up on the half shell and bit Hugh Hefner on his boring porno ass is some kind of fine revolution.


3. It is not original sin we are born into this world with, it is a broken heart we inherit.  So often I question the usefulness of things, I want my poems to stop all the rape and killing.  I know if we could turn bombs from earth we would.  I know peasant or villager are just metaphors by the powerful for people who do not matter.  Like the urban poor, they are there to be studied or killed depending on the need.  To be studied or killed, depending on the need.  Then in that madness they will deny that you grieve.

I am mad with this world and I must remember again that without the music and art of other people.  Without the good company along the way, I would be dead or worse. The audacity, the sheer audacity of people to go on loving,  demanding bread but roses too.  The eleven year old boy in Mississippi who was asked by the cop with the club, What’s your name? and he shouted,  Freedom! Freedom is my name.

The audacity of buses and buses of people riding through the night to D.C. and they don’t get weary.  And the Muslims in the parking lot of the truck stop in Maryland, facing the rising sun because war or no war, the day breaks and you pray.  I am shy now, with my coffee, my lack of cultural ways  but I pray too, am humbled by the sunrise that makes me dream a bigger dream.
                                                             
Rollin’ on in good historical company
marching with all those ghosts
that know the way,
don’t fear the dead
they are the path we walk on
the bones will rise
from earth, blessed clave
giving us the rhythm
to go on marching
dreaming
creating
fall in love
raise children
don’t give up

all at once
and among the mundane details of the day
resistance flows through us
and it is beautiful to witness
and it is beautiful to feel
and the real joy of living
is in that moment,
our scarred and sacred hearts
mending and breaking
mending and breaking
and beating strong.





Note:  The title of this poem is from a book by Alice Walker whose words have been a gift to me on this hard, beautiful journey.  Much of this poem was inspired by a bus ride from Minneapolis to Washington D.C. and the subsequent Anti-war march I attended on April 20,  2002. The poem is dedicated to my beautiful niece and nephew and to all children.  It has been read at many peace and justice events and protests.

I am carrying names around.  Chants of grief and confusion.  Chants of love.  I know deeply loss and longing but there are things I do not know.  Nightmares that walk up to you in the day or under the moon and steal your child.  White supremacy is predator energy manifest.  That is not a metaphor.   Trayvon Martin,  Jordan Davis, Renisha Mcbride are not metaphors.  Real things in the real world that must be done like repeal these stand your ground laws and the spirit cries out to take them back from a world so sick at heart it must say out loud- they were good, they did nothing wrong.  To sing these names as they were given with love and to not forget.  

This is a poem speaks to the madness of white supremacy and I feel that madness right now.   

It Was A Long White Night

I can not speak

                  it breaks under me cold and brittle
                  it cracks and turns to dust in my worn hands

the hands of a house cleaner
the hands of a woman
last night despair and maddening thirst
to know culture
what it feels like to be inside
not seeing, buying or appreciating but being
forever
             birth, life, death always belonging

like driving by the Grand Canyon or taking a picture of it
or living in that wide, deep place so that every stone
knows the rhythm of your breath
the weight of each bone set in motion

in the car next to me at the stoplight
white boys yelled, Take that stupid sign off your car!
You ugly lesbian dyke!
The sign asks How many white men were attacked after
the Oklahoma bombing for looking like Timothy McVeigh?

I had to laugh, what else can you do?
Especially at lesbian dyke as opposed to heterosexual dykes?
they were not laughing
their faces flushed red in that way white folks get
when we are angry,
we blush like that when we are making love too
but I didn’t think of that until later at home
in the bath tub, I choked on tears
while my neighbors through the apartment wall cheered on
the football game

it wasn’t their anger that got to me, I’m used to it
it was this thirst
                           I carry like grief

they carry like weapons.

I can not speak, whiteness
does not even use the same language
black pride means loving yourself
white pride means burning crosses
we don’t say white folks and hear home
don’t know how home might feel
we’ve lost so much
we often don’t even know
we are lost anymore

so when they ask me
I will have to say yes
yes, I know the hard set faces
of young white men
the cruel mouth spitting
the flat lean bellies
the red flush of beer and hatred

                                                  I have studied for my own survival
                                                  for the sake of sanity, angry white men

waving the flag to ward off the sky
the blue that could break something in blue eyes
and yes,
I do
and do not
claim them
as my own.

What is wrong with saying, “We are all one race, the human race.” 
and “I don’t see race”

As conversations about white supremacy are again coming up on a national level I think it is important to look at one of the ways we white people often try and bridge communication with people of color that does not work.  Here is an example of how this “We are all one.” or “I don’t see race.” plays out. It is a just one example based on an actual experience and I think it gets to the heart of the matter.

A meeting is being held to plan resistance against the impending invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003.  It is an excellent turnout of maybe 40 woman and men eager to work together locally to protest this war.  The gathering is about 85% white.  People are going around the room introducing themselves and sharing both their despair and anger over this looming war and also ideas for protesting it locally.  The 5th woman to speak is an African American woman in her early 50‘s; she shares that she is glad to be here and her interest is on focusing efforts in the Black community especially around recruitment of African American youth into the armed services and also tying the war abroad to the racism and inequality at home. 

The next person to speak is a white woman in her late 40’s.  She states that it is important that we not separate ourselves by race.  That we are all one race, we are all one family, the human family.  That the powers that be want us to focus on our differences not how we are similar and especially as women and mothers we should come together in solidarity to stop this war.  She further states that she does not even see a persons race when she looks at them, she sees only sees a human being.

The woman who had spoken just before her interjects at this point that she does not agree that we are all the same and she will not work with white people if that is their attitude towards race. The room erupts in emotion and tension as the white woman tries to defend her position and the black woman continues to argue that she is not comfortable with the assertion that we are all the same or that it is possible or necessary “to not see race.” 

Various other people intervene some other white people trying to explain to the black woman what the white woman meant.  The few Black people, Asian Americans and the one Native man present, heartily agree with the black woman as do a small number of white people.  The black woman says directly to the white woman, “You know nothing about me and what I have been through and I don’t know you at all. For you to sit there and say we are all one is just total nonsense.” 

The white woman begins to cry and says maybe she should leave.  Some white people comfort her and insist they want her to stay.  The rest of the meeting continues but the energy in the room is  noticeably tense and the next meeting that takes place is half the size and easily 95% white and only one of the people of color present at the first meeting shows up.   

Of course race is a politically constructed category.  So truthfully we are all one race.  So why was such a comment at this meeting so disruptive?  I can think of several reasons.

1. The declaration “We are all one race.” is often used by white people to deny racism and the complexity of experience rather than to bring people together.  Regardless of the intention of this white woman.  Just because we are all one race does not mean we all share the same experiences with race, war, meetings to plan protests, living in the USA and so on.  

2. When a white person says to a person of color that they do not see race it is an empty statement. Perhaps what we as white people are trying to express in that statement is that we do not see negative things about someone else based on race or that we are working hard to see passed the socialization of white supremacy which is positive.  But as a comment it undercuts that effort by bringing up the history that white people never see our own race which is a big part of our problem when we want to deal with racism. Or ends up sounding more like, “I see you just as I would see a white person.” Which puts being white right back at the center as the norm.  You can see or know someone’s “race” without it being racist.  And to claim you don’t see race is to attempt to erase the reality of racism in our society.

3. There is often an assumption on our part that we are a blank slate to people of color.  That a white woman would state “We are all one.”  right after a black woman talked about racism does actually have a history for many, many people of color.  That history includes dealing with racist people at meetings. Dealing with white people that are very happy to have a person of color at a given event but want to be reassured that the person of color is either “like them” or “likes them.”   I am not being flippant about that what I am trying to get at is that most people of color have dealt with a lot of white people before you or I came along and some, maybe a lot, maybe most of those white people have been oblivious to the realities and complexities of racism, or oblivious to their own racism or flat our hostile and racist.     Because of that history it can be tricky to walk into a room as a person of color to discuss protesting war or anything else with a bunch of white people you don’t know. 

I have admittedly made some educated guesses as to why this comment was upsetting for the black woman and other folks in the room but I  think it is important to make some educated guesses as to what prompted this white woman to say what she said.  After the black woman had just laid out her interest in working around the issue of recruitment of black youth into the armed services and focusing on the connections of this racist war with racism at home to have a white person basically assert that race doesn’t matter, that we shouldn’t focus on race was a complete shut down of what this black woman was sharing.  Why did this white woman feel the need to express that particular assertion at that time? 
 
My guess?  She felt left out of the black woman’s comments about focusing on the recruitment in her own community and bringing the issues of race home.  Often white people want so desperately to be connected to people of color and yet we have no real vision for what that connection would look like.  It feels good to have a meeting with people of color present that is focused on a seemingly clear cut issue of a imperialist, racist war our government is going to wage in a far away place.  But when a person of color complicates that for us by bringing up the reality of racism at home which brings up the specter of racism in that room we panic, fearing we will be separated by this from people we desire to be in connection with.  And so we fall back on the pathological behaviors of whiteness and try and negate that separation. Sadly we do this in ways that usually result in separating us from other people more.  The black woman in her first comments did not say, I don’t want to work with white people, she said she was glad to be in this room.  And yet the white woman after her I believe heard something else in the black woman's’ comments.  Her desire to focus on the Black community made the white woman feel left out. 

  I know I can’t be a hundred percent certain about the twisted layers of experience that led one woman to say one thing but I am guessing from my own experience I am pretty close to the mark. Truly hell hath no fury like a white person when we are not at the center of something!  And I am speaking from experience here as well. 

What do you do as a white person when you are in a room and something like this happens?  Provided you are not the white person making the comment.  Hopefully having a more grounded idea around the problematic “We are all one.” or “I don’t see race.” can help you be clear and useful.  You could assert that solidarity must come from an understanding how different people experience race. It is another opportunity to practice the act of challenging an assumption of another white person without playing good white, bad white.  But sadly regardless of what you say these situations can ruin any potential coalitions that are just forming.  When something like war or the recent events around the George Zimmerman trial comes up and there is a lot of energy to organize the fault lines in our own understanding of white supremacy really show. This is part of the vital ongoing work white people need to engage in. 

We are all Trayvon Martin.  We are all not Trayvon Martin.       

In a world where tragedies are reported like weather it is easy to become numb or deal with tragedy in an off hand way.  I do not want to be numb to the reality or deal with the actual horror of anyones death as a metaphor or merely a jumping off point.  My own loves are a conduit to that.  Not in a morbid way but in a way that keeps me connected to my own humanity.  I let my heart rest on the notion of what I would be going through if my beloved niece or nephew were shot dead by someone and if the person who shot them were acquitted of that crime.  I carry that with me because we owe it to Trayvon Martin and to his family and friends not to merely turn him into a symbol. We owe it to all our children to dare to feel how much we truly love them and we owe it to ourselves to stay alive to our sorrow and to our love.

When I was 21 and about to attend college I went to see a professor give a talk.  He was originally from South Africa and now living and teaching in the U.S.  After the talk I found myself chatting with him in the lobby.  At 21 I was hyper aware of my identity as a white person and so our conversation from my side was going something like this.  “As a white feminist I think...” or “As a white anti-racist, anti-imperialist I believe...”  and so on.  After a few of these statements he put up his hand and said in a very clear, ringing voice, “Yes Ellen, it is good that you recognize being white in a white supremacy however, you should never align yourself with the very whiteness that seeks to destroy us.”  His words shook me up and set me well on a path to walking with more than one reality at the same time.  This is life long work. 

I think it can be positive that white people have posted images of themselves in hoodies or declared I am Trayvon Martin.  When I was in 10th grade in Dayton, Ohio I wrote Free Nelson Mandela and No More Apartheid in South Africa on my notebook in big block letters.  I knew about him mostly from bands I was into like the Specials.  I had their 12inch Free Nelson Mandela which talked about his imprisonment and I had some ideas about apartheid in South Africa from the song Sun City that came out in 1985.  The song featured many singers of the time declaring solidarity with the anti-apartheid movement and the video showed images of resistance and brutality in South Africa.  This 15 year old white girl in Dayton really had no idea what it was like to live and resist under apartheid in South Africa nor a deep understanding of the complexity of what was going on there. I also didn’t understand my countries involvement in both apartheid South Africa and the reality of white supremacy in America.  But what I did know is that when given the choice I wanted to align myself with what Nelson Mandela stood for and against what apartheid stood for.  I wanted to stand with humanity in the face of oppression even if I didn’t really get how to do that yet. 

At it’s core white supremacist patriarchy is about a complete loss of humanity. I mean our humanity as white people or the humanity of people like George Zimmerman even though he is not white but clearly aligning himself with a white supremacist ideology.  Much more has been and needs to be said about this loss of humanity but for this line of thought my point is that to align yourself as a white person with humanity is positive and against what white supremacy and patriarchy stand for.  I remember the men in Bangalore, India last year that held a protest after the horrific rape and murder of a woman there.  Someone in the Indian Parliament had made a comment about the way young women dressed being a factor in rape.  These men all put on skirts and took to the streets in an act of solidarity.

The impulse to claim solidarity with Trayvon Martin and with all victims of white supremacy can be part of a rehumanizing process for white people.  Staying clear about standing on the side of humanity but also recognizing you have a different experience is the nuanced approach necessary to deal with being white in a white supremacy.  To this point it is also positive that white people are declaring how our experiences in a white supremacy are so different from what happened to Trayvon Martin and other victims of white supremacy.  It is just as important to highlight the insanity of racism and racial profiling and to ackowledge who is directly harmed by that system.  

For many white people around the country especially younger people the horror and injustice of this murder might be their first experience with how truly evil white supremacy is.  We as white people should support them as they find their way and also learn from them as they bring new ideas and approaches to the struggle. Engaging with other white people around the complexity of being white in a white supremacy is not the same thing as throwing our energy down the abyss of arguing with white people pursuing white supremacy.  Choose your battles wisely especially on line with anonymous racists.  They thrive on conflict. Call something out as racist but then move on. Our energy is better served engaging with other white people that are maybe confused or even defensive but trying to figure it out, even as this can be painstaking work.  
And there are real concrete things we can work for in our country.  An end to stand your ground, an end to stop and frisk, a call to challenge racial profiling and to change our prison and justice system just to name a few. None of these are easy or quick struggles but they are possible and vital. Trayvon Martin is sadly far from the only victim of white supremacy and patriarchy in our current time.  I can name two in my own community just this year.

CeCe McDonald http://supportcece.wordpress.com/ 
Terance Franklin https://www.facebook.com/JusticeForTerranceFranklin

As white people working to challenge white supremacy as an institution, as an ideology as well as working to heal from the pathology of white supremacy and to be of use to the struggle for justice we must be honest about our experiences being white even as we reclaim our humanity.  It is not one or the other but both together that can bring about clarity and action from white people.