Immediately after we all learned Rodney King’s name in April, 1992, my obsession with race in America propelled me and my White ass forthrightly into South Central Los Angeles from my home at the beach 12 miles away. I was sick and tired of unaddressed, unrepentant, unrelenting racism — which I felt sure was the rootiest cause of what we called and always call “the riots.” And, I had some ideas. I pursued them there with gusto for a few months before they morphed into a different version of the project. Ten years later I would return to Watts for more time with more people and organizations, continuing to learn what I could about people who experience racism from people who experience racism as my project had taken on yet another form.
Ten and 20 years ago, my White friends would rarely, if ever, engage in conversations about race. It didn’t seem relevant to them and they just couldn’t comprehend anything about what I was attempting to do nor why I was doing it. There was never any space to share with them the unbounded joy and deep satisfaction I felt while spending time with people who were at once nothing like me and exactly like me; people who lived nearby and a world away. “Just be careful,” my friends would say, utterly unaware of how racist that knee-jerk, culturally-colloquial comment really was, and how it was a perfect example of the impetus for my regular sojourns in the first place.
That many of the same people will engage me today is evidence that conversations about race in America have evolved. In many circles those conversations have assumed a frame of privilege, which I appreciate. The invitation to talk about where and how our American system of government encourages and supports some citizens and where and how the very same system exploits and disadvantages other citizens — based solely on skin color/race — seems like a useful and valuable perspective. But it also eschews a critical component that conscious politics practitioners take to heart.
As conscious politics practitioners, we advance our cause by not judging or our life experiences as anything other than purposeful and then, simply, by being curious about one another. What’s it like to be you?
I do not speak with any authority on the issue of privilege — White, male, or otherwise — in our American culture or on this planet. I do, however, speak as a human being for whom our consciousness is an obsession — and a vocation. People like me believe we get born on purpose for a purpose. We believe nothing is random. We believe our current human experiences are perfectly designed to advance us on a soul level despite what it might look like on a ground level in the nitty-gritty of everyday life. We believe we take on all manner of races and genders/non-genders and personalities in a series of human life experiences. As Frank Sinatra famously crooned, “I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king.” We all have.
So, fellow human being, the conversation about privilege we are not having is this: I didn’t come here to have your life experience any more than you came here to have mine. Maybe you are in a Black body and I am in a White one or you are in a wealthy family and I’m in a poor one or I am transgender or they don’t identify with gender at all or you are quite decidedly female or maybe you are physically strong and I am sickly or you were raised a Baptist and she a Muslim or he has no legs and you have two or they live in a repressive society while ours is free or you went to private school and I went to public school or you have a loving family while hers is abusive or, or, or.
Through a lens of judgment, a hallmark of the old consciousness, we create and adhere to supremacy stories about who and what has value and who and what does not. Through a lens of compassion, a hallmark of the new consciousness, there are no such stories. With compassion, we stipulate that there is equal value to each of our life experiences regardless of whether they are flush with or devoid of what we call privilege. As conscious politics practitioners, we advance our cause by not judging our life experiences as anything other than purposeful and then, simply, by being curious about one another. What’s it like to be you? This requires that each of us fully embrace and embody the experiences we are having, which I always hope everyone is doing.
Let’s say we were all on board for creating an American society that works for all of us. Our robust collective practice would first have us join forces to get clear about what that intention really looks like, a project and process in and of itself. Then, against that backdrop, we would make all manner of pitches and proposals to get there. We would evaluate said pitches and proposals through the lenses of our unique life experiences. We would say things like, no, no way, based on my/our experience(s), would that proposal achieve the stated objective(s) and here’s why. We would say things like, yes, absolutely, based on my/our experience(s), that proposal would very likely achieve the stated objective(s) and here’s why. For starters.
We would, as we go, see just how much of a role we each have. We would see how people who appear to be the same aren’t necessarily the same and we would see that people who appear to be quite different are actually, often, very much the same. We would create interconnection and cultivate trust. This is what it means to have the room and space to truly “celebrate our differences.” If you ask me, the privilege will be living in a truly equitable, multi-racial society that only Americans can create — with every one of the Americans we have.
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