I've felt everything that has been said in this module: shame, guilt, fatigue... I guess it's a long way. I'm a swing dance instructor, I've been profiting from an afroamerican culture for long. And I have been aware of it and trying to make other people aware of it for some time now. But recent events have shown me that it's not enough. I'm listening to black people in the media saying how they have felt marginalized in what should be their own culture, and something tells me that I should stop and just change profession. Cause at some point I feel that too much damage has been made already. But this module was really helpful, cause it showed something that I hadn't thought on before. We're here to clean our mess, our dirty racist mess we have created, and they way of cleaning it is to use our patience, voice, awareness in order to give as much explanation to the others and releif POC from having to do so. Cause if the whiteness guilt is exhausting, I cannot even imaging to thing how exhausting it is to be black and being asked constantly about it, and having to confront people constantly.
I've been for long now in the feminist fight, as a woman, I've gotten angry, I've cried, I've said 'I don't want to talk to you anymore, either you accept this or you go'. And I feel entitled to do so, cause it hurts, and nobody should tell me what to do with my pain. However, in the antiracist work, I'm on the other side. Racism doesn't hurt me, or if does, it does in a very superficial way, I've cried with all those videos, and films, and books, but I haven't felt the pain in my body. To learn that here I'm not entitle to get angry it's been very useful. Now I see what's my job and how I can help.
I still go back to the shame and guilt and the fatigue, cause it's a lot of work, but as I said, it is our mess, and it is our responsibility to clean it out. Today I read an article in which a black woman said that she didn't like the word 'ally' or the fact that white people were 'helping'. Helping to what? she said, racism is not about me, is about you, white people. It is not my burden, it is yours. And damn she was right.
