I’m a white-bodied person. I made this collage years ago. For so long I’ve looked at it with curiosity. I wasn’t able to see it.

White hands of power at the top of a hierarchy,
holding captive those whose nature it is to fly.
Gloved hands doing the dirty work.

There’s nothing comfortable about this.

In her book, White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, Robin DiAngelo says, “we won’t move forward in race relations if we remain comfortable.” Here are some questions she invites us to consider when we feel discomfort:

“Why does this unsettle me?
What would it mean for me if this were true?
How does this lens change my understanding of racial dynamics?
How can my unease help reveal the unexamined assumptions I have been making?
Is it possible that because I am white, there are some racial dynamics that I can't see?”

July 19, 2019