Trying and Failing — Every Damn Day
My darling partner occasionally likes to have a few adult beverages and order things from the Internet. Sometimes it’s tank tops, sometimes it’s toilet paper. Each and every time he opens packages that his slightly inebriated self has ordered, he shimmies with excitement.
It’s adorable.
About a month ago, he sent me a text telling me that he was placing an order and he wanted to get me something. I told him that wasn’t necessary, that I had everything that I needed, that our relationships wasn’t dependent on gift giving, that I could buy my own damn things, thank you very much. He responded, “That’s fine but I would like to get you something. So please be a little less stubborn and tell me what you’d like.”
I sent him a book title that had been on my list and he promptly let me know that it had been ordered. The next day, this article showed up in my news feed and I felt my chest tighten. (The article is worth your time.)
My first thought was, “Well shit,” because it was the book my babe had just ordered. A book that I’ve seen on Instagram feeds and Top Ten lists to help white people process the racism that has been the lived reality of the Black community since…well…since before the first slave ship arrived in this land of the free.
Immediately, my anxious, little mind went into overdrive. Should I cancel the order? Is this actually a story worth reading? Am I supporting someone who speaks with authority on race or am I supporting someone who’s hurting the cause? Had I just done that horrible white person thing where I accepted what other white people were saying about race instead of doing my own research and listening to BIPOC individuals who were actually walking the walk and talking the talk and living in the reality?
When the Black Lives Matter protests first began in earnest this spring, I didn’t know how I could be involved. I live in a small, secluded mountain valley that is overwhelmingly white. Local activism felt more like a way to self-soothe the collective guilty white conscious than actually impact any real change. While I have nothing against the protests and support those who were there, it didn’t feel right to me and I decided to sit it out.
Instead, I decided to turn to my bookshelf and look at the authors I was supporting. After a quick inventory, I realized I’d been collecting published stories that were overwhelmingly white. (And overwhelmingly male — a story for a different time.)
It’s when I made the small choice in my very limited and privileged part of the world to start diversifying what I was consuming. It was too little and almost certainly too late, but it felt like the only way I was ever going to change my perspective. And on almost every list of books that I looked at for guidance on what to read to expand my limited horizon, White Fragility was there.
I am the type of student who experiences the world from the words that I funnel into my brain through my eyeballs. I read. I’m a freak about language. I love it with an intensity that I really only show to my dog. I have been known to diagram sentences as a way to relieve stress. It is my way to learn about and empathize with people who live a life differently than my own.
I live in words. Because the words matter.
The words are sometimes the only thing that matter.
When I realized that I had a book coming my way that was problematic, that “simply dehumanized” and “openly infantilized Black people”, I paused and understood I had a decision to make.
I could choose not to read this book out of principle or I could read it with a critical, thoughtful eye and try to understand where it all went wrong.
There is no right way to work through this. There will always be wildly popular stories that miss the mark. There will be moments in culture that are trending and a critic steps in to say, “Well now, wait a minute. That’s not quite right.”
Critics are important. They show another side, one that helps complicate the narrative and make it just a little fuller.
I’ve decided that I’m going to read this book, this story, the words that came from someone else’s brain. But you can be damn sure that I’ll be reading it with that article open on my computer. And probably a few more articles, too.
There is an insane amount of work to be done. There are a voices out there who should be listened to, treasured, criticized, debated, vaunted, added to the conversation because what they have to say is important. What they have to say makes us better, especially when they’re pointing out how we’re — collectively — the worst.
We have an opportunity and a responsibility to examine all of the sides of the stories that demand to be told — stories that make the world beautiful and awful and weird and wild. All at the same time. And sometimes never.
That’s the point of all of this — to live and learn and fall and grow spectacularly. And sometimes, it means a girl orders a book that people treat as gospel and realize that it’s problematic after the fact and read it anyway to better understand the deeply rooted issues that exist within this stunningly imperfect nation.
That’s the work. That’s the growth.
To sometimes fail despite your best intentions. And to keep trying and learning and moving forward anyway.
We will not always get it right. But as long as we’re trying to get it to a place where it’s better, we’re on the right path.
