We all occupy a space on the spectrum of privilege, and that space often blinds us to the pain and suffering of others. Many of us mistake the use of the word “privilege” to mean that others believe we have it easy, and that we haven’t ever gone through tough times. The way we feel about our positions on the spectrum is greatly influenced by what came before us, and what we haven’t been able to leave behind.
I have spoken many times about growing up in a home dominated by domestic violence and many kinds of abuse. Anyone who has read or studied domestic violence knows that it is often cyclical—meaning it impacts multiple generations of a family. I know that to be the case in my own family, on both my mother’s side, and my stepfather’s side. Oftentimes, when a generation—a person—doesn’t follow that pattern, we call it “breaking the cycle.” I was the person in my family. I broke the cycle.
In the cycle of domestic violence, no one could argue that breaking the cycle isn’t the same thing as setting oneself free. I am proud to be the first “free woman” in my family. I also know that the way I look at the world around me, and the way I speak and behave are forever impacted by existing within that cycle, and breaking free from it.
I can’t completely explain why I was able to get out. The deck was stacked against me. Long term abuse conditions us to believe things about ourselves, relationships, and others that aren’t true. Still, even though I believed many things about myself that weren’t and aren’t true, I never believed that the existence I was in was right. I knew what was happening to my mother, my sister and me was wrong, and I knew it should never happen to anyone.
Domestic violence isn’t the only cycle within our families that can be broken, and that can give us a more clear picture of the world, while opening doors to greater openness and love for everyone around us.
I was sewing over the weekend, listening to U2, and thinking about how many people complain that their old music is the only thing of value from them, and that they “sold out.” I am an ardent fan, and I disagree. I started thinking about why their music changed, and one thing struck me—they got out of their “bubble.” They were four guys growing up in working class Dublin during a tough time politically. They knew there was something better for them, and somehow, they broke out. Their music took them to places they had never been. They met people and came into contact with cultures they may never have otherwise encountered.
Experience, and getting out of your bubble influences you and often changes who you are. It changes what you put out into the world. I use U2, merely as an example, because a friend of mine experienced something over the weekend that is so frustrating and so difficult to understand, but I think it happened because of another person’s bubble.
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| Breaking some cycles changes the world. |
A lot of white people—even good ones are racist. There’s no other way to say it. They just are. There’s no justification for it. At the same time, I don’t think many of them could give you an explanation of where their thinking came from or how they “decided” to think that way. I know every person’s situation is different, but as I had already been thinking about what makes a person break out of cyclical violence, or what makes a band’s music evolve, I also began to think about what doesn’t make these things happen—about what doesn’t make people change.
I know issues around systemic racism are complex, but at their core is a simple thought—the thought of being superior to another person because of skin color. It’s a hateful thought, but boiled down, it’s still simple.
Why is it so often that racist people don’t change their thinking, and pass their beliefs down—like violence—to subsequent generations? I probably don’t have the answer, but one thing strikes me about people who don’t change—they never get away from their bubble. They not only stay in their bubble, but they shun any challenge from others that they have allowed themselves to live their lives trapped by it. They are fine with being trapped, and living a sliver of the life that is available to them, and they often apply this to every aspect of their lives.
I would argue that people who never change the way they think or live are some of the most unhappy, and often unpleasant people you ever encounter, and they are depriving themselves and, in many cases, those close to them a world of possibilities. I have never met a happy racist. I’m sure they’re probably out there, but I suspect they live on a higher point of the pay grid than most, and there’s a more significant benefit from their racism than the racism of your curmudgeonly uncle, father or grandfather. Obviously, being racist is not gender exclusive, but when we think of the hallmark racist, it’s almost always a vision of the angry, white man—and often an older angry, white man.
We all know them. They have a very narrow range of interests, and anything outside of that range is pointless for them. They don’t want to go places that will challenge them socially, culturally, or intellectually. They need to control their environment, often needing to “take” their comfort zones with them. They hold onto thinking and ideas that were passed to them, and they have held on so tightly, they don’t even ealize that these thoughts don’t even come from themselves—they’re just carrying the unsorted baggage given to them by previous generations. The baggage isn’t independent thought, and it’s actually evidence of an insecurity that if ever acknowledged, would be both frightening and depressing.
If you had been carrying someone else’s incorrect and unsubstantiated beliefs your entire life, and you were suddenly forced to confront and accept that reality about yourself, I would think you would wonder what more you could have done in your life. What could you have done? Could you have gone places and seen things that would have made your life more fun? Could you have done that for someone you love? Could you have connected with someone you love who thinks differently from you, instead of pushing them away?
My grandpa was a hardcore union card-holding Democrat all of his life. He was also one of the most racist people I ever knew. He only wanted to watch sports on television—nothing else. The deepest connection that ever existed in his life was to his parents, and that connection influenced every aspect of his life—what he loved to eat, how he spoke, and what he thought. He moved away from the small gulf town in Texas where he grew up, but he never left his bubble. He had no use for anything in which he wasn’t personally interested, and those interests were very limited. I hated the fact that he was racist. I loved him. He was capable of immense love and caring, and he lived a life of anger and pain—not all of which was his own making. I often wonder, if he had chosen to get out of his bubble, could he have chosen a life that didn’t leave him in pain and in desperate loneliness that drove him to drink away the last years of his life?
If you never get away from what and where you come from, one thing will happen: you’ll never really go anywhere. If you hold onto thoughts given to you by people who also didn’t have their own thoughts, how can you even say that you believe your life is all your own?
Racism is a thought. Many people carry it around with them, and they don’t even know why they think it. They’ve allowed themselves to stay trapped in beliefs that don’t make any sense. They’ve locked out the possibility that they’ve been lied to, and they have perpetuated that lie with no purpose. Sadly, they often don’t even understand how hurtful and hateful those beliefs are.
I often believe that our best hope of overcoming racism is that the people carrying it—almost like a chronic disease—will eventually die off, and the disease will die off with them. I know that’s not entirely likely, and I know that we have to keep battling. Sometimes, that means standing up to people we love and telling them they’re wrong, and that we are going to remove ourselves from their presence if they cannot remove their racism from our interactions with them. It’s painful. It takes courage. It takes strength of character. But those things are nothing compared to what people of color suffer every day in America. When we break out of the bubble in which we are raised—whether a bubble of abuse, or a bubble of racist baggage—we owe it to ourselves and to future generations not to go back, and not to pretend that bubble is harmless.
We can’t always change people. We can’t always change their wrong thoughts. We can’t always make them understand that the beliefs they hold onto are chains, and they have prevented them from forming beliefs and ideas of their own. You can’t be a complete person or live a complete life when you are chained to a cycle that holds you back, and holds you down. Those chains are probably even part of the reason you remain unhappy, even when no one you think you hate has ever done you any wrong.
