HOW ANTI-RACISM IS LEADING ME TO MY OWN LIBERATION

Here are three big realizations I had this month.

It’s been more appealing to look at the ways I’m an oppressor than the ways I’m oppressed. This seems so obvious: oppressors are way more comfortable than people suffering from discrimination or systems of oppression. Yet this wasn’t obvious when I felt the guilt, shame and horror of how white dominant culture works, and how I’m a part of it working. While this awakening hasn’t been easy, it has been worthwhile: I’ve changed behaviors, choices, priorities. But it’s an incomplete exploration if I don’t also look at how I’m oppressed.

My choice to disassociate with my Ashkenazy Jewish heritage keeps the genocide of Jews alive in me. The oppression of Jews is so devastating and longstanding that I chose in my youth to disassociate with this ancestry pretty much altogether. Such a clever way to avoid intense grief! It’s as if by posturing that I’m ‘not one of them’, I could avoid being subordinated. Instead, I lost both the richness and foundation of my heritage, and I actively practiced being an oppressor (of myself, of my people).

Anti-racism motivated me to understand my own oppression. I’ve learned a lot about internalized white oppression in people of color; now I need to learn more about internalized anti-Jewishness oppression in me. Admittedly, I dove into my Jewish ancestry to help me be a better anti-racist. There’s a lot that’s complicated and squishy about this: how to be helpful in collective liberation yet not caught in the lure of ‘helping others’; how to use my access, resources and positionality to work toward everyone having the same riches. This is good work to do slowly.

Here’s my conclusion, for now, in this very early moment of this exploration: I’m committed to collective liberation, so I’m committed to a thorough look and feel into what it means to liberate myself. White folks talking about the ways we’re oppressed is a tricky thing, so I’m going to tread carefully, reflect tenderly, and pull in supports and wise folks of many racial identities around me.

I believe each of us, right now, is both the target and the agent, the dominating and the subordinated, the oppressed and the oppressor. And I believe our collective liberation is tied to each of us spending real time with how these identities live in us.

Apr. 2023 Back to Blog Home

Want support, encouragement, insight or skilled prodding about topics like this? Check out my coaching.