by Tatyana

 

“I’m worried for you three, but I’m especially worried for them as brown men out here, you know?”

Clara and I were standing outside the kitchen tent, away from our camp and both the literal and emotional warmth of our crew to hash some things out. This was our first night at Standing Rock, and in the morning I was going with two of our campmates—both men of color who had far closer friendships with Clara than they did with me—on our first peaceful direct action. Since any interaction with the police could lead to arrest for water protectors, the three of us were preparing to be held in police custody, and to face the brutality known to arise when dealing with them.

“You can’t forget. It goes: Women of color, men of color, white women, white men.” She lifted her gloved hands gradually from chest height to just above her brow as she spoke, building an invisible ladder of oppression between us in the air fogged up with our breath. Clara didn’t blink or look away as she implored me to remember the reality that powered both American colonizers and the contemporary oil industry, her large eyes both kind and maybe a little worried we were about to have a fight.

Putting this particular moment in context, I understood immediately why she would be worried. In the years of our friendship, Clara had shared with me her frustrations as a Latinx woman as she’d tried to talk with other white friends and loved ones about their behavior. She’d faced resistance and gaslighting, broken promises and condescension, and I knew all of it had cost her more energy and pain than she let the other person know. She was risking the same reactions in talking to me, no matter whether I seemed like one of the “good” white people before this. And still, even though I wanted more than anything to be supportive of her in that moment, I felt a kind of resistance bubble up in me.

My mind swirled with questions, trying to pick apart Clara’s assertion. Could we really throw aside women’s issues like that? What about threats to my safety as a woman? What about sexual assault in jail? Wasn’t I putting myself on the line? Why wasn’t that enough?

The word “enough” did it for me. Somehow I’d twisted her words in my head to mean that if she had specific concerns for her male POC friends that were different from her concerns for me, then I wasn’t actually important to her at all. Looking into my friend’s face, watching her fight to stay honest and loving and vulnerable with me, I knew I couldn’t deny that she cared about me without literally ignoring her. That realization made the frantic resistance I was swimming through click into focus.

So I took a deep breath and outlined the familiar patterns of white fragility in my head:

• the impatience with things not being fixed as soon as I said I wanted to help
• the squirming to avoid blame or accountability
• the deep fear of doing something wrong

I remembered all the times Clara had my back when we were dealing with patriarchy. I forced myself to see, written all across her face, what I would destroy between us by letting that be louder than my care for her and for the men we traveled with. I remembered that extending care for those directly endangered by white supremacy wouldn’t ever mean that I didn’t deserve or wouldn’t get care, too.

I reached out and squeezed her shoulder. I thought about our friends, and said sincerely, “Yeah, I’m with you. I’m worried about what they’ll be up against.”

I’m not saying that I’m an expert by any means, but I am familiar on an experiential level with continuously stepping into solidarity as a white woman. The goal of Restorative Writers is to build a community where white women are constantly being given both the tools and the opportunities to choose into solidarity in a way that’s different from maybe anywhere else. Most community spaces do not treat solidarity as a continuous series of choices, both big and small.

The community we are building is especially important at a time where over 50% of white women in America voted for fascist patriarchy. It’s important because white women who care deserve space to learn how to actively express that care, and women of color, perhaps more than anyone on the planet, deserve to be in relationships where they feel their trust being earned on a moment to moment basis.