Both/And

I’m up to Step Six in my Equipping Anti-Racism Allies Bootcamp Training. (A program of thirty self-paced steps toward engaging with racial skeptics who think discrimination is as much a problem for white people as for black people in order to invite them to consider new perspectives.) So far, I’m quite impressed with the curriculum and am learning a lot. What I’m learning, however, is not so much about any ‘other’ people, but about me.

I’ve seen how reactive I can be when someone gets angry and accuses me of hurtful actions. I’ve noticed of how my preference for confluence and calm leads me to unconsciously and continuously avoid conversations and situations that might lead to disturbance. I’ve become more conscious of how my social circle (pandemicly limited though it is) is filled with people who mostly have similar educational backgrounds, skin color, incomes and world views. And I’ve been thinking a lot and even practicing communicating across the boundaries of ‘otherness.’

These boundaries of otherness are encoded both in institutional structures and in the human consciousness that we all share. Institutional patterns of education, work, socializing and access to resources all reinforce the ideas of difference that led to their creation. At every point and in every place, human societies have valued some people more than others. In every group that gathers, there are power relationships—there are leaders and followers, bosses and workers. There are those who are listened to and those who are not heard. Even so-called egalitarian groups create subtle hierarchies of power and meaning.

These structures of power and hierarchy are unavoidable and even useful. The problem is when we begin to think they are an expression of some kind of ‘natural order’ rather than a temporary and fluid expression of human interaction.

But the deepest level of division is the division between self and the world. Our human consciousness arises out of the capacity to make this distinction. This separation creates enormous opportunities for imagination and creativity. It is one of the primary gifts of human beings but the cost is enormous and the confusion created is endless. Unlike the plants and trees, the dogs and fishes, we mostly live in the delusion of our separation, one from another and each from the universe. This delusion creates great pain and causes us to act in ways that are hurtful to ourselves, each other and our environment.

When we look closely, however, we can see that this idea of separation is not true. There is no such thing as an ‘individual’ human being. We only arise and survive in relationship with each other. We are intimately intertwined with the world we life in. The sun, the earth, the air, the water are all part of us and there is no human life possible without everything that is around us. We are merely waves on the great ocean. We momentarily appear, make our wet complaints of separation, and then fall back into the vast water we were never separate from.

I feel rather inadequate and unclear as I try to tease out these ideas and connections. I suppose the main thing I am trying to say is that the ‘problem’ of division is one we can (and should) work on at every level – internally, with our families and friends, with those across the political, racial and ideological spectrum. Our partners and friends are fundamentally as much a mystery to us as the person who voted for the other Presidential candidate or holds other views of how race operates in our society.

My ongoing practice is to tolerate and even appreciate difference and disagreement wherever I encounter it. I vow to continue doing the internal work to bear my own fears and reactivity even as I take concrete actions in the world. This includes listening and appreciating others at the same time as standing up for what I believe, even with people who strongly hold opposing positions.

Both/And rather than Either/Or.