YOU CAN'T RUSH REPAIR
You can’t use a supremacist process to dismantle white supremacy.
Supremacist processes urge instant fixes and perpetuate erasure and trauma because they don’t allow the time and space required by deep healing. We are conditioned to see success through a supremacist lens. When operating from this place we look for closure, comfort, destinations, clean breaks and cleaner surgeries. Losing this lens is paramount to anti-racist work.
[Content warning: I proceed to discuss some mild, yet still gory experiences of the human body. I will also be addressing violence which stems from white supremacy. If you get queasy about bodily fluids, or are a person who spends a lot of time experiencing or with-nessing this kind of violence, perhaps take a break, get some water, consider if reading this right now, or ever, is nourishing for you.]
Wounds take a long time to heal.
About a week and a half ago* I split my finger open on a broken ceramic shower knob. Blood was everywhere instantly. My roommate, dear friend, and mentor of sorts, helped me stop the gushing and stitched me up in our kitchen. Due to other semi-related injuries, this process took us about 3 hours, which included me lying on the kitchen floor in my underwear for an hour so I wouldn’t throw up or pass out. A wound that was made in a split second took three hours just to stabilize and address the initial trauma.
Everyday since, I soak my finger in hydrogen peroxide, pour a calendula wash over it that is made fresh every three days, bandage it up, and apply various salves. I wear gloves and protective materials when cooking, bathing, and cleaning.
I have worked every day since the injury because we live in a capitalist system and because there are important uprisings happening. I am developing joint pain in that hand akin to arthritis because I am pushing it to work beyond its normal pace while injured. This experience, while microscopic relative to the current goings on, offers us some openings to understanding to how white supremacy operates as an overlying system.
Wounds take a long time to heal.
They also take consistent tending, applied effort and active rest.
My finger was sliced through in a moment. Is taking weeks for the skin to come back together. Is supported by resources that promote cleansing (calendula wash), softening (gently applied salve), rest (time), and resistance (patience with discomfort rather than picking at the scab).
I am seeing a lot of folx who have been totally submerged in whiteness and white supremacy, urging their apologies, inflicting their “good deeds”, claiming space in the revolution they just joined. I am cautious because the truth is, we need these people. But we need those actions to change. We need them to stay with the trouble in a different way. We need them to learn to see on many levels.
If you try to rush the repair, if you don’t resist the urge and compulsion for a quick fix, you will rip open the wound.
If you listen to your body, if you diligently keep the wound clean, if you refrain from negligent action and take the time to educate yourself, to observe what tools are available and what healing can happen, you may be able to support the healing.
So the first thing I want to say to those folx who are new to the revolution is “there is time.”
Not because the work isn’t urgent but because time is a necessity and a reality we cannot escape.
There is a time to leave some things alone. There is time to let some abrasions settle without causing more rupture to them. It is time to leave Black and Indigenous People alone and focus on the issues and work they are telling you to do. This is not a time to be lazy. It is a time for active rest. It is a time to actively embody patience. It is a time to actively listen. It is a time to be critical in our understanding of the actions we are taking and why we are taking them. It is time to tend other things we can tend, to make sure that the holistic system is primed for health.
My finger was sliced through in a moment. Is taking weeks for the skin to come back together.
Slavery. Genocide. Stolen lands. Stolen lives.
These are collective wounds that have been inflicted over and over and over for hundreds of years. They are urgent and they need our tending. But these wounds will not be healed in an hour, a day, a week, a year, or even our lifetime. This is not a reason to give up. This is a reason to continue and, specifically, to be the ones who approach the wounds in new ways. This is a reason to learn how to interrupt the thinking process that got us here in the first place. This is an invitation to stop rushing, reacting, fixing as if we even understand what needs repair and how.
If you are someone with white or white-passing skin privilege, you must learn to be with the shock and discomfort in your body without reaching for a Black and/or Indigenous person or another person of color to tell you you’re okay.
You must persistently clean the wound,
which is to say,
face the pain,
educate yourself,
ask for help from other white people
clarify your vision by increasing your awareness and your capacity for understanding.
You must apply salve,
dress the wound every day with action towards collective liberation.
There may be regular maintenance required, like physical therapy/hard conversations, massage/collective care-work, acupuncture/applying localized pressure under the surface that opens gateways for stuck energy to flow, soaks in baths/periodic cleansing when aggressions slip through the cracks in the skin.
And even when a wound has healed, there will be a scar.
You will have to take care of this injury for the rest of your life. But when you care for this wound, it’s so much better. Your health improves drastically. You create environments in which that body part can thrive. This is what happens when we defund oppressive structures like police and redistribute wealth to mental health, housing, food justice, the arts, education, and care for communities most systemically oppressed.
I use this analogy not to imply that Black people and/or Indigenous people and/or people of any marginalized identity are sick or that something is wrong with them, but to acknowledge that they are a part of our collective body.
My liberation is tied up with every other person’s liberation.
Right now we are just dressing a bleeding wound.
You can’t rush the healing, nor can you abandon it.
Collective liberation isn’t just anti-oppression and it doesn’t get or even want a quick fix. It requires consistent community care.
*This piece was written in the first week of June 2020. After weeks of meditation and reflection it was published August 5th, 2020 in light of the forthcoming Mars retrograde through Aries. Mars in Aries is a warrior like no other. Strong, but also rash and very forceful, Mars in Aries will introduce us to anger and action that is compellingly reasonable in the present, but may seem less cogent in the aftermath. We are still deep in the territory of conflict and violence. One of the most important things we can do is care for our wounded and prepare our warriors with patience and forethought.
Here are some things I learned from recently that moved me:
How Can We Win a speech by Kimberly Jones that was for me a vitally clear explanation of the pervasive quality of economic racism.
Accomplices not Allies: Abolishing the Ally Industrial Complex on Indigenous Action Network made me uncomfortable in all the right ways and left me with more questions than answers.
What is Transformative Justice? a video by Barnard Center for Research on Women in collaboration with many other activists makes it really clear what we are trying to do.
Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro, by Gloria Anzaldúa is a balm, a constant companion, an everyday reminder that crisis is a constant state for some, that cracks are portals and that tending the threshold is worthy work.
The Free List by Jillian Walker is one of the most creative, radical, conditioned-boundary-defying newsletters I have ever experienced. And yes I mean experience.
On Listening, adrienne maree brown, How to Survive the End of the World Podcast
If this resonated with you and you want to talk about your relationship to urgency, activism and repair through the lens of astrology, you can book a natal chart session with me.