Whiteness and looking through each other’s eyes
Snow is falling,
“Whiteness”1 over all I see,
Fog is heavy and not lifting.
The Ground beneath, surfaces, color in the thin snow cover
Waves crest and billows crash against pier and pilings.
Non-white, fragility now in the base
-Not normal
-Advantage fades
The mountains high,
Privilege,
Freedom,
Power and domination,
“...invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, assurances,"*
Seeming unjust when challenged,
The steepness of it like a white, snow-clad, unscalable mountain
Erasing stories,
Difference to maintain.
The Pier's surface
Patterns seen
Same script again, and again, superficial things:
-I was taught to treat everyone the same
-Race, doesn’t have any meaning to me
-It’s in the past
-Everyone struggles, but if you work hard”2
The Pier's supports, pilings pommeled deep.
Piles, necessary supports:
- Implicit bias1
- Segregation
- Unconscious bias and bias
- Internal, superior
- Racial order
My whole life segregated
Loss without the view,
Black, Indigenous, and People of Color
- Inherent value lost
- Saying no to essential value
- What we don’t see
- Not given the perspective 3
History is written:
“America had two irreconcilable goals.
One was to seek equality, freedom, and democracy.
The other was to maintain white supremacy,
and the domination by white people over any people of color.” 3
White men's blind spots: 4
-Defensiveness to inquiry
-Rugged individualism
-Action orientation
-Invisible to me box
-Unconscious bias
-Others have different experiences than me
-My view may not be wrong, but it’s incomplete
-The word privilege is a hard term for white men; we feel we have worked hard
-Not something I chose
Shift needed using humility, inquiry, and love.
The Pier's surface and pilings now severed by waves of the brave,
storms of civil change, and winds of pioneering, martyred, voices.
Color restored and vibrant with life and meaning and destiny.
- Diversity is our strength 3
- History must be told,
- Hear and see and feel the perspective of all Americans
“Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?” 5
Whiteness and looking through each other’s eyes,
Glimpse poetry by Joe Holuta
About this Poem: Whiteness and looking through each other’s eyes, is a poem about how me and others that are White have privilege and advantage by just being born white. White supremacy reveals itself in the patterns that maintain advantage and power and strong supports of segregation, bias, racial order. Many years of my life I experienced segregation and the loss of the value inherent in Black and People of color and being a white male, my view has been incomplete, and I have had blind spots to defensiveness and unconscious bias. Pioneering and martyred voices have enabled change, including the need for diversity and value in history and the future. - Joe Holuta
1. https://bethebridge.com/using-the-term-whiteness/
Note: Whiteness ≠ white people
“There’s a name for this. It’s called whiteness. Now this word sometimes makes people angry, upset, or off-put. But I’m not going to stop using it because it accurately describes what is happening here. Internalizing whiteness, as white people, leads us to act on the outgrowth of white supremacy. “
“Whiteness is indeed divisive. But it is not the use of the word that divides. Rather, it is the history that led to the need for a term to explain the underlying ideology that produced the division we are now shining a light on. Don’t blame the light for illuminating the division that already existed. It is not bridge-building to work in the dark, tiptoeing around caverns, rather than believing that Scripture teaches us: the truth will set us free.”
-Elizabeth Behrens, Intensive Educator
2. Concept Dr. Robin DiAngelo, Deconstructing White Privilege
https://youtu.be/DwIx3KQer54
3. “Diversity is our strength. That is what we and our children can learn from our history; and so, as I argue in The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself, our history must be told from the perspective of all Americans, whatever their race or ethnicity.”
-David Mura
What the Whiteness Story of America Denies, David Mura
https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2022/11/17/america-history-race-diversity-whiteness
Upcoming book, The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself: Racial Myths and Our American Narratives, “From its very beginnings America had two irreconcilable goals. One was to seek equality, freedom, and democracy. The other was to maintain white supremacy and the domination by white people over any people of color. White America is fine with telling our tale through the lens of the first goal. But it is still decidedly not fine with telling the second story of America’s treatment of people of color and America’s desire to maintain white supremacy. All the recent ridiculous distorting, disparaging, and damning of Critical Race Theory are just the latest manifestation of this repression.”
4. White Men: Time to Discover Your Cultural Blind Spots | Michael Welp | TED×Bend
https://youtu.be/rR5zDIjUrfk
5. Henry David Thoreau
Resources:
*White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible
Knapsack By Peggy McIntosh
https://nationalseedproject.org/images/documents/Knapsack_plus_Notes-Peggy_McIntosh.pdf
"In the years since, the term white privilege has come to be used to explain power structures and racial inequality inherent in American society that supports white supremacy by disproportionately benefiting white people while putting people of color at a disadvantage."
Perhaps Toni Morrison said it best when she proclaimed in 1992,
“In this country, American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.”
“Non-white Americans are consistently associated less often with the label “American” than white Americans.
In fact, implicit association tests reveal the prevalence of the “American equals white” bias, which has persisted up until today and bears deeply harmful impacts. Specifically, it can lead to discriminatory actions and judgments, especially in the realm of employment.
https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/
Note:
White people can possess other marginalized parts of their identity, but their race is not one of these.
Being white does not mean you haven’t experienced hardships or oppression.
Being white does mean you have not faced hardships or oppression based on the color of your skin.
Hear and see and feel
the perspective
of all Americans
“Could a greater miracle take place
than for us
to look through each other’s eyes
for an instant?” 5
