Jessica Fish Facebook Post

I'm a white woman who does race work, who teaches about race and systemic oppression. A white woman who is perpetually in awe of the brilliance and resilience of black culture, who deeply loves black people. Whose life and spirit owe an incalculable gratitude to black artists, writers, intellectuals, activists, students, teachers, and friends.

When you do race work in white skin you stare straight into the oncoming waves that are owning and understanding your whiteness, the complicity of your whiteness, and the power of your whiteness. Sometimes it feels like a tsunami of guilt, of anxiety, of fury. But you choose to bear the crash of those waves, because in every cell you know, it's not about you, that you could easily turn and outrun the shore-break should you choose.

Because, whiteness.

You lean into the discomfort/anger/anxiety because it is the place from which you grow, understand more, reach deeper levels of care, love, empathy. The place from which, once processed, you can be of the most genuine service.

If you're serious about the work, you do not run from it.

What I realized today from Rachel Dolezal’s interviews is that rather than doing the hard work of integrating the discomfort of her whiteness she chose to perform blackness. She chose to run. She chose to lie.

It is due to her whiteness NOT her blackness that we all know her name.

We know her name and NOT the names of the black women killed by police in the last year.

We know her name and don't know the name of the girl brutalized by a cop in McKinney at the pool party.

We know her name and do not know the names of the women at the front of the Black Lives Matter and Say Her Name movements.

But Rachel. We know her name.

And, Rachel will be fine. Rachel, will get a book deal.

Rachel will not use this national stage to highlight the plight of her “sisters.” Nope, in the true fashion of white supremacy she will use blackness for her own personal gain.

That she has taken so much airtime from the black women and girls who really, truly, need our collective voice and outrage is infuriating.

She made it about her. And, that, as another white woman doing this work is unforgivable.

- Jessica Fish

Source: Facebook

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