How to have an emotionally intelligent conversation about racism.
Hi my loves:
I want to break something down for you because I hear myself saying it a lot lately.
The cure to the division we experience in gender, race, sexuality, etc is not understanding.
Preaching and explaining and teaching gets us all nowhere fast.
The cure is humility.
Let me give you a quick example.
Hi, I am Antesa.
I grew up in a poor family.
I was abused and neglected and molested and sexually assaulted.
I had a life threatening illness which almost killed me multiple times.
I am a cisgender heterosexual female.
I know what it’s like to be poor. I have access to compassion about poverty.
I know what it’s like to be abused and neglected and molested and sexually assaulted. I have access to not only compassion but am also trauma-informed about all forms of abuse.
I know what it’s like to be so sick that health feels elusive. I have access to compassion about sickness.
I know what it’s like to be cisgender and heterosexual and to identify as a female. I have access to compassion about being a straight woman.
We can only really have compassion for things we have direct experience with. That’s how compassion works.
It’s not wrong that you can’t easily access compassion for things you have never experienced before. That doesn’t make you broken or weak.
Trying to mimic compassion through pretending you understand something you couldn’t possibly understand is insulting. Because people don’t want to be understood. They want to be seen, heard, and treated as though they are valid.
All of us want that.
So. When we can’t access compassion and we want to be helpful, we have one choice:
Humility.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
“Hi, I’m Antesa, and I don’t know what it’s like to be a black woman who was raised in Detroit.”
That’s it. That’s all it takes: admitting you don’t know. That’s what humility looks like.
And to be clear, I’m talking about humility, not humiliation.
There is nothing embarrassing about not knowing what it’s like to live someone else’s life.
This is the essential stuff of building intimacy.
Resolving this existential dilemma is not a cognitive process: it’s a heart-based one.
The potential conversation that follows could be deeply cathartic for you and a person who maybe has a different life experience than you.
It could go like this:
“Because I don’t have direct experience with being a black woman, I wonder if you might be willing to share with me what that’s like.”
Let me break this down:
1. I humbly share that I can’t possibly imagine their reality.
2. I make a request that they share their life experience with me and I listen to hear; I listen with my heart. (By the way, letting ourselves feel what we cannot understand is the tip of the iceberg of what makes being a human so extraordinary. This is why music has the capacity to move us to our core.)
3. I genuinely receive them and allow myself to be enlightened. I don’t pretend to understand. Because I don’t. I. Just. Listen.
4. And then I thank them for sharing their experience with me. (And I really mean it)
Here’s the kicker and the medicine for both people:
Receptivity.
By fully receiving their share, I now have an indirect felt experience in my heart of what it’s like to be a black woman from Detroit. An indirect felt experience I can now understand. I’m in a better position to advocate for them going forward.
But not in the way you think. Sure, I might advocate pretty well by sharing the story they shared with me with others. I even get to be smug because I get to be the one who understands.
But their story doesn’t belong to me. So actually the best way I can advocate for this person is by passing on the transmission of my humility to others. I share MY story. And this is how I access compassion. I access it in having compassion for myself for not knowing.
In doing so I spread the message that it’s safe to be humble and not know.
And let’s say this black woman from Detroit shares generously what it’s like to be a black woman from Detroit with me. And she has — perhaps for the first time in her life — an experience where she is fully received for who she is. Where someone gives her their undivided attention and truly listens with their heart. I don’t pretend to know something I don’t really know or to have the answers or to try to fix how she feels.
I. Just. Listen.
And she just feels heard. And seen. And valid.
She has just been witnessed in a way I wish every human on this planet got to experience being witnessed. Being witnessed and totally received is the biggest gift you can offer to another human being.
And she can receive herself because I have shown her what that looks like. And she doesn’t have to fight to exist anymore. And this is new territory maybe for her too. And she is probably also humbled.
And from that shared receptivity and humility we both transmute together into the great mystery of a different paradigm where it’s not us vs. them anymore but WE. And because none of us have ever been there before we get to create it together.
That’s it. That’s how it works.
