This is what I was listening to on Tuesday evening, March 16, 2021, before I found out about the victims of the Asian-American hate-motivated shooting in Atlanta. 

I wanted to be surprised—it would mean that we lived in a better world. But I’m not. 

For more than a decade, I’ve driven all across the country, and outside of weather concerns, I’ve only felt truly unsafe twice. 

You know when you can feel the weight of eyes on you, whether they’re friendly or dangerous? This was definitely the latter. On both occasions, I was traveling through the Southern Appalachian mountains with Asian-American women, both of whom are my family.

On both occasions, the gazes belonged to white men. 

My immediate response at the time was alarm: “How do I protect them?” (Physical distance. We left without incident.) 

I didn’t tell either of these women what I’d noticed, but I wonder sometimes what would have happened if I wasn’t with them. The dangerous gazes I felt could have turned into a comment, and/or sexual aggression, and/or physical harm. 

I have heard some—not all—of what does happen to these Asian-American women when I’m NOT around. It is so common, especially in the American South, that they likely couldn’t list every single incident if they tried. It’s possible that they noticed and didn’t tell ME. 

Over on Facebook, someone asked me if the “foundational lens” definition was my road into social justice. Eventually, I’ll post my entire response here too, but for now, I’ll repeat a couple points:  

1) White supremacy IS a foundational lens, one that infuses the entire Western culture. Kaitlyn B. Curtice articulates this much better than me.

When you live inside something centuries-old that pervades every aspect of your society, you are living in relationship with it—even if you don’t yet see it. 

Once you do see it, you may not be able to remove it completely, but you can work with it to change its flavor. 

The way you work with it, and the flavor it takes on, depends on your own unique situation, which your own heritage.

2) As a white debutante from the American South, it is inappropriate for me to consider myself or to position myself as an anti-racism educator of any kind. 

I seek out and pay BIPOC educators, whether they teach anti-racism specifically or another modality that they’ve labored to de-colonize. Again, I repeat: I don’t teach this myself. 

Instead, as a white person, specifically a white debutante from the American South, I need to EMBODY this work, transmuting white fragility into white reckoning. 

So, what does that look like for me? 

How does a person bear the weight of the wrongdoing of her ancestors, her people, and herself long enough to transform it? 

You expand your capacity to hold it.

It’s like all grief—there are cycles, all deeply emotional. 

It is a slow, deep, inner transformation. It’s a daily practice and a lifelong task. 

Personally, I’m still not 100% convinced that that practice belongs online, especially from me. 

I have chosen to separate my emotional labor from my writing, which are the fruits of that labor, for a couple reasons: 

1) Overall, many of you readers are significantly younger than me, and I prefer not to put you in a position where you have to hold space for my emotions before I’ve integrated them. 

2) Specific to the topic of white reckoning, many of you readers also hold less racial privilege than I do, and I needed to learn to trust myself enough to believe that I wouldn’t cause harm unintentionally. 

So, instead of teaching anti-racism work, what I’ll share instead are the tools I use to expand my capacity to hold and transform uncomfortable emotions. I use examples both from personal creative projects and personal anti-racism projects.

Once you have those tools, it’s your choice what to do with them.