I am hurting right now, and I do not want to change that emotion. I am hurting because of what is happening in our world to perpetuate racism. I hurt as I read stories of George Floyd, Ahmed Aubrey and Christian Cooper. I am hurting because I know these few highly publicized cases are a severe underrepresentation of the occurrence of racism. I hurt because, as I saw written by someone else, “I am not a racist, but I have done racist things.” I hurt because I need to do better and we, as a society, need to do better.
You may wonder why I don’t want the hurting to stop. The answer is simple. As a DBT therapist, I know that emotions serve a purpose. They are a call to action. I want my hurt to continue until no motivation to action is needed. I want my hurt to continue until the racism stops.
I have been thinking about my relationship with race growing up. I was led to believe that my mission was to not see race. I think many of us were. The idea was that if we ignored the color of one’s skin, then we saw the person instead of race. I have grown to think of this approach as a dialectic in that it is both helpful and harmful.
I continue to like the sentiment of viewing a person through a different lens than only the color of their skin. At the same time, I believe it is harmful to ignore the context of race. If I ignore the color of one’s skin, I am also invalidating their experience. No matter how much I don’t want it to be true, people of color are living a very different life than I am. I need to remain mindful of that if I am to create change in myself and the world.
As I process the enormity of racism, how I might prevent it and how I may unintentionally perpetuate it, I am reminded of the underlying DBT assumption that we are doing the best we can, and we need to do better. Recently, I was struck by a quotation from Maya Angelou that reflected the same idea. She wrote “Do the best you can until you know better, then when you know better, do better.”
My first call to action is to “know better, so I can do better.” To me that means not passively being aware of racism but being continually mindful and ever-present in its existence. I am trying to educate myself, to listen and to truly take it in rather than denying its pain. This is nowhere near enough, but only a place to start.
I have previously become overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem. Like with many ideas that overwhelm us, that may have triggered some avoidance. DBT teaches us that if we truly want to decrease the anxiety that comes from being overwhelmed, we need to act opposite to our avoidance urges and confront the source of our anxiety. It further encourages us to tolerate the distress of this confrontation by taking things one step in the moment.
That is what I am trying to do. One step at a time, so that I do not retreat to avoidance.
Right now, these steps include reading, talking and donating. It is my hope that each of these steps will help me learn more so I can do more. As I take this journey, I hope to stay mindful of the hurt I am feeling right now as it prompts me to do better.
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