Learning to listen – really listen – to people of color and believe what they say when they are describing their experiences in a white supremacist society didn’t come naturally to (virtuous, white) me. It came painfully, and the lessons demanded an intensity of self-reflection and self-examination that was usually embarrassing, often excruciating because it contradicted my saintly self-image, and it was always shocking.
And, these painful lessons ultimately also proved to be liberating, because by embracing them rather than fleeing in defensive, angry flurries, flaps, and frenzies of denial, I began to aspire to be a white, female race traitor. It wasn't a planned career ladder, but hey.
I’m not completely there yet; while I am not a foaming-at-the-mouth racial bigot, there undoubtedly are still ways in which I am complicit – often unwittingly, certainly unintentionally – in perpetuating systemic and institutionalized racism. But it’s a journey filled with astonishing goodness, inspiration, relationship, and possibility.
It began in a serious way in August 1970, in the sweltering confines of Denver County Jail.
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