“Is there any way you have space today for an emergency phone call?” This frantic text came from a young woman with whom I have worked for years. Gwendylin, Dylin for short, is not prone to emergencies, so I made space for her immediately.
“Kevin and I are having a friendship break-up! He sent me a text last night telling me what a racist I am for not using my voice on social media to stand up against racism. He said that I have used my voice for other issues over the years, and that I could just stand back in the wake of George Floyd’s death is unforgiveable. I. Am. Not. A. Racist.”
In terms of context, Kevin is black and Dylin is white. They are each other’s ride or die friend. She held his hand and visited when he was in rehab. He held her hand after she was assaulted. They have had a plethora of friends come and go from their lives; however, their friendship has remained steadfast. They have had frequent conversations about race, culture, sexual orientation, gender fluidity, as well as many of the other sometimes difficult-to-navigate topics. This fall they had plans to rent a flat in NYC where he would continue pursuing a bachelor’s degree in International Affairs, and she would begin a graduate degree in Psychology. And, just like that, the friendship is over.
“I am not a racist!! I am horrified, HORRIFIED, about what happened to George Floyd!” Dylin continued in-between sobs, “I actually haven’t known what to do! I sent him a text to brighten his day because I wanted him to know I am here and thinking about him! This is so crazy! I feel like this cannot possibly be true, like this can’t possibly be happening! How can this be happening?”
My heart breaks for Dylin. I can hear the devastation in her voice. Losing Kevin’s friendship occurs for Dylin like a death. She cannot imagine not having Kevin in her life. She is furious at being accused of being a racist, she cannot imagine what she did to illicit this reaction from him. On and on she goes, frantically creating a defense, interrupting her defense with incredulous disbelief and grief. And I am right there with her mirroring her shock and disbelief. And, at the same time, my heart also breaks for Kevin. I imagine him trying to process the hideous killing of George Floyd, longing for the comfort of his best friend’s support, and not getting it in the way that he felt seen and heard and validated. Dylin felt assaulted by Kevin’s accusations. I imagine Kevin somehow felt betrayed because Dylin’s response was not the response he wanted.
I have to admit, it took me a minute to get that what was happening. Dylin and Kevin’s lives have been so intertwined that it took me a minute to get oriented. Since my primary relationship is with Dylin, my focus in this conversation was Dylin’s upset and trying to find some logical reason why Kevin would have cut her off so abruptly, so aggressively. But, in the spirit of full disclosure, I was having mutually exclusive thoughts in my own head.
My first thought was that being upset about the loss of a friendship is a pretty clear indication of privilege. When you are white, you get to call your therapist about the loss of a friendship, while your black friend, who is part of the black community, gets to process the loss of yet another black life! My second thought was how could cutting off a friend, a friend who has been an ally of marginalized communities for her whole entire life, possibly support the Black Lives Matter cause! How can alienating someone who loves and cares for you, who has supported you through all the difficult times in your life, possibly be your best move? I thought about telling Dylin that SHE lost Kevin’s friendship, but to just try to imagine what our country is losing every single time someone from a marginalized community is killed. THEN I thought about what a privileged position it is to be able to think that our country is losing something versus what it is like to be a member of the black community experiencing this kind of tragedy over and over and over again. On and on, one mutually exclusive thought after another, racing through my head, each one feeling valid until the next thought came along to unhinged the validity. I couldn’t find a place to plant my feet, a place to orient myself.
Obviously, I will never understand what it is like to be a member of a marginalized community. I was born with white skin and that white skin has afforded me opportunities that otherwise I might not have had. I know that. And, while I certainly have “fought the good fight” on so many fronts, for so many issues over the years, it doesn’t erase that I live inside of a white person’s context. I think of it like this - when you’re a kid, you know there is this thing called “reading.” You see people read, you learn letters and numbers and, to some extent, you recognize where to apply those letters and numbers, but you don’t actually read, so you can only do so much with those letters and numbers. You can do more than if you didn’t have any knowledge of letters or numbers, but there is a limit to what you can experience in life because, at the end of the day, you don’t read. And then, one day, you put it all together and you begin to read. Once you can read, you can never not read, your entire world is different because you can read. You go from knowing that there is this thing called reading to having the actual experience of reading. YOU migrate from the group of people who didn’t read to the group of people who do read. When you live inside the white-skinned context, no matter what you do to “fight the good fight”, you never know what it is like to be a member of the black community. You have learned some of the information you need to know, and you can recognize the issues and even apply them sometimes, but you can only do so much because you will never, ever be a member of that community. You never migrate from knowing some of information you need to know about racism, to having the experience of what it is like to have black skin, to live in a marginalized community.
Like Dylin, I am horrified over what happened to George Floyd. I understand the protests. I also understand the rioting. Over the years, Americans have exercised their right to protest over many, many issues. It is a fundamental right to being an American. There is nothing not to get about that. Protests are fueled by anger, they are productive, they are informative, they demand rights. Riots, unlike anger, are fueled by rage. Also, unlike anger, rage happens when people feel impotent. Riots happen because the anger has been ignored, because people have done the right thing for so long, and with so little progress, that the pressure just builds and builds until the anger erupts into an out of control inferno of rage. With each inexcusable death of a black person, the pressure just keeps building. How many peaceful protests are enough? How many times should marginalized communities and their allies have to gather before we see some change?
I don’t know the answer to those questions. I have no idea what more to do beyond what I have been doing, what I will continue to do, having conversations about race and privilege in my life, with my family, with my clients, with the middle school children that will attend the leadership camp a friend and I run. My family and I attend local protests, support minority owned businesses, correct each other when we make some insensitive comment that we didn’t even know was insensitive. I bumped the piece that was supposed to post today, interrupted my schedule for the day to write this piece instead. And, to be perfectly clear, I mention all of that not because I want credit at all for doing any of it. In fact, I feel as though anything I have done over the years has been grossly inadequate and insufficient. I mention it because my heart is broken and this piece is all I have to contribute to the memory of George Floyd.
“Take a breath”, I tell Dylin, as I follow my own advice. I tell her that it IS hard to imagine her without Kevin in her life, that her shock and grief is completely understandable. I confess my own shock and dismay over the way Kevin treated her. I tell her my theory about the difference between anger and rage, and how Kevin might be experiencing a kind of personal rage the result of which led him to think that destroying their friendship was somehow a good idea. Her grief over losing him, like the smoldering remains of a torched building, is all that is left of their friendship.
“It will never be the same!” she says. “No matter what he ever says or does to make this better, it will never be the same!”
“It MAY never be the same,” I offer. “You don’t know. These things can be tricky for sure, but often they play out and relationships get stronger, they grow, they change in unpredictable ways.” I say these things because I know them to be true, but I also say them to create a little space for a miracle to happen.
That night before I fell asleep I said a little prayer that maybe the Universe would hear Dylin’s words and take them to heart. What if the outcome of the protests and riots over George Floyd’s death resulted in things never being the same again? What if, no matter what, it actually WAS never the same again? And then I wondered if that, too, was a white person’s prayer. These things can be tricky.