I’m overwhelmed

Dear White people;

These following posts are a series of thought and options I think we need to consider. I consider myself both the writer and the recipient of these ‘letters.’

‘I’m overwhelmed.’ I keep hearing this from white people. Listen this is all very overwhelming and a heavy subject and heavy times, and to boot it adds to already trying times during a world pandemic and an economic crash. When you decide you need to do better and want to do better it is hard to know what actions and what path is the best path. There are a lot of paths to choose from and to take. You can’t take all of them at once. I believe in you and trust you in making the right choice for you, which may be different from mine. We’ve committed to a change so you are hopefully heading in the right direction, we will need to be corrected along the way and we need to be open to corrections. It is overwhelming.

What I would like you and me to consider, and also to pause for a minute and think about is . . . the idea of pausing for a moment and observing our physical and virtual surroundings. Have you noticed your social media feed? You’ve seen the rally cry, the call for action, the support the reposting of videos and speeches. It can be inspiring, depressing, and overwhelming all in the same moment. You can have moments of upset, anger, and disgust at those who are not with you. Have you also noticed this? A large number of your POC friends have been quiet or suddenly dropped of your feed. Have you thought about why?

While you have expressed your own feeling of being overwhelmed have you considered others?

This is a different overwhelming for those who have had to live this reality and awareness everyday of their life. This is never in the background the way it has been for us. We white people are for the most part only now becoming aware. But this is a reliving of a continued trauma for POC a daily, monthly, and yearly, and decades long, and centuries long trauma passed down from generation to generation. This is PSD. So I ask you to show some consideration to them.

Jumping in to console and help . . .

I’ve seen posts about reaching out to POC friends, checking in with them, checking that they are making sure to self-care. This is more complicated than the nice supportive gesture it sound like it is, and our whiteness makes us blind, ignorant, and naive to so many things. I have reached out to some people and it has been the right thing and the thing they have told me they needed. I hope that it was.

I have also reached out to people and is was the wrong thing. They were being bombarded with concerns from white people. Instead of being a comfort it was salt in the wound it was a slap in the face, it was the wrong thing. In nativity and straight up whiteness I then apologized and this too was the wrong thing for them. ‘Stop being sorry for your sorry’s.’ was the response. I won’t lie that response stings, but it is absolutely justified. I invaded their space, I put my white guilt and fragility on them. I added to their burden. Opportunities of self-care and escapism are different when you are not white, they may not exist, I forget this all the time. Checking in on people can be a reminder of trauma, I forget this too.

I have awareness to know some form of self-care can be to get away from whiteness, white spaces, and white voices. Our friends may be not wanting to talk to white people right now, but I am naive and ignorant enough to still make the mistake of thinking I know when that is and isn’t. So if you make a mistake take no offense, you have offended and you will probably do it again. Just try not to do what I have done repeatedly, try not to make it about you, and try not to put them in a position of needing to make you feel better about your well intended checking in on them.

So while we might feel overwhelmed we don’t really know what this overwhelmed is for our POC friends. Things we can do to help while in the virtual landscape of our lives is to take some time to consider our posts and if it is a true help or just added clutter on the social media landscape.

I hope my posts are a help to you white people on your new or continued journey and I hope that they take the burden of some POC and don’t cause them further upset and pain. I hope I can grown from my own mistakes as I take this path too.

Books I’d like to recommend to you here are memoirs and novels. I sometimes find memoirs and novels open me up to seeing the world from a different view or voice than my own in a way that discussion books do not. (I note I am missing Latinx voices, and making this list of some of my favorites books has made me aware of this need to read more books by Latinx writers and to listen to their voices.)

Asian and Asian Diaspora focused:
Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee