Community In Action
Even when I don't always get everything right, finding ways to take action is a commitment I will not compromise.
I think about community all the time. I try to really remember my connection to both my local and global community in everything I do, and use my belief that I am obliged, by virtue of being human, to care, to do what I can when I can with what I can.
That’s not new and I am not unique in that belief. I am unique, as we all are, in how I choose to live out that commitment.
At least for me, deciding to live with intention inevitably means I make a fair amount of mistakes. Personal growth is evolution, and that is experience and learning and vulnerability and stumbles, some that make me want to fold back into myself and decide that good enough is good enough.
One of my dogs got up early one morning, so we were out the door before six, which is not usual for us. Rounding the corner in our alley, there's a line of six garages.
The last garage in the first set of three had about an inch of space left open at the bottom. The other two were closed tight. As we got closer, I could hear a car running inside.
I thought that was odd, but knew I was out of coffee so was going to run up the street after taking the dogs in, so quickly reminded myself to grab my phone. On the way up the back stairs, I quickly contemplate a few things: 1. Is an inch enough ventilation to prevent co2 poisoning? 2. Could there be someone in the car attempting suicide? 3. Do I have a moral obligation to try and help if there is someone attempting suicide?
No. 3 will likely make some of you bristle, but as someone who has lived in the deep end of misery at various times in my life, I do truly wrestle with my role in prevention (and it's not a question that comes up often, if at all). I believe in body autonomy. I also know that the darkest days are often followed by pinholes of light that eventually blow wide open.
When I'm back outside and hear the car is still running, I kneel down and smell for exhaust but don't get much. I stand for a second, then decide that *if* someone is inside, I needed to do what I could. I bang on the garage and shout "Are you OK?" Nothing. I bang again and ask the same question. Nothing.
Reading this interview with Tracie McMillan, the author of a new book called The White Bonus: Five Families and the Cash Value of Racism in America, wherein she details some of the financial advantages she and her family—as well as four other families—have experienced because of race, I couldn’t help but wonder if we’re asking the right question.
I want to be clear I’m not casting doubt on McMillan’s work. I agree with her that many of the conversations happening around white privilege are too nebulous to be helpful. I believe there is value in having a more concrete accounting of what’s at stake.
But instead of thinking about what and how much white people have gained, is the more appropriate question: What do we owe?
Of course, it’s not wholly for me to decide. Maybe not for me to decide at all, even. We know from states like California, where Gov. Newsom signed legislation in 2020 to create a nine-member Reparations Task Force, that calculating harm is, at the very least, possible. In fact, Evanston, IL, passed a reparations resolution in 2021, and since then, other cities have started considering reparations, too.
One of the most common responses you’ll hear from white people when you mention reparations is fairly predictable, if tired: I didn’t own slaves.
Then, some will follow up with some version of America’s whitewashed mythology: I worked hard to get where I am today. No free hand outs. The American Dream is possible for everyone and if you don’t succeed, it’s because you’re lazy.
Yawn.
Even a cursory understanding of (honest) American history and the founding of this nation is enough to understand that the past informs the present in ways both big and small, and though no, you may not have owned slaves, your whiteness continues to afford you many and varied and valuable advantages.
The 2014 The Atlantic article “The Case for Reparations” by Ta-nehisi Coates is what first got me seriously thinking about reparations. You can’t read that piece, so deeply researched and deftly reasoned, without acknowledging that much of the America you know today is the result of thievery: stolen land, stolen labor, stolen futures.
More importantly, perhaps, the piece expertly lays out why reparations can no longer be just a thought experiment nodded to by progressives and people earnestly interested in equity. You can’t truly understand the scope of what’s owed and not find ways to act. Reparations are required for this nation to move toward any real embodiment of wholeness.
I call 911 and explain. The operator asks if I saw someone go into the garage. I didn't. For all I know the car is empty, I add. She connects me to the fire department and the person who answers asks me the same questions. When I answer "No," they tell me they're not going to respond at the moment and hang up. The 911 operator comes back and asks me if I know that some people have remote starters for their cars.
Yes, I do, I tell her, but I guess my point is that if there is someone in there, I'd rather they stay alive today. She told me she'd have the cops swing by the alley, which is not what I wanted at all, but couldn't stop now. So, I left my name and number in case anyone needed to contact me.
Coming back with coffee, there is an older Black man taking a bag from a car that is just outside the garage I heard a car running in, though the garage is still shut (or shut again). I assume his car was the one in the garage and perhaps he does have a remote starter, but when I catch his eye and think about asking he gives me a look that says "Not today white lady," which I can actually appreciate and so just keep walking.
I find, in myself at least, a real tension exists between being engaged and minding my own business. When is it best to leave well enough alone? When does being community minded slide ever so softly into being the Gladys Kravitz of my neighborhood? When is inserting myself less helpful and more intrusive? When am I even more of a burden to people who are already oppressed and distressed?
These are honestly questions I grapple with regularly.
I consider this nation’s debt my debt.
So, how do I boil down and clarify for myself how I can best show up without getting so in my head that I become paralyzed?
Truthfully: I don’t know, and that answer is unsatisfying but honest.
I find I’m hardly ever certain of the exact right way to approach most situations I witness or think on. I'm often drawing on what I feel I can be sure of in any given moment and doing the best I can, which sometimes feels right and other times feels ... like I don't really know what I'm doing at all.
And maybe that's OK. Maybe, as I often think to myself in reflection, that's just the human condition.
The one constant I will not compromise, however, is a commitment to action, in all the ways action manifests for me, including but not limited to:
Tipping BIPOC servers and gig workers at a higher rate
Never being your dependable white ally
Donating to organizations and people doing work that aligns with my principles
Continually pushing myself to find ways to show up for my community
Reading and listening to people who allow me to sink into discomfort and stretch my understanding
Being intentional about raising my trans son and exploring the ways this experience intersects with other forms of systemic oppression
Do all of these matter equally? Do all of these even matter? No. Probably not.
What does matter, to me, is that I’m not afraid to try. I’m not so afraid of getting things wrong that I instead do nothing. I’m not afraid of being corrected, called in or called out. I’m not afraid to sit in discomfort.
I am afraid of not having the guts to participate in building the world I want to live in—the world my trans kid deserves, the world so many people who have been denied so much for so long deserve.