White and learning

What year was it that my friends Kim and Kristen accompanied me to what I'd described to them as the most wonderful, Africa-centered experience I'd had to date in State College? It must've been 2003, or 2004, or maybe 2005?

I'd invited them to accompany me to the Touch of Africa event at the Penn Stater, an experience I'd cherished since 1999, when my friend Edem was president of the African Student Alliance and had introduced me to the event.  At the 1999 event, I'd bought raffle tickets, one in the name of each of my 8 year old twin sons who were with me that night, mostly to support Edem's sheer excitement for Air Afrique's gift of a round trip ticket to the mother continent.    I'll never forget the sight of our friend Jokoo, with raffle ticket in hand, waving it at me the next morning at church exclaiming "Andy won! Andy won!"  I'd left the event to take two little boys home for bedtime, and handed the raffle ticket to Jokoo as we walked out the door, saying "Jokoo, if these are winning tickets, the trip is yours."  By the time we got around to letting Jokoo and his wife Thelma, Ghanians by birth, Americans by choice, and Edem, a Togolese educator pursuing a PhD in the US know that we wanted them to use the ticket, they informed us "we've already told our families that you are coming to visit Ghana/Togo."  At that time, I had no appreciation for the 20 year relationship of learning and loving the continent this raffle ticket launched for my entire family.  First for me in Ghana and Togo.  Then all five of us in these amazing places.  Then Burkina Faso, then Ethiopia.  To this day, when I catch a scent of Africa in the US - hibiscus and mango, smoke and street foods with a certain blend of savory seasonings, city-stank from the heat of day mixed with market animals and unsewered wastes - my heart lurches with longing. 

All of this I held in bringing my two white girlfriends to a Touch of Africa, both of whom also longed for Africa in their hearts, one as a soul-centric learner, the other a masters and PhD candidate geographer.  Sometime in the 2000s, one of those years, we entered the large ballroom, round tables for the guests, anticipating an evening of incredibly prepared and seasoned foods, music, drumming, and dancing.  I led us into the room and found a table with a couple already seated, about my age at the time, possibly a little older, African American, and sat down with them.  I sat down in the seat next to the woman, her male companion to the other side of her, my girlfriends to the other side of me.  In my mind's eye, I think that I would've asked whether the seats were available before claiming them.  And in my truest heart's conversation, I recognize that there were many places that we could have sat without entering so closely into their personal space, including across the large round tables instead of next to.  But I was being intentional about not simply sitting at an open table where we may not have had the opportunity to meet new people or people who were other-than-white.  Was my rush to this space calculated?  Probably.  Did I have friends of color at that time who were Americans?  No.  Not in State College.  I had many friends who were African, students or spouses of students who had settled in State College for the period of their studies.  But no friends who were people of color who were Americans.  I remember hearing a local principal in the school district, a leader in the community, and a woman of color saying at a race dialogue in the 1990s in State College that most whites in State College were more likely to have friends who they'd invited to their dinner tables who were Africans then they were African Americans.  Guilty.  It spoke to me as this was most certainly the case in my own household.  I wanted friends who were also African American, but had not easily connected or found them in my mostly white- and international community.

My memory of this approximate 2004 moment is clear, mostly because it was painful and the recalling of it for years caused me deep embarrassment.  I was trying to connect to the woman sitting next to me.  She was increasingly agitated, as I could sense through her body language.  In that moment, I thought "I am clearly not being understood", which in my mind meant, try harder to connect.  The more I tried, the more agitated she became.  What had I said?  I'm pretty sure I'd started with "where are you from", a question that in my college town where all people are transient, I would have asked anyone. But in asking it of this woman of color, I'd clearly crossed a line. She had replied that she was an American.  Oh, I had been misunderstood, as I had not intended to suggest that she were not an American.  I don't think I said this, but I certainly felt it, and so what did I do?  I tried harder to connect.  Find out more about her upbringing.  Her family. Her reasons for coming to State College.  Her interests.  All the connective work of 'fact finding' that to this point had been a reasonably easy way for me to find connection with another.  Why wasn't it working now?  Why was I being met with increasingly heightened resistance? Why?

She finally turned to me and explained with what I experienced as animosity, no, indignation and measured anger that surely I must know that I represented danger to her.  That my questions of her hearkened her to a time that her people had felt that sharing information with a white person was dangerous.  Gave away what little they could hold as their own.  That I was a threat.  How could I not understand that my trying to learn about her was a threat and harm to her very existence?  And to the existence of those who had come before her.  I was shocked.  I was hurt.  I felt so misunderstood.  And I was completely inside of my own head and heart in the experience, unable to hear her pain and recognize the deeply held trigger I represented.  

How many times through the years have I returned to this moment and thought what did I do?  What happened?  How did we get to this place when all I wanted/needed/tried to do was connect?  

How indeed. For the first time, I shared this specific story with friends around the table in my intentional community one day in late 2018.  Women of color.  Women of white culture.  And for the first time, I shared it for the learning that I have received through the years of recollecting the interation.  Learning that has taken me years to distill and perhaps will continue to require my attention to learn even more.  In the few years that I've lived in Richmond and finally taken up the yoke of learning what 'waking up white' means for me and mine, I've peeled away one onion layer after another in learning about the power of race culture in my own life and the lives of those around me.  

When I listened years after this incident to the audio book "Waking Up White in America", I was finally given the words to describe what happened (and continues to happen, albeit with increasing self awareness, I hope).  The author spelled out for me the difference between "intent" versus "impact".  My intent in sitting with this woman was to meet someone new.  Someone who was not white-like-me.  Someone who lived in my community and with whom I wanted to connect.  The impact of my sitting with this woman and working so hard to connect with her despite her clear signals to me that my intent and approach was neither welcomed nor wanted, was an avalanche of white cultural crap being dumped on her by my need for something that wasn't mine to claim.  Only hers to give and only if she chose to do so.  And she was clear with me, she did not choose to do so.  I was wrong to initiate much less continue the white culture "interview" of getting to know you, pushing for my needs over recognizing and honoring her needs.  I had devolved to a place of entering conversations with the "other" as transactional, meeting my own needs for information without consideration for how my own actions came across as hostile or dangerous.  How much was my interaction reminiscent of those who were dangerous or hostile to her or her ancestors for the purpose of hurting or containing them through many inhumane and unjust actions?

And not to defend nor criticize it, but without a doubt, I had grown up in a culture where information was and is power and I had failed to recognize this in myself.  Who are your parents?  Where are you from? What do you do?  Where did you go to school? What church do you go to?  Who are your friends?  What associations do you have?  For years, I truly believed that these interviews or fact finding missions were about making connections.  And perhaps, some times, connections were made.  But they were based on the premise that the information gathered was the foundation for the relationship, requiring connection at some of these fairly superficial factual points. 

At Richmond Hill, I've learned that the question for connecting is never, "what do you do?" or "where are you from?".   These are questions of curiosity and serve neither the person who I wish to connect with or me.  Instead, I'm learning to ask "how was your day?" or "what did you learn today?", a place of new beginnings that can lead us anywhere as we forge places to connect with one another.

I'm grateful that in my conversation with fellow residents at Richmond Hill that I can now recall the story of the confrontation I had with this woman years ago without tearing up or feeling short of breath, as it has for many years.   In fact, it was very empowering today to hear myself share the story without feeling the angst of "oh how I was misunderstood" - and instead, I could feel the window of "oh how much I have to learn".  With the grace of Godde and the Universe and the empathetic and understanding of others surrounding me, may my learning only continue to unfold that I can hold space and the beautiful potential for connection for all in this amazing place and creation.