Blogging and Spirituality

(I wrote this post for the “Blogging and Spirituality” series on experience.mhgs.edu.)

Everything that can possibly be said about blogging and spirituality is already written on the internet somewhere.  Same goes for blogging and politics.  And blogging and family.  And blogging and anything, really.  Blogging is like, so 2004, and analyzing blogging is so 2005, and that means I am four years too late in writing this post…which is pretty standard for how quickly I catch on to trends.  At least I’ve stopped talking about the Information Super-Highway (raise your hand if you came of age in 1997).

My husband Jack is never behind on internet trends.  Which is why, before starting this post, I asked him what he thought it meant to be “a spiritual person on the net.”  I hoped he could give me the 2011 answer and I, for once, would have archived proof of my coolness.  Take that, The Future!

Jack got really excited, as he always does when I ask him about the internet, and started speaking in engaging, witty, and fully edited paragraphs about blogging and spirituality.  I hate it when he does that.  He explained that everything online is instantly open to everyone else’s response, and he called this the “Rapid Feedback Cycle.”  You write, you publish, and you skip the process of meditating on your own writing because you already have 36 comments on your post (or, in my case, maybe two).  Contrast this with the Apostle Paul, Jack said, who sent off a letter and six months later the church in Corinth was shocked to read that their pastor did not approve of incest and adultery.  Imagine if Paul had a comments section at the end of his epistles!

This Rapid Feedback Cycle (oh please tell me someone got here by googling that phrase) is what makes blogging hard for me.  What can I say that won’t be criticized, debated, or objectified?  Will there be space for my voice before it’s drowned out?  Will my writing be my own, or will I numbly absorb the praise and criticism in my inbox?  Will my readers know that there’s flesh and a heart and tears behind my words?

I keep these questions close when I blog.  I write about normal things, like what I learn at Mars Hill, or the women in my church, or how many moles my Italian ancestry gave me.  But before I hit “publish,” I have to acknowledge (at least to myself) that I don’t understand this internet thing.  I wish I could see the faces of the people who read my blog, and ask them why they were searching for “celebrity teeth” or “restless in marriage.”  I’d like to tell them that I am not very smart and they shouldn’t listen to me, but to please still give me lots of attention and continue reading my blog.  It all seems so desperate and impersonal, both on my end and theirs.

And yet, relationship still happens in the rapid feedback cycle.  Sometimes I feel a stranger’s humanity as if it was radiating from my laptop.  Often, in the security of that private-yet-public blog space, I write words that are truer than even my best friend could coax out of me.  I don’t love the rapid feedback cycle (especially now that I know it has a name), but it might be worth dealing with.

My White Identity Development

I’m taking a class this term on Multicultural Issues in Counseling, and our mid-term assignment was to write a paper on our own racial identity development.

Part of my white privilege, I’ve learned, is that I never really need to think about my race.  I’ve been told through my schools, churches, government, and media that White is normal.  Not until college did anyone tell me that I belonged to a race and a culture like everyone else, and that maybe my idea of “normal” was culture-bound and oppressive.  And it wasn’t until last month, at the beginning of Multicultural class, that I began to see just how much racism I’ve inherited. Shouldn’t I have known this from elementary school?

I’m re-printing part of my midterm paper on my White identity development.  I’d love to hear your thoughts, but please keep in mind that there’s a tendency to change the topic from race into other forms of oppression (gender, class, sexual orientation, etc).  I’ve certainly done this, so I’m now trying to stay with the topic of race, even through the intense guilt and anger it brings up in me.  Also, know that I’m beginning a process that I wish I had started years ago.

Here it is:

On the first day of Multicultural Issues class, we were asked to discuss the question, “Who makes you dance?”  The “dance,” Professor Hollins explained, is one of anxiety followed by awkward cover-up.  Two panicked steps back and one embarrassed compensating step forward.  A nervous and silly-looking jig.  I thought, “does she seriously want us to name an ethnic group?”  I hoped, as I had in college, that I could admit to being a white victim of societal racism without naming the particulars of my own unconscious beliefs.  I tried to think up a softer answer than the one that jumped into my head.  But I knew that the professor was asking me to give that first answer, the one that nagged from the pit of my stomach.

I sat at a table with four other white people.  The first person said she grew up in the south with many racist attitudes, then when she went to Africa she understood how hard it was to be a minority.  This answer irritated me.

The second person said he felt uncomfortable in large groups when he was one of the only Whites.  Then he added as an afterthought that he felt uncomfortable in all large groups, so it was hard for him to tell how much of it had to do with ethnicity.  This answer irritated me too.

Then it was my turn.

I was furious.  Were these two really going to leave it at that?  Give their vague answers that touched the topic of race then revoked it?  Were they really sitting there claiming victimhood?  How would I look next to them when I gave my clearly racist answer?

I looked at my hands and said, “I, uh, find myself really anxious around… African American men?”  I didn’t mean for it to be a question, but I felt like I needed permission to say that.  Someone at the table nodded.  Then a flurry of words came out of my mouth, about movies and newspapers and the media and how I didn’t mean to develop these attitudes about Black men, but I did.  I suddenly felt that it was very urgent to emphasize my victimhood, and minimize the clear personal racism I had just expressed.  My table seemed just as nervous as I was.  There was silence, then we moved on to the next person.

When I got home I told my husband about this exercise, and started wondering out loud what personal experiences I had with African American men that might have led to my discomfort.  I haven’t had close Black friends since grade school.  I could name a few interactions with Black men that might have confirmed my stereotypes that they are “dangerous,” “angry” and “seductive,” but I could recall far more neutral or positive interactions.  I realized how deeply and unconsciously I must believe advertisements, movies, and news outlets in how they portray Black men.

In the Resistance and Immersion phase, Sue and Sue (2008) write that “for the first time, the [White] person begins to realize what racism is all about…Racism is seen everywhere (advertising, television, educational materials, interpersonal interactions, etc.).”  As I become more resolved to name racism where I see it, I realize how daunting that task is.  I cannot sit in public, watch television, or browse items at a store without noticing how our world caters to white people, and overtly or subtly oppresses people of color.

As I have read, written, and participated in this class, I’ve experienced a lot of what Sue and Sue (2008) describe as “guilt, shame, and anger toward oneself and other Whites” that typifies the resistance and immersion phase.  I worry that I must somehow pay the world back for my privilege, which is a terrifying and impossible task.  I feel guilty for how easily I was able to go to college and now graduate school because of my race and social class.  I am weighed down by the thought that I have not earned my keep in this world.  It’s a relief to know that guilt, shame, and anger are a normal part of the resistance and immersion phase.  Perhaps that means these feelings will not last forever (especially since they are helpful to no one).

Despite feeling so much shame, I am finding that I can stay in the hard and messy conversations much more than I was able to as an undergraduate.  During the lunch break on the second day of class, one student said that she wished Multicultural Issues had been offered the summer before our regular classes started.  But after a pause, everyone at the table agreed that we were glad to be taking the class now and not earlier.  The inner work we’ve done in the past nine months allows us to engage in conversations about race.

It’s paradoxical to me that the very privilege I feel so guilty about– the “luxury of the middle and upper classes” of being able to “sit and talk about things” (Sue and Sue, 2008, p.150)– is what allows me, little by little, to be engaged in conversations about race without completely shutting down. When Sue and Sue write that we have all inherited racist beliefs, I am able to understand that this sad truth is not an attack on my right to exist (it helps that Sue’s language is not personally attacking).  I do not hear the anger of oppressed minorities as a demand on me to somehow make up for years of past pain.  I am slowly able to enter conversations about race as an adult, learning how to be responsible for myself and the harm I’ve done without accepting burdens that are not mine to carry, and without backing out of the conversation in terrified self-defense.