He looks at me and says, “You are just acting like a white supremacist.”
I feel the knot in my throat constrict. My fists clench, unclench.
His eyes are cast down. Silence ensues.
We started out talking about masks. A dear friend made our family of six masks. Each mask took over 45 minutes to sew. She had purposefully given us fabric options, researched the best design, and chose ribbons to match. She made these masks anticipating our need, with care and love.
I had unpacked the masks 30 minutes earlier. Everyone gathered around, claiming the fabric style they requested. My friend didn’t let us down. She had even sized some of the masks to a child’s face.
We helped the children to put them on. My eight year old ran around the house, mask on, jumping, bouncing. My 10 year old put on a dress to match hers. The older two discussed whether or not their friends were wearing masks.
And, everyone’s mask fit except for my husband’s.
It quickly turned into a negotiation of sorts. I worked hard to tell him the mask could fit. He worked hard to force it to cover his nose and mouth. It wouldn’t work. Sinking into shame and embarrassment, caring more for how my friend would feel about him NOT wearing the mask, I pressed him to try again. He did.
And, that’s when he said it, “You are just acting like a white supremacist.”
The pandemic has been many hard things, and now this. I sensed it coming. In this season of quarantine, I look often at the specificity of my own complicity in white supremacist systems. My complicity leads to an exhaustion for my four children, and burdens my husband. I am a bi-racial Latina woman. This is true. It is also true that I am “white-passing”.
My graduate school studies in counseling and psychology have asked me to know my own story with more specificity so that I may serve others, in the role of trauma practitioner and therapist. Knowing particularity of story is the work of discovering identity. It not only transforms me, but means I can come alongside the generational traumas carried in my body and offer kindness to them, understanding. Yet I sit across from a man challenging me to see this oppressive system as it is. Evil.
He doesn’t apologize. I don’t speak. The silence continues.
Silence for the traumas of bodies, and the resilience of indigenous, brown, and black bodies. A silence which offers space for human dignity between Africa and Mexico. A silence linking the histories of continents separated by an ocean, and remembering the colonial violence perpetrated.
Our Mexican heritage is linked to the earth. There is a sense of belonging in the dirt of life, which holds us to one another. And, the dirt underneath Luis and me is mixed with the blood of indigenous, brown, and black bodies. It calls us to sacred, and holy spaces. The past horrors of colonization live in my body, my husband’s body and our children’s bodies. It lives in the descendants of slavery, and the descendants of the colonizers.
I am not humiliated. I am humble. He is not humiliating me. I am humbling myself. We both are. The pandemic exposes wounds we ignore in the business of family. The pandemic exposes layers of hurt and grief – the trauma of a white supremacist system we are trying to appease. It doesn’t work. There is not enough we can give, change, or acquiesce to – to satisfy this white ecosystem.
It’s a white ecosystem thriving on our shame. It consumes both the shame offered from the liberal white ally voter who has one or two friends of color and calls it good, to the evangelical conservative who boldly declares, “All Lives Matter.” This white ecosystem is poisoning our souls, families and communities. It’s poisoning my marriage.
Instead of moving away from him and his words meant to pierce me, I begin by apologizing.
“I am so sorry I forced you to keep trying to wear the mask when it clearly didn’t fit you. I so valued a white woman’s feelings, that I didn’t value your body and who you are. I love you.”
There are seasons where repentance, addressing past harms with specificity are not only painful but opportunities to experience surviving on something else besides shame. It is the opportunity to thrive by loving deeply, and experiencing hope built on truth.
As I engage shame, it is an opportunity to bring the story of other bodies, different than my own, and bear witness on behalf of another. I witness, engage, and pursue the transformation of shame and generational racial traumas, which are indeed, also mine.
Mother of four and wife of one awesome Mexican, Danielle Castillejo is a 2nd year student at The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, studying to get her MA in Counseling and Psychology. She works and volunteers part time in an organization in Seattle that advocates for the agency and freedom of commercial sex workers. A survivor of abuse herself she continues to fight for sanity and love every day.
Danielle – I think it is good to be humble but I worry that we are in a place right now where we are required to apologize for who we are especially if we were born with white skin or even semi-white skin. God created us with our skin color and our heritage/ancestory ALL of which contain both good and bad.
Agreed
Thank you, Danielle, for your honesty. I am grateful to you for sharing a piece of your story. I am humbled and reminded to see my husband trauma in our interactions. Thank you again for the love and humility you have shared. Teresa
I totally agree with Barbara above. This whole thing so weird and causes so much division, it can’t be right. I am white and my past doesn’t include color racism but religious racism. I grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness and was the only child in my school who didn’t celebrate Christmas or Birthdays or anything, had to sit among all my peers for the pledge of allegiance to the flag in school. Do you think that was traumatizing and racist.
Wearing or not wearing a mask shouldn’t be divisive but it is. I can’t wear a mask for medical reasons and people continue to tell me “Put on your mask!” So ugly! I am never stopped from going into a store from not wearing a mask. There is a provision that you don’t need to wear a mask if you have medical condition. This isn’t posted on notices anywhere but it is true. Something seems wrong here. Check it out for yourself.
Agree 100%
Very sad state of affairs we are I
Danielle – what I heard in your story is your wanting to meet your loved ones where they were at. I am not in the place to say what is right language for you, your husband, your family. Only you were there for the exchange.
What I also hear is your willingness to step into your husband’s frustration. And your willingness to write about it is always brave. Thank you.
Danielle, your story speaks to me of shame. I usually recognize my shame when my response to a comment or situation is defensiveness. For me, the question, “Who am I protecting?” can help me dig deeper into what is causing my shame. Acknowledging the shame I carry and working through it to freedom has been a life-long process for me (and will probably continue until the day I die). Thank you for posting this.
You are bold in your words, humble in your response. You are daring to call us in deeper to our own collective story. Am I willing to receive it?
@Barbara, we’re definitely living in a cultural moment where we’re being invited to see deeper, recognize the ways we have been complicit in white supremacy, and lament the harm that is still being done to people of color. This doesn’t diminish the fact that God created us with difference. Fighting for racial justice is actually one expression of valuing the difference we bear. @Maryann, Bingo. How many times have I allowed the opinions of others cloud my ability to see the people I love right in front of me? Danielle’s vulnerability invites me to explore my own. @Constance, I’m sorry for the trauma you experienced in being set-apart in your childhood. It’s painful, isn’t it? As a white woman, I had to spend time in therapy around the particulars of my story before I could see how I benefited from growing up in a racist system that gave me privilege in society for the very parts of me that felt like a liability in my family of origin. Our particular stories have taken place in a larger context that must be changed if we are ALL to flourish. @Danielle, Thank you for sharing so vulnerably about the ways you, as a person of color, are challenging the influence of whiteness you hold. You’re courageously leading the way for the rest of us. May we learn from your example.