A timeline of me and racism and anti-racism, 2011-2020

My whole life I've been uncomfortable around Black Americans, seeking a way into comfort.

My whole life, until recently, I wished I could have been old enough to march with MLK during the civil rights movement of the 1960's. I longed for the excitement of being part of something so right and so consequential.

That seeking, this wish ... fed into enthusiasm around an upswelling of anti-racist work in popular culture, manifested in the Black Lives Matter movement.

I've experienced a range of thoughts and emotions as a result. Gradually over time, my enthusiasm became tempered by disagreement and doubt. Below is a timeline of relevant events I happen to remember. My hope is that this timeline will help me sort out my thoughts.

2011: Advocate for DA, the existing receptionist at my employer's new building and a Black woman, to get hired by my employer. At his request, coach a Black HVAC worker (also at my place of employment) in meditation and edit a memoir he's started writing. Trying to use my white privilege (though I wasn't aware of that term) to assist Black people in my life. I don't remember now whether I'd done that before in my life but I think I may have.

2013: BLM is born in response to police killings of innocent Black Americans. I am vaguely aware.

August 2014: I accompany Z to a birthday celebration in Tuscany for her co-worker and experience a typical set of responses to Black Americans I meet there. Experience usual discomfort around Black woman activist who visited our villa. Uncomfortable because she's Black, doubly uncomfortable because she's a young, hip activist and I'm not. JW, also Black, is there but I'm more at ease with her because she's more chill, middle aged, and not so much an activist, ergo I fear less she'll judge me.

November 2014: Z attends a compelling workshop on race as part of a Resource Generation event; starts the ball rolling for work among the small staff at her place of employment on racial equity during 2015-2016. As the racial equity work continues week after week, month after month, I am genuinely confused as to why it's taking so long. In my then-naive mind it would be a one-day workshop where some new information was imparted.

April 22, 2015: Z sends me article on white fragility (defensive reactivity against the idea that one may have acted out of racism), my first exposure to the topic

April 23, 2015: Z gets info on POCAS (People of Color and Allies Sangha)

Around this time she and I had a heated argument about whether each of us was a person of color and whether I would attend a POCAS event with her. Clearly Z's skin is  darker than mine and she has experienced othering more than I have, yet I sense she is claiming victimhood as a way of feeling good about herself and having power over me. Z suggests I attend anti-racism training, specifically training designed for white people, before attending POCAS with or without her. I experience defensiveness and recognize it as white fragility. Not wanting to be a fragile white person, I hold my reactions in check and plan to follow Z's suggestion.

May 1-14: Germany with E's family
May 17: Purchase adjoining property as a rental

May 23-27, 2015: Z and I attend a retreat where we meet R, a Black meditator who lives in our very white neighborhood. R, Z, and I express interest in staying in touch; R invites us to stop by her place to visit. I begin stopping by about once/month.

June 27, 2015: I attend my first racial equity workshop, Color & Culture, with Greg Kramer.

July 26, 2015: Second racial equity workshop, White Awake at Sati Sphere.

August 8, 2015: two Black activists interrupted Bernie Sanders at Westlake Plaza. Z pointed me to some articles explaining why this was appropriate and I eagerly and uncritically imbibed that viewpoint, wanting to be part of the next wave of anti-racist activism.

August 21, 2015: dinner with E's parents where they denounce the interruption. The next day I wrote them a strongly worded email.

September 2015: my tenant K started graduate school in Public Health at UW and was excited to learn about racial equity issues. I told them, "I want to learn everything you're learning!" I recall the eagerness, excitement, and envy I felt.

Fall 2015: KK, a biracial Black and Caucasian woman, lives with us. We pretty much never talk about race. We do have a two-house outing to a panel discussion on being Black in Seattle but don't invite KK to share her perspective with us; I find it awkward.

2016: Try to gently advocate for and support two Black women post-docs in my workplace and the only two Black women scientists we've ever had since I'd started there in 2008. At the suggestion of one of them, Z comes and gives a presentation about business.

Jan-June 2016: Awakening White Allies Together monthly series at Sati Sphere.  I set an intention to cultivate relationships with Black Americans, despite discomfort. During this series I ramp up my commitment and focus on racial equity issues, a focus I sustain for the following 2+ years. I am gratified by the sense that I am both learning and successfully challenging myself to act outside my comfort zone.

During these six months, work on my rental property is completed, I'm laid off from my job & shift to part-time hourly, Mom dies, and the foundation that had employed Z dissolves as planned.

March 2016: Diversity training at my workplace. I bring up ideas I'd gotten from Z to center voices of POC and white women. Tense discussion with JD, who disagrees with me.

July 24, 2016: Together with my tenant K and my orienteering friend P, make Black Lives Matter signs & distribute in neighborhood. Jerry Large of the Seattle Times does a story and one of the local TV stations picks up on it and interviews me. I confer with K and Z for tips about how to decenter whiteness in the interview (although the phrase "decentering whiteness" was not in my vocab at the time). Taken aback by my first exposure to SJW as a slur, in comments to Times article.

August 2016: R invites me to consider joining the Ravenna-Eckstein Community Center Advisory Council, of which she is a member. I tell her that it interests me as a way to work in allyship with her.

September & October 2016: decision to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline with the Standing Rock Sioux. First trip, in October, I invited my white friend H to join us and offer intuitive healing; she accepts and I fundraise among my friends to support her travel expenses. I then notice how I was acting out a tendency for white people to support other white people, even while purportedly trying to support non-white people. Second trip, in November, I acted outside my comfort zone and invited Black women and other women of color to be sponsored by us and my former band-mate S, a Black woman, accepts. Intensely mixed feelings about the ideology inherent in the movement. Is this when I begin to question the progressive ideology overall?

September 2016: Five month series, Decolonizing White Views, at Dharma Gate

Thanksgiving, 2016: Request E's grandfather, who had escaped Germany during Hitler's time, to urge E's family to be vigilant regarding fascism

December 10, 2016: Incorporate political action into Street Scramble at the Market. Also, checkpoints have themes of government and justice.

December 2016: S hosts a gathering at her house to share about Standing Rock. Afterward she tells me of the discomfort she felt throughout the evening at the manner in which a white woman, a stranger to her, had interacted with her. S concluded it may have been best had she asked her to leave. This woman had not seemed overbearing to me at all and I felt uneasy that I could not even see it when it was pointed out to me. What if I behaved that way, would S ask me to leave?

December 26, 2016: E's grandfather letter is subject  of Jerry Large's column in Seattle Times

January 13, 2017: Last day working at the employer I'd been with since 2008
Jaunary 21, 2017: Attend Women's March with S

February-May, 2017: Volunteer with Water Protector Legal Collective arrestee support. Notice that, aside from this work, I'm not moved to do any further anti-pipeline activism, and feel ashamed about this.

February 17-18, 2017: Nonviolence workshop by Bernard Lafayette Jr, organizer during the civil rights movement. I am craving to be a 1960's style activist and my attendance here is an attempt to be that. Yet when I leave I sense that I am not going to follow through with further trainings by this man.

March 13-21, 2017:Jury duty. Case involves two apparent native Americans, one suing another for medical expenses. Defendant seems to have better witnesses and lawyers. We rule in favor of the defendant.

March 14-28, 2017: Host TB, Lakotah Sioux grandma, at our two-house community. Host party to raise funds for her sustenance. I am uncomfortable, make effort to offer her my presence. Continued judgment esp. when she gives funds to her heroin-using daughter and talks about getting a tattoo. I buy her cannabis.

April 3-8, 2017: Human cadaver dissection workshop

April 20 (Earth Day), 2017: Garden work at Swinomish Reservation. Meet RC, a Swinomish friend of my late brother Paul, for first time.

May, 2017 (or earlier): My tenants set an intention to decenter whiteness in their household and to not have whites be in the majority.

June 18, 2017: Charleena Lyles is killed by police at Sand Point Housing in nearby Magnuson Park. E and I attend a vigil that night. Next evening is our usual Monday two-house dinner and S is present; she and I are planning to place flowers near Charleena Lyles' residence after dinner. I speak some awkward words at dinner acknowledging the injustice of the killing. My new tenant JN, a Black woman, hovers between the kitchen and the dinner table; my sense is that she is uncomfortable (or perhaps someone actually said she was upset). Soon after a plan is hatched to have a garage sale on July 8 to raise funds for Charleena Lyles' family. After dropping off flowers, S and I walk in the park and I share (with much discomfort) that I am more quiet with her than with other friends because she is Black and I'm "afraid of saying the wrong thing."

June 22, 2017: Two-house meeting about parking. JN takes issue with my parking policy, saying it's classist to tell them not to park in front of my neighbors' houses. During meeting I am aware of something I'd recently read: a long list of negotiation/discussion practices that maintain white dominance. Each time I noticed myself about to use one of these practices, I stopped myself. Ultimately we reached a compromise that left me feeling I had let go of too much, and over the ensuing months that feeling never went away.

June 26, 2017: R says that Sand Point Housing is looking for people to lead meditation, yoga, and walking for residents. I agree to lead walking, eager for an opportunity to connect with the residents. I continue leading this walking group until the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020 and do form a nice connection with a number of residents, though most who attend are white.

July 4, 2017: R shares with me and Z a brief memoir she'd written. I notice my own prejudices arising. One (surprise that she'd done Outward Bound) I did not catch before words came out of my mouth. A couple days later I email a brief apology. The email caused hurt that hadn't been caused by the initial remark; R is so angry she doesn't know whether we can be friends anymore. I'm quite shaken. Repair happens over ensuing weeks.

July 9, 2017: First meeting of the NE Seattle Equity and Social Justice Council. This group emerged out of discussions about local racism on the NextDoor platform regarding Charleena Lyles' death. I attend and am an active member through the present. Our focus is support of Sand Point Housing and Sand Point Elementary, and community building between that community and the surrounding affluent communities.

August 2017: A few months earlier I was shocked to learn that Sam Harris' thinking on racial equity lacks nuance; he dismisses the repercussions of implicit bias and rues so-called identity politics. Looking for discussion on this topic, I join The Sam Harris Experiment facebook group, only to find no dissent with Harris' views on race. In October and November I attempt vigorously to persuade people and find that nobody budges. In December I go out for drinks with other locals from the group before Harris' Seattle appearance (which I don't attend) and enjoy conversing. Overall, I am shaken that Harris and his very intelligent fans are so blind to their participation in systems of oppression, and put up so many defenses around discourse. In particular, they blocked my attempt to ground our discourse in an agreed-upon definition of the word racism.

September 2017: Nikkita Oliver, a progressive Black woman, doesn't make it past the primary for Seattle Mayor. Z and I had hesitatingly supported her (after asking her if she'd voted for Clinton in 2016 and she'd said yes) and after the primary I chased votes for her.

Fall 2017: Begin Decentering Whiteness meetings in our two-house community, once or twice/month. These continue until the disbanding of the other household two years later.

Fall 2017: M of Sand Point Housing tells me and R about inequities at Sand Point Housing. These inequities played a role in the death of Charleena Lyles. I am dismayed to learn of this, yet eager and excited to use my privilege to make a difference.

October 2017: Join Reparations Facebook group. Start giving amounts of $20-$100 to Black Americans who make requests. Help group member VP find someone local to fix her car; in the end it doesn't work out so I give her money to get it fixed. I continue to focus support on VP over the next six months, though I do fulfill other arbitrary requests. I also do some focused support of a young woman named C; she sends me her memoir after I offer to help her edit it, but then after some time complains about me to the group admins about something unknown to me and finally drops out of the group. In November I share my ambivalence about the group with my tenant A, and A suggests I might find the Social Justice Fund a more satisfying place to send my money.

October 2017: Real Rent Duwamish is established and I begin monthly $54 contributions. This fulfills a desire I'd had to make some kind of reparation for "owning" land that was stolen from the Duwamish tribe 150 years ago.

December 2017 - June 2018: Work with SJ of Florida, a woman I learned of on the Reparations facebook group, to get her and her family out of a motel and into a home. All together give her about $9000. Get friends & family to help some also. A lot of mental and emotional effort.

December 2017: Begin sending $50/month to SB in Zimbabwe. My desire is to honor and support SS, my marimba teacher from decades ago, by supporting someone important to her. I continue sending this monthly to this day and intend to continue indefinitely.

January-March, 2018: EMT training

January 9, 2018: Dinner to discuss whiteness, with two friends, CC and BJ.

January 2018: Notice the dearth of Black EMT students, and also notice a racially insensitive comment made by the teacher ("we don't accept students with felony records -- we don't want felons as EMTs" when we know that Black people receive felony convictions more often than whites for the same behaviors). Schedule myself to talk about this with her at the end of the class, after we've established rapport. Follow through with this plan and find she is very receptive. Feel certain that waiting was wise.

February 4, 2018: Garage sale for VP. She had said she wanted to have a garage sale to help make ends meet, but that she didn't have a garage.

February 14, 2018: Send letter to Mayor Durkan asking for an impartial investigation of Solid Ground's management of Sand Point Housing, initiated two months earlier by R and signed by a dozen prominent residents of NE Seattle.

March 2018: Surmise that RC is facing financial barriers in fleeing her abusive husband. Offer her the $7000 that I inherited from my brother Paul, thinking that he would want her to have that money. After some thought she uses it to rent an art studio for a year.

March-April 2018: Do some follow up work to the letter to Mayor Durkan, including attending Solid Ground board meetings and meeting with the board president. Gradually come to realization that I am not going to follow up vigorously. I don't analyze why, I don't push myself to do it anyway. I feel ashamed. I'd wanted to "use white privilege to end white privilege" but when push came to shove I didn't want to do the work.

Feb or March 2018: Two-house dinner. JN attends, unusual for her. Felt awkward at first. She put on music and that loosened things up. It seemed like a successful dinner but later JN gave feedback about three things she'd found uncomfortable about the dinner:

• When talking about issues at Solid Ground someone mentioned wanting to understand the perspective of Solid Ground (a social service organization but in this context the oppressor)
• Two new white housemates who'd spent time in Mexico talked about their experiences when there was a Mexican-American housemate present who'd never been to Mexico partly due to poverty
• Those same white housemates had casually mentioned an interaction with the police in Mexico, seemingly oblivious to how that could be triggering for the non-white people present.

I felt discouraged and disappointed. I could not find it in myself to agree that we ought not try to understand the perspective of an apparent oppressor. The other remarks, I could see how they could make non-white people feel unseen. I sent JN a note of thanks for her feedback. She never again attended a two-house dinner.

January-July, 2018: Criminal Justice Giving Project. I ask 50 people in my social circle to contribute large amounts of money to grassroots community organizing projects led by underprivileged people, raising a total of $30,000 (including my own $10,000 contribution). Lots of work, moderate amount of stress due to my own doubt regarding the progressive agenda. However I do believe strongly that Americans of wealth and privilege need to be encouraged to share their wealth with Americans lacking wealth and privilege, and it is this belief that drives me.

Around March 2018: After a meeting of the NE Seattle Equity and Social Justice Council, about six of us go out for drinks. Two Black women who both lived at Sand Point Housing but who were not well acquainted with each other had some heated disagreements about parenting. Later, in a parking lot after I'd gone home, one of them punched the other in the face, and the victim called the police. When I heard about this I thought, "how could they call the police after what the police had done to Charleena?" Then I realized I'd been thinking that Black people held homogeneous perspectives. Learned why the woman who called the police had done so.

April, 2018: D, a young Black woman I met from Sand Point Housing, asks me if I'll go on a walk with just her, separate from my weekly walking group. I do, then I invite her to regularly come to the gym with me and Charu. She does so for some months. Early on she told me that she received racist treatment at Bartell Drugs. My immediate reaction is incredulity, which I suppress. In coming days I hear that she also receives racist treatment at U Village QFC and at a Lake City cannabis store. I go myself to the cannabis store to talk to them, and go with D to U Village QFC. My conclusion is that there is much more racist/classist behavior in North Seattle than I'd thought, and that D's perception and response magnifies it (both in reality and in her perception).

May & June, 2018: Work as an EMT at Pacific Raceways

July 29, 2018: Attend a day-long workshop, "Reaching for Blackness," for $300. I'm eager to go deeper in dismantling the anxiety I feel around Black Americans, but I'm underwhelmed with the workshop.

Sometime around here: My white next door neighbor A mentions that one of my tenants had yelled at her dog to shut up when passing through our yard to get to her car. A said, "just so you know". I was pretty sure it was JN, and asked JN about it. JN said that yes, she did yell at the dog to shut up, and she didn't think there was anything wrong with that. She is afraid of dogs. I consider talking to A about how her attitude about JN's yelling is colored by white privilege and anti-Blackness, but I never muster the courage and soon A moved away.

Summer 2018: A neighboring household, a group of non-Black people, have a pasta-making party in the street followed by an outdoor movie. I text all my tenants to join. JN shows up after it's dark and the movie's started, complains that nobody is greeting her. Two of us try to persuade her that she's actually welcome but she abruptly leaves.

November 2018: A friend observes there is a new magazine in our area, NE Seattle Living, that has mostly white-oriented content. I follow up and find that the editors are my neighbors. I have some conversations with them about privilege and whiteness, and lend them Ijeoma Oluo's book. Awkward, uncomfortable. I worry that I am shaming them and/or not sufficiently appreciating the efforts that they did make to be inclusive.

2019: Begin to feel ease in my friendship with R

April 2019: JN moves out of my rental after nearly two years. She says she wasn't happy there and the others say they weren't happy with her there. They had made a sincere effort to de-center whiteness, but from my perspective that ended up consisting mostly of me and her white housemates doing tasks for JN, cutting her slack, giving her money, and imbibing her observations about white-centered behavior. Discouraging.

July-August 2019: Hugely stressful breakup of my tenants' household, including denunciation of my choice to enter the bedroom of a Black tenant when she'd been missing for several days. Also, stress around not wanting to call the police on this tenant when she began harassing the others, and around another Black tenant who threatened to sue me if I didn't return her security deposit early. R is supportive throughout process and, somewhat to my surprise, sides with me. I strain to accommodate the two non-white tenants who weren't already planning to move out at the end of the lease, and end up over-extending and harming one of them. Looking back, I see that this event has impacted me deeply and prompted me to fully retreat from anti-racist work, at least for a while. I decide to have as formal a relationship as possible with my next tenants.

January 2020: Z asks that we take down our BLM yard sign, and we do.

March-May 2020: COVID-19 pandemic means we are staying home almost all the time. R breaks off her friendship with me, perhaps because I didn't call her enough.

Late May, 2020: A huge re-invigoration of  BLM-related activity in the aftermath of Minneapolis police killing an innocent Black man. The NE Seattle Equity and Social Justice Council talks about reconvening. I decline to be active again, both because I want to continue the quiet life I'd enjoyed since early March, and because of my doubts about the movement. It appears that white people are much more open to the message than they were during the mid-2010s. Mass protests including lots of white people. Sales of Oluo's book and other anti-racist books skyrocket. Though I have doubts about strategy, I am heartened that so many more white people are understanding that Black people are still having a hard time.