Vulnerability in Black Skin
Yesterday, I made a bold proclamation, as I sometimes do. I told myself, and soon thereafter twitter and Instagram that “I want to have a public conversation with Brené Brown about shame specifically as a tool of White Supremacy; relooking at the paradox of vulnerability as an act of liberation and sovereignty but also the high risk of vulnerability in Black skin. I’m ready Brene.” As soon as I wrote it, my whole body got hot. I was terrified, what had I done?
Immediately, admittedly, I wanted to delete the post. Forget the proclamation. I quickly realized that what I was feeling was shame, specifically imposter syndrome of the “Who does she think she is” variety. The feelings came quickly and flooded my body with panic but before I could delete the sentiment, I made myself put my phone down and just wait. I made myself breathe through all the reasons why I actually was uniquely qualified to have this conversation. I thought of three reasons:
This conversation is a continuation of one I started with Brene (and Oprah). In 2013, I was invited by Harpo production to take part in a leadership lab for Super Soul Sunday where a collective of about 100 healing professionals were invited to talk candidly about shame and vulnerability with Dr. Brown. The call came not two weeks after I put a photo of Brene and Oprah on my vision board and I quickly scrambled to find a friend to join me. My love Jakora, was able to join me and together we got to sit front row (!!!) for a taping of two episodes of TV but more importantly, we got to take part in an all day conversation about shame and vulnerability, embracing imperfection, and daring to lead authentically with our whole selves. To say the experience sparked something in me would be a gross understatement. From there, I’d go on to teach three years of school and clinical professional counselors using Brown’s books Gifts of Imperfection and excerpts from Daring Greatly. I dove head first into the idea that I could be a better leader, teacher, counselor, partner, friend, anything if I actively worked to be authentic and that meant embracing my imperfections and leaning into vulnerability. All bold actions that shame would absolutely loathe. And then Ferguson happened.
I watched the news incessantly, like I never had before waiting to see what the outcome would be? Would there be an indictment? Would there be a reckoning for the gross display of racism and overt systemic oppression? No. There would not be. And as the town of Ferguson erupted, so did I. Only, I was living in San Diego attending a predominately White, Catholic, private, and let’s face it, extremely elitist and expensive graduate school. I went to school and work and no one made any mention of Ferguson or Michael Brown or any of it. I had so much anger and I didn’t know what to do with any of it. At the time, I was also enrolled in an Ethics class and prior to the lack of indictment, I’d been working on a paper where we were to analyze an ethical dilemma that impacted how we took up leadership. I can’t remember what my dilemma had been, but the night of the verdict, I erased it all and wrote a new paper called “How Black to be in White Spaces: An Ethical Dilemma for a Black Leadership Practitioner”. In the assignment I began to write without edit or much of a filter about the constant negotiations of identity that I have to do in order to account for white comfort and white gaze. I wrote:
Twelve pages into my previous paper—the one with the approved topic and feedback from both professor and teaching assistant, the one I had been thinking about for an entire semester and had gotten feedback on—the grand jury decision not to indict Darren Wilson broke. I watched the news with emotions surfacing within me that I could not name and they welled up and poured up out of hot against my skin. They are going to burn that city down. It was the thought that kept moving pulsing through me, slowly at first then quicker to match my heartbeat. It was as if in my viewership I had sped to the pace of the movement and my rage matched their rage. Only, I had no sign. I was home on my couch far away from the eye of the storm and I wondered air outside my own home smelled like. Could I smell the smoke, the salty smell of tears, hot ash, gunfire, teargas, the chaos? If I inhaled sharply enough could I breathe in the movement? I wondered to myself if it were a good thing or a bad thing that I lived in such a White city and attended such a White university. I was certain that the next day life would persist as if Ferguson was not happening 1,500 miles away. I was sure that no one would understand my solemn mood or why when I dressed in all black I had done so. I was positive that when my fists clenched and my jaw tightened, and when tears fell down my cheek for the sons I now feared to birth that no one would understand why. I was right. And as I maneuvered through that day one person said to me, “You look sad.” I responded to them, “I am.” Persisting on to a meeting with an Assistant Vice President (AVP), a White woman, at the university I asked myself if I should bother to put myself together or if I even could? I abandoned the notion of being anything other than an angry Black woman that day and I told myself that for that day, it would have to be okay. But secretly I wondered if it was and more persistently I wondered under what circumstances was “she” ever allowed to exist in this world?
…
The small act of how to arrive to my meeting with the AVP became weighty as I moved through the consequences of showing up angry. I chose not to; instead when she inquired about my mood and demeanor I pushed scholar me to respond, intellectualizing and articulating the greater systemic issues rather than my personal feelings on the matter. This happened largely because of my appraisal of situations with authority and especially White authority, and perhaps especially especially White female authority as being “unsafe”. In Winnicott’s (1971) work around True Self and False Self he posits that the healthy false-self arrives out of a need to dissipate perceived anxiety within a group; individuals constantly make adjustments according to group dynamic. As a minority in a majority White school, city, nation I constantly receive messages that it is my job not to “anger the White people,” not to upset the status quo and that doing so would only be to my detriment. Jacobus (2006) further asserts that “the false self is the ultimate defense against the unthinkable: exploitation of the True Self, which would end in annihilation.” In this sense, anxiety—real or perceived—within a group setting can call for inauthentic behavior and an inauthentic self; it shields varying degrees of truth and then perpetuates status quo within the group dynamic and discourse. Therefore in many ways being my authentic “angry Black woman” self may cost me my True self, and in that sense I constantly have to ask myself is it worth it?
I was wrestling with embracing vulnerability within my Black skin. I believed so deeply in the work to be authentic, and to reduce shame, and yet so much around me informed me of the danger in doing so. And then, during my dissertation work I learned exactly why.
“I think we have to remember constantly that shaming is one of the deepest tools of Imperialist White Supremacist Capitalist patriarchy because shame produces trauma and trauma often produces paralysis.” bell hooks
3. Shame is a tool of White Supremacy to produce trauma response. It is a tool of White Supremacy to invoke fear, to recall pain, to limit our reaction to primal where we can be dehumanized or paralysis where we can be overpowered. Radical feminism coming out of Oakland—The Fat Underground—produced some of my favorite literature to read. Much of their findings colored my perspective of feminism and social justice because before them, I am not sure I understood just how pervasive this tool had been utilized. A groundbreaking moment for me was learning that the vilification of fatness in women was a means to undermine women’s acquisition of power. The Fat Underground radically suggest that dieting is a form of genocide. The very idea of a moving target of “fatness” is thought to be an intentional way to keep women from gaining power. Shame…as a tool, to produce trauma to force trauma response.
When Audre Lorde wrote “the masters tools will never dismantle the masters house” this is what, I believe, she meant. We cannot use shame as a tool to try and motivate change, we have to go about things from an entirely new consciousness. Which, is what I proved I could do in my dissertation. Simply put, I hypothesized that I could reduce shame by connection; using mutuality and authenticity (being myself with others who were encouraged to do the same), to shift consciousness and increase leadership capacity. And it worked. Only, my study was with people of color. It was an intentional healing space with no white identified persons. So here we are at my growth edge.
Which is exactly why I’m calling for Brene. At this point, I want the conversation to expand. I want to think more deeply about how we can look at shame paired with the lens of race. I want to speak to how the call to be vulnerable in Black skin can feel like a trap, and in some ways, it is a trap. I want to speak to how Black people can use vulnerability in service of eradicating shame, shifting consciousness, and empowering ourselves and our community. I want to do this in colleague with one of my favorite scholars, a White woman, who I believe has the capacity to sit with the discomfort and the growth edges of her own research.
And when I look at how clearly I was able to articulate all of this, in a matter of 60 minutes, I can more steadily approach that feeling of “Who does she think she is?” I’m a student and a scholar, who is committed to social justice and the continued evolution of Black people and all people with due attention to and in service of healing our whole selves.
So now, I’m waiting on Brene, because clearly I’m ready.