It’s interesting to me as a white person to see other white people uncomfortable and unwilling to center Black narratives, Black stories.
To me, it comes from one of the leading white biases - the What About Me syndrome.
Yes, all of us humans have the What About Me syndrome, but those of us who have had our white stories centered on the grand stage of life, generation after generation? We have an extended version of it.
I was born into it. I know it well.
And I think it can be hard for white people to understand what it might be like to not be centered in that grand picture of reality.
In my experience as a white person, being dismissed has been predominantly a personal experience. And I’m not belittling this. Trauma is awful. And I spend my whole life healing my own and validating the trauma of others.
I’m only bringing it up to illustrate what the outrage looks like when my narrative as a white person with personal trauma has been dismissed.
And I’m speaking only for myself so as not to offend anyone.
I’m either eating myself from the inside out, unable to function, or I’m venting on social media, unfriending to protect boundaries, making appointments to therapists, calls to attorneys, or I’m writing another memoir.
And, if my dismisser has the audacity to say, in the middle of my upset, “Well, my point is just as valid as yours...” Not so much anymore, but in the past?
Oh, the memes have gone flying: posts about narcissism, posts about karma taking care of things, posts about not accepting apologies only changed behavior, meditation retreats, acupuncture, even speculations that god must surely be on my side.
So, knowing how upsetting it has been to have the pain of my personal trauma dismissed and invalidated… imagine having to deal with the same legitimate experience of coping with and trying to heal personal trauma, while also enduring the additional daily trauma of being dismissed, invalidated, marginalized or worse, just on account of your complexion?
That’s trauma compounded on top of trauma.
Can you imagine leaving your house after a horrible, traumatizing day with your kids or your partner or your chronic illness to decompress at a cafe with your favorite book or music, only to be further traumatized by someone you don’t even know, all bc of the color of your skin?
I have never had to deal with that.
As a woman, yes, I know the impact of those certain male-centering “what about me” voices that dominate spaces, those certain (not all) men who feel that if women are centered, they will lose instead of gain some level of “mattering the most,” which of course is sourced from that same inability to understand and appreciate life through multiple perspectives.
But still, for myself, there is a racial component that I have zero experience with.
Bc I’ve still been centered in whiteness.
(Though funny, the times I have been in all Black spaces, I have been welcomed. Every time.)
The past couple days, I have heard some white people wanting to dismiss the Super Bowl halftime show, without understanding that they’re dismissing the experience of not being centered.
And what I’m asking is, why?
Why, in all good conscience, would I have a problem with setting down my whiteness to see life, not through “what about me,” but through the lens of “what about others?”
Why would I not want to understand the narrative of Black men and Black women and Black children who not only have trauma from their personal narratives to heal from, but have been dismissed again and again for centuries, from daily micro-aggressions to being murdered, all because of their complexions?
The whole reason people capitalize the B in Black and embrace the sentiment that Black Lives Matters, is not to upset the white narrative, it’s bc Black stories have been so repeatedly dismissed and trampled over and taken over by white people, that Black people and those of us who care about Black lives have had to paint signs and t-shirts that literally say, “Hey, Black Lives Matter,” just bc it seems like a lot of people never got the message.
Centering Black people and Black stories in the Super Bowl halftime show was revolutionary. And that it was televised was also revolutionary.
For myself, when I looked at that screen and I saw Kendrick Lamar surrounded by Black bodies draped in red, white and blue, literally building America, I knew something meaningful was happening.
I was watching an important story of America.
And it was not about me. And it was not being told to me. It was being told by and for the people whose story it belongs to.
And what’s more? It’s not the job of Black bodies to then further labor to help me decipher their story.
If I want to understand the story, I need to do the labor myself.
And why would I want to understand?
Why would I want to expand my narrative, what I’m used to, to include stories other than my own?
Because centering others has more value than only centering myself.
There’s a reason that the premise of every Holy text reminds us that All People Matter.
Because all people contain the Sacred Seed of Being which is beyond complexion, beyond political persuasion, beyond indoctrination, orientation, identification, geography, neurology, physical ability or disability, etc., etc.
The ultimate narrative is not “what about me,” it’s “What About God,” or whatever word you want to use to describe that Sacred Seed of Being.
I’m not talking in any religious sense, only with the knowledge that whenever we dismiss one of us, we dismiss a container of God that is part of us all. And we become fractured.
What I have learned most in my ongoing healing is that I can hold multiple contexts and narratives at once. I can honor my story and the story of others at the same time and cherish us all.
I have learned that we have a vast space within us, that if we don’t constrict, has no limit for how far it can expand.
And the more we stretch our minds, the more narratives we can fit. And the more narratives we know about, the more people we can care about. And every time we make the effort to care about each other, we generate peace instead of war.
Another reason the message of the halftime show was so powerful to me, is bc our country is currently being infiltrated by “what about me” people who no longer even need to ask “what about me.”
They have enough resources now to make sure it’s “All About Them.”
And they’ve signed up others, and they tell these others, “Hey, pay attention, this is about you too!”
But I’m not so sure it is.
There is another demographic here that’s not only racial, that’s building something other than America, and they’re using *all* our bodies as a means to their end.
It’s billionaires.
And they have the vast resources to press your “what about me” button and get your attention fast.
They might be saying, “Look! That (insert name of person or demographic or policy that isn’t subscribed to their narrative )doesn’t care about you!”
But what they’re really doing is centering themselves as mattering most and getting others to join their agenda.
And the richest man of all? The ultimate “It’s All About Me” guy? That this man would be considered something to strive for instead of something to heal, like a rogue cancer, is beyond my abilities to understand.
The “it’s all about me” people who have the most resources will ask the people they need agreement from to become patriots, not for America, but for their agendas.
It’s not about the flag. It’s not about the constitution which clearly states our values—for the people, by the people. It’s about profits. And control. It’s investing in a story that only works for those who have turned “what about me” into “it’s only about me.”
Unchecked What About Me syndrome leads to colonizing. And though colonizing is powerful in that it pillages lands and people, it comes from a place of scarcity.
From what I’ve noticed, it comes from a personal “what about me” narrative that may have originated in trauma, but as it takes and takes to compensate, it expands to land grabbing, culture grabbing, and turning everything into theirs, so that they imagine they’re finally safe and that they’ll never not be centered again.
But it’s wrong. Greed stops growth. It cuts off life. And it cuts off access to the valuable, Holy perspective that sees all life as mattering.
That impoverished child on your screen? That’s not a stranger. That’s little Kayla from Minnesota down the street but born through different circumstances, via a different container to house the same Seed of Sacred Being.
See that kid from that poverty-stricken urban neighborhood? That’s no stranger. That’s little Henry from Long Island in your kid’s karate class, born through different circumstances, via a different container to house the same Seed of Sacred Being.
We are all each other. We all deserve to live in peace with equal access to the same resources and opportunities to reach our full health and potential.
To imagine that one person doesn’t matter, is literally killing off parts of us all.
But someone who is stuck on “What about me” or “It’s only about me” will not be able to conceive of this.
They will believe sharing wealth and opportunity is a waste of resources, bc they literally aren’t able to access the perspective that teaches us
the value of people over profits. For them, people make profits. And people are either a means to that end or an obstacle to that end.
They want to turn the world into a place where people serve only their narrative. A world that’s made for them. So of course they are very threatened when somebody else comes and tells a different story. Especially on *their* grand stage.
Have you ever seen a “What About Me” temper tantrum? Well in this current climate, it looks like white nationalism.
It looks like someone who had personal trauma and then gained enough resources to compensate for that on a larger scale.
Some people are afraid to not be centered.
They’re afraid to say, “What about you?”
But funny, what I get out of all this lately, is that whiteness is not at all the privilege that many of us have been imagining it us.
It’s a deprivation.
Just think of how much more growth we’d have as a species if more narratives had been invited to all these tables.
We’ve missed out on so many geniuses. So much talent. So many incredible perspectives. So much ingenuity. So many hearts with so much to share.
Can you imagine our world if all voices were centered? If we could build bridges that merge our narratives?
Surely there’s enough space on this planet for that to still happen.
Diversity is growth. Diversity is beauty. Diversity is genius.
So my hope is that before us white people open our mouths to say, “What about me,” in all those different dialects of what-about, that we instead pause, orient ourselves as one valid perspective among many, and ask out loud, What about that person over there? And what about those people? And what about you?
And then go find out.
-JLK