On Rage + Responsibility

I don’t even know what to say today.

I’m still not over Buffalo and now here we are having to grapple with Texas.

Such is the nature of life in America, isn’t it.

So much trauma and tragedy that we can’t keep up.

I am full of rage.

But I am also grappling with what accountability and responsibility looks like in this moment, and in all the moments, as a white parent in America.

I’ve been iterating and drafting something to send to you all about Buffalo. I was surprised that when I shared a call to other white parents in my Instagram stories, none responded. I knew it was important for me to continue finding the words… So I’m going to do that today. And also talk briefly about Texas. And then I’m going to go back to talking about pleasure and healing and joy, because fuck if we can’t have both. But also, I’m not sure what else to do. How do we continue to pretend that everything is fine when nothing is fucking fine?

Friends, last week an 18 year old white boy drove over 200 miles to a Black neighborhood in Buffalo, NY for the sole purpose of terrorizing and murdering Black people. He even apologized to the white guy that he accidentally pointed his gun at.

To my fellow white parents, raising white kids… that boy is ours.

We raised him. We nurture the environment that raised him. We enable the toxic masculinity that raised him, that told him that the only acceptable feeling from a boy is anger. We shepherded him to want power over all else.

That boy is ours.

Just like Kyle Rittenhouse and Dylan Roof and on and on and on.

I know the temptation here is to reject what I’m saying. To highlight all of the ways that your kids are different. That my kids are different. But at the end of the day, we’re all connected. And we can’t raise our kids in a vacuum while we’re silent about the collective.

Last week I was in a retention space for white bodies as a part of a somatic abolitionism training that I’ve been participating in (which I highly recommend, by the way!) and Resmaa Menakem (one of the facilitators) asked us to reflect on how the white boys in our community, not just in our family, but our communities and around us would know that we’re different? I haven’t stopped considering the question since and I invite you to join me.

He also urged us to let our children see us grappling with this, to see us doing the work to divest from whiteness and disrupt white body supremacy. So I put out a call on my Instagram that went unanswered. I won’t pretend to know what that looks like, but I am compelled to say that we have to start somewhere. Are you in? Simply reply here and let me know. Then we can gather and rage and grieve and take action and figure out the next step as we go.

And Texas. Holy shit I am not even ready to think about Texas, let alone talk about it.

But here we are.

I will never forget the first time my 6 year old came home after having an active shooter drill at school. He was traumatized. Sobbing about why there would be a bad guy in school. I had no answers for him, no ability to assure him safety in a meaningful way. He had nightmares for several days. We are traumatizing a whole damn generation of kids to protect some ridiculous idea that slave holders wrote into the Declaration of Independence. My unpopular opinion is that I don’t actually give a fuck about any gun enough to make it more important than the wellbeing of any child or human, period. We need to stop this gun bullshit.

But it extends beyond the gun laws. This is all interconnected in a culture that values power over humanity. We have to disentangle ourselves from white supremacy in all its forms, starting from within. We can’t just march about guns or abortion while maintain the status quo at home or in the workplace.

This is personal work as much as it’s collective and systemic work.

Let’s fuel our rage into motivation to divest and heal.

For our kids. For us. For our future.

For all of the Black, Brown, Indigenous, Trans, Queer, etc. folks who are dying at the hands of white supremacy every day.

If you’re not already invested in ongoing unpacking, healing, and divesting work please make that commitment. Again, I can’t speak highly enough about the Foundations of Somatic Abolitionism program that I’m a part of.

Today let’s sit with the rage and the responsibility we have to it.

And let’s do more than we’ve ever done before to make a change.

That’s all.

In love, rage, and solidarity,

Victoria