By LaRinda Johnson
As I reflect on Erin Grimm’s June 3,2024 blog post, White People are in Historical Time…and It’s Not Good, I think about this idea of historical time and am sparked with thoughts of nostalgia. I’m thinking about how “what is” and “what was” exist as a cycle and self-fulfilling prophecy in whiteness.
A few years ago I learned that in the 17th century, nostalgia was considered a disease associated with mental illness. This diagnosis stemmed from Swiss mercenaries longing for home. I imagine I am not alone when I think of nostalgia as a harmless longing for childhood things or cozy memories of the past. Nostalgia brings us Marvel reboots and television shows like Stranger Things–which resurges memories of, “Goonies never say die.” Seems harmless, right? I think it’s much more nuanced than that.
Threshold Time – Who is in crisis?
Grimm remembers her undergrad class on Dostoevsky and that his “threshold time” writing responded to a time of crisis. Readers stand upon a threshold as they prepare to enter his world of examining the human condition.
It is the year 2025 and I believe the entire world is watching the United States with wide eyes as we stand at that threshold while knee-deep in crisis looking into the shadows beyond a metaphorical line.
Grimm then references Tolstoy, examined through the lens of historical time. She writes, “It’s like white people are in historical time and thrust everyone else in crisis all over the world for the sake of our stability. And you get us together and there is this placidness, like a still lake, and we keep the struggling people we’re drowning below us, kicking them down while maintaining small talk.”
My response to this is, “Yes, and…”
Yes, we have thrust others into crisis all over the world and this is a result of our own crisis of whiteness. Recently, I came across a video from this year’s INmusic Festival in Zagreb, Croatia.. In this video, Grammy nominee and Academy member, Seun Anikulapo-Kuti, gives some advice to young people in Europe. He says, “I know you want to free Palestine. You want to free Congo. You want to free Sudan. You want to free Iran. There’s a new one every week. Free Europe! Free Europe from right Wing extremism. Free Europe from fascism. Free Europe from racism. Free Europe from imperialism. When you do this job, as soon as you do this job, Gaza will be free. Congo will be free. Sudan will be free. Iran…forget about us! Don’t worry about us. Free Europe”
I may be born and raised in the United States but my ancestry is European. Seun Anikulapo-Kuti’s message is for me and all European colonizers. We are like a toddler melting down in the middle of a grocery store because we do not know how to process emotions brought on by racial tension. This results in a tantrum. Like a toddler throwing and smashing anything they can get their hands in an attempt to soothe, we destroy everything we touch. We then cope with our destruction by wrapping ourselves in a cozy blanket of nostalgia while we suck our thumb.
Nostalgia Avoids Looking in the Mirror
For me, nostalgia hits differently when red hats appear shouting, “Make America great again!” Nostalgia hits differently when liberals use Dr. King to criticize Black Lives Matters protesters for lack of peace. Both examples long for something that we remember and yet, never existed.
When was America great? Was it when Black folks couldn’t vote; when women couldn’t vote; during the height of chattel slavery?
When was the civil rights movement peaceful? How can we, as white-bodied folks, read Dr. King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, and not see ourselves as the moderate King spoke directly too?
Please watch this short video of John Lewis’s account of the march from Selma to Montgomery (Bloody Sunday) before reading on: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XST4lV7HnO8
In 2020 I watched live streams from local activists at BLM protests. I watched as chants of, “I can’t breathe!” and “Say his name!” filled the air. I saw no violence as police utilized a tactic called kettling, also known as ‘trap and detain’ to corral protesters while simultaneously shouting to disperse. Trapped and confused protesters panicked as police deployed tear gas and used physical force injuring many.
The footage and John Lewis’s account of Bloody Sunday mirrors what I saw on live streams in 2020 but we avoid the mirror. We turn away from the threshold and live inside a world of historical fiction where we believe we would have marched alongside Dr. King. We hate the white moderate and yet, we are the white moderate.
White Bodied Folks – We Must Free Ourselves
What if we could free ourselves from this cycle of avoiding self-reflection by revising history? What if white supremacy was a disease we could treat? What if those of European descent could free ourselves as Seun Anikulapo-Kuti advises? What if the saying, “No one is free until we are all free,” was turned inward by white-bodied folks? What if living in a white body means I am both the enslaver and the enslaved? What if we could heal whiteness? What if deconstructing whiteness is the key to liberation for all?
In 1999, Tema Okun published an essay describing fifteen characteristics of white supremacy culture displayed as bottles of poison: either/or thinking, worship of the written word, objectivity, individualism, quantity over quality, power hoarding, open conflict, sense of urgency, defensiveness, paternalism, progress is bigger-more, belief in one right way, right to comfort, and perfectionism.
Healing from white supremacy is not easy. Deconstruction work is not like taking a pill and making the pain and trauma white supremacy has inflicted on me magically disappear. Deconstruction work is more like chemotherapy where the mental pain of confronting the white supremacy within my nervous system is so great that at the beginning, I wondered if I was worse off. I thought I hated myself even more. I didn’t hate myself more; I merely turned away from a revised history created through nostalgia and crossed the threshold where I could look directly in the mirror and face what IS by acknowledging what was.
I grieved what white supremacy stole from me, from my ancestors. I let myself feel ancient anger at the trauma white supremacy inflicted on me without my consent. I apologized to my inner child and asked forgiveness. I cried and stomped and yelled until my body began to connect to my mind and my entire being began to connect to the earth and sky–to the divine. My anxiety over social interactions began to dissipate as I deconstructed guilt and shame. I began to love myself and validate myself.
I feel more. I cry more. My tears no longer say something is wrong with me; my tears let me know humanity is flowing through me and I am connected to all of it.
I am not healed. I never will be. However, I will always be healing as long as I keep taking the medicine. I will not live to see the day we are all free but individual liberation contributes to collective liberation. I imagine a world where we are all free and because I imagine it, it’s possible.
LaRinda is a community organizer and activist with a focus on community building and pro-humanity education and healing in hopes of a liberated world.
She created The People’s Lunch as a way to promote civic engagement and community through a non-partisan call to action and solidarity. Currently LaRinda is working on opening a local community gathering place which will facilitate mutual aid, education, connection, skill building, collaboration–a place that rejects and heals from hierarchical systems.
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