Changing Your Mind in Public

I grew up middle class in a very white, culturally conservative neighborhood. I didn't (knowingly) know a single queer person until I was in high school. I had interacted with exactly one black person before middle school. Everyone I knew was at least nominally Christian. I knew to look down on, ever so slightly, people whose family constellations looked differently than mine (married hetero parents, two kids, white picket fence).

The additionally honest truth is that I was scared of anyone who was different from me. They ate different things, used different vocab, and had different rules in their family. It was just scary and uncomfortable. I knew nothing at the time of internalized patriarchy, racism, agism, homophobia, and misogyny, but they all existed in my little body. I avoided contact, made snarky jokes, and discredited their plights.

I first realized something was off in me when I attended an intentionally mixed-race school in sixth grade and recognized the awkwardness. That school made a lot of effort to address racism, to at least bring it into consciousness. I also spent more time in close proximity to black and queer students for a solid eleven years.

But there was still a block for me until I had to take this assessment in grad school. It measures your internalized biases by looking at your responses to a series of stimuli. It looks at what you don't want to see. What you don't want to say. It is objective data about your subjective opinions. It blew my mind and humbled me.

My conscious belief in and loyalty to a loving, just Creator compels me to act repentantly the moment I learn something in my life has been destructive. Are you compelled, too? If not, why not? At the very least can you be honest with yourself about your lack of benevolence? I started reading Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, and Brandi Carlisle. I wanted to know what they thought. Do you?

Next for me came George Floyd and Black Lives Matter, a whole new round of public discourse regarding racism, challenging my automatic assumptions and revealing differing perspectives on public authority and systemic structures. I have also, at this point, had countless black and queer clients, who share intimate, very human details of their lives with me. You can't not see humanity when it is sitting raw in front of you.

I can't say that I no longer internalize the racism and homophobia that exists in our culture and our systemic structures. I wish I was not affected by them, but I am. What has changed for me is an awareness and an intentional effort to work against those subconscious beliefs and unjust privileges, by listening regularly to voices that don't sound like my own, and supporting those humans both financially and with my attention, even though that isn't convenient or socially acceptable in all the circles I frequent. Without intentional effort, nothing will change. Without listening, how will we hear?

You don't have to be afraid of what is different from you. You can listen and still be discerning. You can be kind and compassionate and still disagree. But you can't avoid contact and stay your own course and still honestly believe that your way is the best way. You don't know; you haven't even really looked.

You can change your mind, too.