This month’s antiracism title was Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor, by Layla F. Saad.

The chapter was “You and White Exceptionalism,” and I might be its poster child.

Nobody wants to be the poster child of white exceptionalism. It’s not a title I bear proudly. I know I benefit from white privilege. White exceptionalism says, “Yes, but YOU leverage your white privilege for good.”

A confession is most effective if it lifts the weight off of your shoulders without putting the weight on someone else. So before you read the story I’m going to tell, take a second for self care so that you don’t take it on.

I went to the home improvement big box store to buy some drywall yesterday, and asked a middle-aged man of color who worked at the store for help cutting the drywall to the size I needed. I told him the dimensions. He verified it, and then marked it on the drywall.

I asked him to cut two sections of drywall from the big piece, so that if I messed up with the first piece, I would have another correctly sized piece to use. I told him what the measurement would be for doubling the width.

One part of my self-identification is that I’m good at mental math. Somewhere in my reasoning, and I was aware of this AS I WAS SPEAKING, I was face saving for this man in case he couldn’t do the math in his head and would have to, I don’t know, pull out his cell phone and use the calculator, or slide the measuring tape down.

This was totally condescending. It assumed he wasn’t good at math OR measuring, at least, not without help. Maybe I assumed that because he was an older person working in retail.

Speaking up about the measurement because I was sure I was right (the best part is that I was an inch off, and had to correct myself), and right before anyone else was right, felt gross even as it was happening.

Then reading a chapter on white exceptionalism the next day felt like a punch in the gut.

It doesn’t seem to matter how much work I do around my own superiority, I still have more to do. It comes out in weird ways, like mental math at the big box store. It comes out of my mouth almost like a glitch because the ideas are so deeply embedded on my psyche.

As I was listening to the white exceptionalism chapter, I was thinking back to the situation in the store, and wondering, damn, was that a micro-aggression? And, what the hell is wrong with me that I know this is a thing and I still let it happen?

I heard many times as a child that I was bright and well behaved, both inside and out of my house. I was hatched in a nest that both valued integrity (doing the right thing when no one is looking) but still struggled with the need to do things, dress “appropriately,” and be on time for appearances in way that I’m still unwrapping.

None of it “had to do with race,” and that is the trouble with white supremacy. When it’s part of society, we learn a certain set of values that is present everywhere we go. It isn’t often challenged in a way that makes us see our way as one of many, or “not necessarily the best.”

White exceptionalism is the part of me that says, I would never say out loud that I have Black friends, a Black husband, and Black children as a way of virtue signalling, but at the same time – doesn’t their presence in my life say something about my values?

I have consciously made sure my kids have black and brown dolls to play with – to the extent that I have gotten rid of white dolls because because I find their ubiquitousness offensive. White exceptionalism is the part of me that wants credit for that.

In the chapter on white exceptionalism, there is a section about how white exceptionalism shows up.

“White exceptionalism convinces you that you don’t really need to do the work. That you are doing it …. but you do not have to dig as deep as you are being asked to go.”

“White exceptionalism is the little voice that convinces you that you can read this book but you do not have to do the work. That because you have an intellectual understanding of the concepts being presented here, you do not have to diligently write out your responses to questions. That you can just think about it in your mind, and that is enough.”

I know I have to do the work, and that I don’t know everything, but I still often act like I know more than other people.

It helps to remind myself that instead of picturing us all as racers on a track, or points on a graph, we are more like particles in a cloud. Some of us are up higher in the cloud, some of us are practically raindrops, some of us are closer to the edge. Those aren’t value judgements, they’re just descriptions of where we are in space.

Yesterday and today, I was reminded of how my “superiority” is a tic – it’s so automatic, that being aware of it is not enough. I may not be fully conscious of it being about race, but it probably is. It’s also about class, education, and economic privilege, and if those things make one person better than another, that’s not a world view I want to perpetuate.

***********************************

Did reading this make you uncomfortable? Did you want to defend me, to tell me not to worry about imposing my math skills on the man who was helping me? What does digging deeper mean? Is it possible to be too conscious of the possible undertones of everything and drive yourself up the wall as a result?

I know which tools I can use for change: the pause of breath before speech, to take something back before it’s even been said. Taking the path of humility.

That is where the real work begins.