“Democracy is a political enactment of a spiritual idea.” —Raphael Warnock in his first speech as a US Senator
I’ve been fantasizing about moving for a while. New York. Raleigh, NC. Oakland, CA. Somewhere with more Black and brown people, somewhere with more culture. But I don’t want to leave my home, to be honest. I love the rolling hills, the beach, the farms, the wide-open spaces. I love cities, but I think I love trees more. And even if I moved, the white supremacist patriarchy is everywhere. No matter how diverse the area, no matter how liberal, there’s no escaping it. The recent wave of anti-Asian hate is a harrowing reminder of this.
So I’ve been thinking, rather than moving, why don’t I create my own community? This is where you all come in.
“Belonging” has become somewhat of a buzzword, especially since Brene Brown hit the scene. Companies want to foster a culture of belonging. Spaces are designated as one where we can feel a sense of belonging. We all want to belong. So why is it that so many of us don’t?
What fosters a culture of belonging? How do we create spaces where everyone feels welcome? Is this even possible? (Spoiler: I think so.)
I am someone who has often felt like I don’t belong. I feel, or have felt at many times, like an outsider, like a token. I have spent most of my life feeling like I don’t belong, pretty much everywhere.
I’ve been looking for my people, my place, for a long time. And I have found my true home, the home within myself, where I am safe and whole, where I am without the need for external validation (mostly) yada yada; but I am human, and we humans are social creatures. We thrive on community, family, friends. We thrive on belonging.
And though the answer isn’t 100% “outside,” I don’t think it’s within 100% either. Sure, we can be more at home anywhere if we are at home within ourselves, when we can feel at peace with who we are, when we can look in the mirror and say, I love you (I still want to gag with that one but I’m going to do as my therapist says and keep at it!), but what would it be like inside if we felt safe and not otherized “out there”?
Because I’m sure you’ve gathered by now, that though many characters within the wellness space encourage us to “look within,” for most of us as women and as POC, feeling whole within ourselves isn’t going to protect us from microaggressions or bodily harm.
The common enemy for us all is white supremacy; patriarchy, capitalism. It’s misogyny and bigotry, it’s hatred and delusion. It’s hegemony. How we ALL suffer can be attributed to this. From the “nude” color of band-aids to a lack of healthcare, to living in a food desert, to having to hold our keys in our fist like a weapon when we walk to our cars at night; all of this traces back to the same root cause.
Manifest destiny! “Progress!” How many of us have been harmed in the name of “progress”? And why does progress here in America look so ass-backward?
Progress is a world where everyone has access to everything they need. Is this socialism? Probably. Do I care? No. I mean, does anyone need a billion dollars? NO. This disparity of wealth is a symptom of a lack of care. And a lack of care, stemming from the cult of the individual and the societal constructs of race and gender, fosters a culture where everyone is othered and no one belongs.
Growing up, I didn’t feel like I belonged out here in white Sonoma County. I belonged in the orchards that I ran through, I belonged at the beach, I belonged in the beauty of nature, which was why my mom moved us out here from LA when I and my twin were 7. But when it came to the four walls of a classroom, or the interactions with other (white) kids, that’s when I found myself realizing, for the first time, that I was “different.” That I didn’t belong.
I was at home within myself, among the trees, running in the waves, playing in the sand, but as soon as I became a part of society, that’s when shit went sideways.
Sonoma County is super-white; why? Because of wealth. Why are only white people wealthy? Because of othering and fearmongering and hate-engendering practices, policies, laws, and belief systems that are embedded into the fabric of our existence, and have been for centuries.
They say slavery ended a long time ago, but the peculiar institution remains in everything that surrounds us. And this trickles down and seeps into everything, all the way down to impacting a little Black girl in Northern California, the daughter of a single white mom, who loved cats and writing (still do), into making her feel like she didn’t belong.
I remember when a white woman at the supermarket asked my mom if she had adopted me and my sister; this woman couldn’t imagine how or why my mom would have daughters that looked like us. To my recollection, no one had ever asked her this in LA (I’m not saying LA is perfect, but seeing a white mom with Black kids down there is nothing new).
What started as “different” in school became worse as time went on. It always does for girls, who become women. It always does for POC, who get older and become “threats” or “superpredators.”
It has taken me a long time to feel like I can be myself, fully and authentically, and it’s still a struggle, and it’s not always safe for me to be myself, depending on the setting. What would it be like if we could all feel safe to be ourselves everywhere? Why is that such a radical idea?
Even when you’re factoring in the need to be “professional” at work; who dictates what professional is? Think about how only now, in 2021, has the CROWN (Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair) Act become law in California. And still hasn’t passed in many states.
Think about who defines what “proper” speech is. What is proper? Who says it’s “right”? How much of our behavior is dictated through a white lens? How much of what is deemed acceptable or appropriate is what’s mandated by the dominant culture?
I cringe when I think about all of the pictures I had plastered on my walls when I was 15, pages torn from the magazines I pored over, like Vogue and the now-defunct Seventeen. The pictures were aspirational to me, photos of models and actors I admired or wanted to be like. And they were all white. There was no one within these pages I loved so much that looked like me. No one resembling myself.
I dabbled pretty hardcore in assimilating; I straightened my hair, I wore makeup that wasn’t made for me, because the store didn’t have makeup for me. I listened to what everyone else listened to; even the music I found that “spoke” to me was angsty white-boy music like Dashboard Confessional (!!). I felt the pain, but not his pain. And he would never know mine.
Representation matters not for optics, not for grand ideas of inclusion (we want actions, not just ideas!), but because every little girl, every person, deserves to feel like a fully realized human being. To be treated as a fully realized human being. Because a lack of band-aid colors is intrinsically linked to Black and brown people making less money, to having less access to resources, to the waves of anti-Asian hate, to us being killed with impunity.
I wonder what I would have been like if I had felt like I belonged growing up.
I wonder if otherized people would still be killed in the street because of dominant-culture fear. If we belonged.
I don’t see Sonoma County becoming more diverse anytime soon, for the aforementioned reasons, but if the last year has taught us anything, it’s that we can gather and connect no matter how far apart we may be. There’s nothing like meeting up IRL, but we can create our own spaces, too, spaces that look like this one. I hope you feel like you belong here. Because you do!
You belong here:
Action: Sign the CROWN Act petition and help make hair discrimination illegal! “People should not be forced to divest themselves of their racial cultural identity by changing their natural hair in order to adapt to predominantly white spaces in the workplace or in school” (from the CROWN Act’s website).
Follow: Aminatou Sow! Co-host of the Call Your Girlfriend podcast with journalist Ann Friedman, Sow is an author, writer, digital strategist, and cofounder of Tech Ladymafia, which advocates for women workers in the tech space. I LIVE for Sow’s newsletter, Crème de la Crème, which offers her invaluable and often hilarious insights into, well, everything. I found Sow’s assessment of the current Substack debate to be spot-on; if you aren’t aware of the Substack landscape or want to know more about it, check out Sow’s recent newsletter issue here.
Listen: “SULA (Paperback)” by Jamila Woods. I love this stripped-down version of Woods’s song (there is also a Hardcover version; how genius is this concept??). Listening to both versions of the song is like stepping into two different worlds, although the core material is the same. I’d love to hear which one you vibe with more; it kinda depends on the mood because they’re both so good yet so different. Right now I’m feeling the Paperback version. Woods creates a different but equally gorgeous moment/mood/world in each song, inspired by the novel Sula, by the one and only Toni Morrison. If you haven’t read Sula yet, put down the phone and get it NOW. There’s a line from the book that I wrote down somewhere and now I can’t find it, but trust me when I say that there’s no one who does language as Morrison did—Woods comes damn close, though!
Move: If you need some grounding, try yoga teacher Nico Marie’s 20 Minute Root Chakra Yoga | Get Grounded sequence! Nico offers a practice that left me feeling very centered and peaceful; I especially enjoyed the Root Chakra affirmations she included during Savasana. She has a wealth of videos, from restorative yoga to meditation, in addition to videos like “Beware: Spotting Pyramid/Ponzi/MLM Schemes”, which I am so here for. There are so many scams and schemes proliferating everywhere, especially within the wellness space, preying on desperate or disenfranchised people. I love it when someone within this space uses their platform for good. Speak on it, sis!
Watch: Ginny & Georgia (shoutout to my sister for the rec!). We DEVOURED this show in an embarrassingly short amount of time. This Netflix series is created by a woman and mostly written & directed by women! Ginny & Georgia explores the mother-daughter dynamic between Georgia, a white mom, and Ginny, her Black teenage daughter. I flinched in recognition or nodded knowingly at many of the moments Ginny experiences in their new white neighborhood, and was pleasantly surprised by the show’s handling of race and gender amidst the soapy plotlines. G & G is one of those rare shows that weaves humor, cheesiness, intrigue, drama, and social issues into a completely entertaining package. Kinda like Grace & Frankie meets Gilmore Girls, but with a much-needed dose (just a dose!) of reality. And melanin! Addictive and surprisingly heartwarming.
Read: Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino. I think Tolentino’s brain may be one of the few to escape pandemic-induced smooth brain. I am always in awe of her cultural criticism and sharp observations of being “very online.” The aim of Trick Mirror, which includes nine original essays by Tolentino (a staff writer at the New Yorker), is to question and wrestle with and attempt to disentangle the knotted organic cotton threads of our modern (capitalist, consumerist, misogynistic, etc) society, and to reckon with how it impacts us all. Tolentino doesn’t offer easy answers or solutions, but is that her job? Nope. I’d say it’s the government’s job. “A whip-smart, challenging book.”—Zadie Smith
P.S. If you’ve read the book already, I’d be interested to hear what you think about book critic Lauren Oyler’s take on it; Tolentino gets dragged, which felt really unnecessary to me. Don’t get me wrong, I love a debate and smart discourse, and if Oyler didn’t like the book that’s her prerogative, but damn, do we really need young women writers taking cheap shots at other young women writers? Shouldn’t the review be about the book and not Tolentino’s personal life? Tolentino includes personal anecdotes in the book, but this isn’t a memoir, and Oyler complaining about Tolentino’s “popularity” feels below-the-belt. Normally I wouldn’t give air to a critical review of a book I love, but I do love a book discussion! Let me know.
Till next Friday, my friends!
If there’s someone you know who might need some community, I hope you’ll send The Find their way—even though it’s not IRL (yet!).
xo Emma
My favorite one yet, so much to relate to. Thank you for sharing and keep going! ❤️