Journey to Awakening
As we consider our organizational Mission to continue the healing and teaching ministry of Jesus Christ, I would invite us to consider how Jesus led His disciples and the community at large about the journey of awakening and transformation. With patience and persistence Christ taught His disciples, religious leaders, civic officials, outcast, sick, marginalized, and those who were revered, to love and respect one another. While the concept seems simple, it was not easy to apply for individuals or groups then, and it remains a struggle in our world today. What Jesus’ ministry shows us through many accounts, was His intentional actions and patient understanding of our human journey to awakening and transformation. He walked individuals through stages of denial about their thoughts, attitudes and behaviors; acknowledging conscious and unconscious biases toward race, gender, status, and religious traditions; and being transformed to individuals who would generously serve and love others. Today, we find ourselves in various places in our awakening and transformation toward our societal and personal struggles with diversity, equity, and inclusion. Some struggling to empathize; others uncertain of what action to take; many resistant to the idea there is a problem; others frustrated with the failure of others to see them and care about their struggles of injustice, discrimination, and disregard. May we examine ourselves and consider our own journey to awakening to our own struggles and those of others. May we consider what transformation of thought, attitude, heart, and behavior are needed in ourselves to confront the injustices of the world, empathize with others, and take action to advocate for love, respect, and value for all people. I invite you to consider the story of one individual and her journey ongoing journey of awakening, transformation, and action.
Karima A. Curry, LCSW
It was my mom who left when my parents split up. My dad hadn’t been working, there was a recession, and we three kids survived on government cheese and nonfat dry milk. (Milk that came ready-made was for people who had money.) If I wanted to go ice-skating at the church instead of scraping the snow off the pond, I had to find a way to earn the quarter for admission. My first real paycheck came at fourteen, courtesy of a government program for low income students.
I attended college erratically, enrolling in a class whenever I could scrape together enough funds to pay for both tuition and books. I didn’t really have the network or resources to know that there were other ways to get educational assistance. In the end, it was an employer with tuition reimbursement that opened the doors to my degrees. My innate resilience was buoyed by a supervisor whose conviction in my potential kept me on track.
At first glance, I find it ludicrous that someone would think I had experienced any kind of privilege. I lacked economic wealth, familial support, connections. I earned my way, in spite of the obstacles, on my own merit.
Here’s the thing: white privilege is not a synonym for privilege.
It’s recognition that the vanilla white color of my skin was not an additional barrier to overcome. It’s the reality that I have to improve my level of self-awareness over the things I take for granted because I am white. I am represented in the media that surrounds me. I don’t have a special section, or a special store, or a special month devoted to me because my demographic identity is ubiquitous. I have advantages, both systemically and as an individual.
It’s a classic situation where I don’t know what I don’t know. It appears when I least expect it. It showed up when I stopped for gas and my best friend was alarmed that I would leave my gas pump unattended as I was refilling the tank. It surfaces when I decline to take a cart at the entrance to a store and don’t stop to think about optics when I use my tote to hold things until I get to the counter to pay. When I marched in Washington almost four years ago, I was excited to be a part of a peaceful protest. I continue to work on being astute enough to smash any sense of personal white fragility.
Like my formal education, it’s not anyone else’s responsibility to enlighten me. There are endless resources available for self-development, to the point that it can be overwhelming to know where to start. For me, I updated my podcast list to include series like The 1619 Project, Code Switch, and Nice White Parents. I am a voracious reader, so my favorite author list was already pretty diverse but I picked up The Yellow House (Sarah M. Broom), Know My Name (Chanel Miller) and The Hate U Give (Angie Thomas). It’s more the concept that starting something is better than standing still.
I’m still white. I can’t change that any more than my circle of friends can change their origin story. As LLUH has launched a formal plan around diversity, equity, and inclusion, I’m still stumbling over being a member of the training subcommittee. Add my assignment to lead the policy sub-committee, and my sense of inadequacy is exponentially increased. I fret that my whiteness is a liability to the credibility of what is produced.
Looking back, one of my educational moments of truth occurred in Economics. I was learning about the law of diminishing marginal returns. I was flabbergasted to learn that something that seemed very intuitive about productivity had mathematical roots and specificity. It was as intense and memorable as a double rainbow. I wanted to race around and tell everyone what I had just discovered. In the same way, I want to share my exploration with others around me. I am giddy with delight and weighted with disappointment on my journey. It is clear to me that I’m still learning how to be an ally.
Suzy Adams
