Hey University of Nevada, Reno friends, one of the tiki-terrorist guys in Charlotte is from UNR. Do you know him? If so, please find him and talk to him, or direct him to me, before he gets any more people killed. Three have already died in Charlotte. Countless others have been terrorized by him and his friends around the world now. Let’s shut it down, Wolfpack. Now.
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Hello, tiki-wielding white guys. From here, this march of yours in Charlotte isn’t freedom of speech. It isn’t adulthood or manhood. It’s not a revolution. And it damn sure isn’t being patriotic. This is intentional violence against the spirit, heart, and soul of this country. Against all of us who work and play together to make this country better for ourselves and future generations. This isn’t 1930. You look ridiculous and pathetic so trapped in a delusional past. And, this country as a whole now looks ridiculous and pathetic and trapped in the past in the eyes of the watching world. I, for one, am not ashamed to be out in the light. The world should see this. If for no other reason, to feel better about themselves. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. And, because our need for each other now spans country borders as if they don’t actually exist at all except in our imaginations.
This need to wield torches and march with a small group of other angry white guys intent on striking terror into the hearts of everyone else–from my perspective–is about you not having the truly strong community that you need. You likely have been raised to blame yourself and other individual selves for the problems of the world. The lift-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps shtick. I was, too. I get it. And, its possible to grow fully into that and beyond that. I’ve been helped to grow into recognizing that close, diverse, and tight-knit communities are what most of us need to thrive in the hyper-connected, chaotic world now. The kind of rich community that helps us learn to own our own pain (there’s honoring the bootstraps idea–hear it?), learn how to move with it more fluidly (this was new for me), and how to move through life lifting everyone around me up instead of blaming myself and others, carrying torches, and mowing other people down with my car (this is fully owning the shadow side of bootstraps, which in the past were also seen as useful for beating children into submission–ah, the good old days?).
We all need people who call us on our bullshit while simultaneously loving us and not giving up on us. When we don’t get that we wither, flail, and lash out. To keep growing, we need more people and different people in our lives. Growing means regularly hearing that you don’t have all the answers (damn it), that you’re valuable and loved regardless (thank God), and it also means periodically walking away from those who believe it’s their job to hurt us. Learning often hurts but love doesn’t. We can trust our tender hearts on this one. And here in adulthood we know full well: the people we often need the most next–to mature and grow–very often don’t look at all like us on the outside. The people we need next can only be identified by how they make us feel. They stretch us. Make us more curious about the world. They also make us feel more free to be ourselves: the fearless, learning, growing selves we were at our core when we came into this world. This means we’re more playful in their presence. And more free to reveal our shadow sides. Our hatreds and deep fears.
There are a lot of us in the world suffering from a lack of true community now. In the white world in the U.S., many of us live in isolated bubbles because of our wealth or our long-ago-divided neighborhoods/towns/cities or our failing local economy and job loss or the deep fears and persistent assumptions and biases of our families, and for some of us it’s all of the above. I agree with you that our ancestors were amazing. Both of my grandmothers left their rural homes as children so that they could attend more school. One grandmother defied her own mother after she pulled her out of school because she wanted more help at home with all the younger children. At just 12, my grandmother snuck onto her father’s wagon as it left the farm yard, convinced him to take her hours away to a Catholic school and let her live there indefinitely, and then on the fly convinced a group of nuns and a priest to let her move into the school’s attic because all their student rooms were full. Just so she could keep learning. At 12 years old. That was back in the days when many in the U.S. didn’t count Irish immigrants as white people. I have ancestors who hid their accents and changed their names to get bank loans (this explains a lot about my family’s persistent belief in trying to just fit in). That grandmother became a teacher, then a farmer, then a mother, grandmother, great grandmother, and sustainable gardening and living guru. She died just two-weeks short of her 100th birthday. For decades she was considered nutty by many neighbors because she believed that sugar in American diets was our true enemy…
And.
The shadow side of what our ancestors did here, and still do here, is long. Very long. It’s a gaping wound that generations of people have been traumatized and that many of us have spent trying to heal by denying others’ truths, looking the other way, or by throwing Band-Aids at poorly understood problems from a safe, intellectually cold distance. This isn’t a conservative or a progressive issue. It’s an American issue. A human issue. We need to heal generational trauma and we can’t do it separately or only with people who look a lot like us. We’ve tried that. It doesn’t work.
And, we’ve made a lot of progress. In this country today, Nazis intent on spreading pain, terror, destruction, and violence across communities lose the respect of grown women and men, lose the respect of most of their peers, and, more and more, they lose their jobs. Hatred as a constant state of being isn’t sustainable, it eats away at us like a cancer, and life-loving humans won’t stand for it. We’ve already fought several wars about this (start by Googling U.S. Civil War or World War II). The fear-mongering, wall-building folks always lose eventually. Always. Because connecting to more of life–not walling yourself off from it–is the approach that actually heals and actually works. How do more casualties to a dying cause help anyone at all?
There are billions of better ways to vent your frustrations, pain, and anger. Connect to someone new, someone outside your bubble, and find another way.
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Friends, may we loudly and persistently demand BETTER of ourselves all the way up to the highest elected offices, until all the tiki bros hear our message, even while they’re golfing. Or tweeting.
Looking the other way doesn’t work anymore. Not that it ever did.
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We do not fear you, tiki bros. Frankly, we can’t anymore.
We (well, empaths like me anyway) are sorry for your pain. I’m sorry for all pain, because I can often feel others’ pain in my chest until I can’t breathe. And, I am one of billions of humans who won’t allow you to spread terror across this world until you burn it to the ground. Because that’s where unexamined, unchecked, stuck and festering hatred–the deliberate cutting yourself off from all life–ends. It burns everyone near it. We won’t build walls. We won’t allow you to spread fear to those we hold dear–which, hello, its 2017, means a whole lot of people of color, people in the LGBTQ+ community, people with disabilities, people of all ages, people with life-altering diseases, people in other countries, women, and some animals, plants, and trees who comfort us on the days when humanity’s pain is too much. We will play together. Dance together. Learn together. Laugh and weep. Together.
Those of us connected to all of life can’t fear you anymore. We can fear for our lives and our communities, sure, but we can’t fear you. Not anymore. You just look small and sad and highly unlikely to ever get laid again there locked inside a fading 1930s-era fear bubble of isolation with a bunch of other angry white dudes. Even with your guy in the white house. Your faces shine out from Twitter and Facebook in torch light looking like the saddest, most lonely and lost little boys in the world trying to find their way home having stolen their parents’ old party torches. You look like the little boys in Lord of the Flies with not a single playful spirit and true elder among you. The entire rest of the world does not want to be in that fading fear bubble with you.
We want you to come out here. Come out and play with life.
Come out here and truly be with us–learning, wandering, working, playing, struggling, eating, and laughing together. Don’t mistake the people knocking on your door, asking you to come outside to play, for torch-wielding villagers. We may be hurting. But the torch-wielding villagers are only in your mirror.
***
Friends, those of us connected to the wider world–those of us who love life as a result–must speak out. Let’s not let homegrown white terrorists create yet another new and ridiculous hate-elevating flag, maybe this time with a Fox News logo and a tiki torch on it, imagining themselves as the next ISIS (minus the fake Islam, and adding a fake Jesus, of course), and showing up to march in more towns. Let’s not let these guys be the face of white America. This is the face of unchecked arrogance and ignorance run amok. This is not me! Or is it? This is also the face of kind and open and listening and loving white people not calling their own family and friends on pure bullshit every time they hear it. Not being aware of each other’s pain, let alone helping each other out, when we’re at our most angry, vulnerable, or terrified. We used to be afraid to do so–trapped behind our own walls.
Then we saw the tiki bros and something clicked within us–at least, within this white woman. Wait. These guys? We were afraid of these guys. The farm boys and frat boys we grew up with? Those who needed a lot more kindness than they ever got at home? Those who hated themselves. What were we thinking fearing these guys?!
Let’s commit, Gen Xers and Millennials and all kick-ass Boomers not inclined to give up despite years of struggle. Let’s commit to connecting to more of life. To tapping into her full resources and growing and changing like healthy, living, life-loving beings. Its up to us. If you haven’t already, educate yourself about how to build community and how to approach hatred like this. The world is full of leaders and hard-won wisdom about how to do this, and you’ll make many new friends in the process. Start here if you’re wondering where to start: start here with ten ways to fight hate in your community. Or start here if you’re most curious about how to build a new or stronger community.
Let’s talk to friends and make agreements to support each other in having difficult conversations. I will not be afraid of difficult conversations–with family, neighbors, coworkers–with anyone who I could imagine showing up in Charlotte to cause terror and reopen generational trauma and wounds in communities of color. The love, listening, and willingness to learn and laugh at our core are protection enough for humanity as a whole.
I’m going to speak up more. Every time I feel strong enough to do so, which will be more often, not less so, in the future. My close-knit diverse community of lovely humans, yoga classes and gym membership, and tree advisors will see to that. I’ve dedicated myself to learning and to doing what it takes to become strong enough so that I can speak out against bullshit bigotry and trapped/stuck/spinning-in-our-own-hatred every single time.
We are stronger than we know.
Let’s take back what it means to be human, and what it means to be white (if that’s a label you carry), from the utterly ridiculous, embarrassing, and horrifying Tiki Bros of Willful Ignorance. Because the world doesn’t need another terrorist organization. The world doesn’t have to burn to bring forth massive change–these are the illusions of young people who cannot find truly playful and strong elders to lean on when they need to lean.
Playful elders live a wider truth: the world herself heals us when we set our torches down.