A recurring complaint many white folks share with me is that they’re tired of people playing the victim card.
“I get it. There’s racism,” they say. “But I don’t think that should be an excuse.”
This oft-repeated complaint shows an utter lack of empathy and compassion given how much racism so many people endure daily. Yes, daily. Dare I say most of us wouldn’t feel too great if we had to confront such challenges.
So while I don’t think many of them “get it” when it comes to racism, nor do I think the deep impact of systemic racism should ever get a free pass, I do agree with the complainers on one point.
Living life in a victim mentality is not healthy.
In my Jewish faith, this week we observe a holiday the prophet Moses first celebrated called Yom Kippur.
Yom Kippur is a day of atonement. A day to make amends with and apologize to our fellow human beings. A day to make amends with God. A time to reflect, change and grow.
Jews worldwide fast for 25 hours on this solemn day without so much as a drop of water so they can truly focus on repair of their souls rather than focus on the body’s joy and desires, although pizza definitely crosses my mind a few times during the day.
The holiday begins at nightfall this Tuesday with a communal singing of a 1,300-year-old prayer called All Vows, written in Aramaic, that is essentially a cancellation of promises made and debts incurred throughout the previous year.
Hold on a second.
Does this mean I can break the promises I’ve made to others? Am I free from my debts? Sounds like a great holiday.
Not so fast.
We still need to keep our promises. The prayer isn’t about wiping away our obligations to others.
What it’s really about is canceling some of the so-called vows and “promises” we made to ourselves.
So many of us, Black and white, effectively “promise” ourselves,“I can’t do this,” or “there are too many stumbling blocks,” or “I’m destined for failure,” or even “my life is a mess.”
I can’t I can’t I can’t.
We know the refrain.
People who suffer from the pains of pervasive and systemic racism might sometimes even tell themselves, “I can’t possibly endure more of this bullshit” or “why do I even try anymore?”
My friend Rick has been asked by cops to step out of his vehicle for speeding no less than a dozen times in the last ten years. I have twice as many tickets and I can reach into my glove box without fear. Rick’s a private lending banker by the way.
I’ve met so many great people in the Black community like Rick who’ve shared with me their justified exhaustion with racism and the snail’s pace of real change. And the negative feelings, even some people develop about themselves, that result from that exhaustion.
Still, what this ancient Aramaic prayer is nullifying are these self-imposed limitations and promises we make to ourselves about what we can’t do. The cancellation of vows is there to cancel negative thoughts about ourselves. To open our minds to a world of unlimited possibilities.
My white friends who complain about victimhood need to know, though, it’s not about deciding between fighting racism and unjust, structurally bankrupt systems on the one hand and advocating for mental freedom on the other.
We can and must do both.
President Obama regularly talked about the need to take personal responsibility and provide others the help necessary to change society. It was never either or.
Let’s indeed take a renewed look at ourselves to cancel our self-imposed mental limitations, regardless of who or what caused them, and at the same time quadruple our efforts to undo the systems that significantly contribute to those negative feelings.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: iS