My Maladjusted Journey
In the midst of a tough 2020, I was talking to my therapist and he mentioned that writing seemed to be a good outlet for me. So, naturally it took me several months to start doing it. I started to write short thoughts on the character limited LinkedIn space about my thoughts and journey on the relationship with white supremacy characteristics, the workplace, and being a cis black heterosexual male in America. My goal is to detoxify and deprogram myself from the impact of learning and facing these characteristics. I also want to seek refuge from racial battle fatigue.
In thinking about this journey, I started to think about MLK and his speeches about being maladjusted. “But I want to leave this evening saying to you that there are some things in our social system that I’m proud to be maladjusted to, and I call upon you to be maladjusted to. I never intend to adjust myself to the viciousness of lynch mobs; I never intend to become adjusted to the evils of segregation and discrimination; I never intend to become adjusted to the tragic inequalities of the economic system which will take necessity from the masses to give luxury to the classes; I never intend to become adjusted to the insanity’s of militarism, the self-defeating method of physical violence. There are some things that I never intend to become adjusted to, and I call upon you to continue to be maladjusted.” — MLK
If I’m going to be maladjusted then I feel compelled to be real about what lessons I learned growing up and still act upon today that are barriers to being maladjusted. That means looking deeply at the characteristics of white supremacy and reconciling with the internalized impact of it as well as the ways it’s been used as a weapon to silence and downplay my lived experience. To do this work I organized a Reflection to Action guide.
This guide was written to support people in moving through the process of building self-awareness and forming a plan to build antiracist habits that minimize the occurrences of employing these characteristics. I also wrote this as a way to take the burden off of myself to answer and teach people about my life experiences. Now, when people ask me certain questions I point them to this resource and ask them to do some work on this to discover their answer and way forward. I’ve shared this with the good people at DismatlingRacism.org and got their blessing. This is a work in progress, so if you have feedback let me know.
One of the purposes of listing characteristics of white supremacy culture is to point out how organizations, which unconsciously use these characteristics as their norms and standards, make it difficult, if not impossible, to open the door to other cultural norms and standards. As a result, many of our organizations, while saying we want to be multicultural, really only allow other people and cultures to come in if they adapt or conform to already existing cultural norms. Being able to identify and name the cultural norms and standards you want is a first step to making room for a truly multicultural organization.
Over this journey, I will explore my answers to the reflection guide and other thoughts around each white supremacy characteristic.
