An Invitation to Heal: Racism in America
Seneca Wills was 7 years old when he remembers experiencing an overwhelming sense. It was summertime and he had just finished a game of basketball before lying on his back to gaze up at the sky.
A sensation hit him that would stick with him for the rest of his life.
“I saw the clouds,” Wills says. “And, it dawned on me just how small I was as a human and just how big this thing (we call Earth) was, and it scared me. I started asking questions, and after that, was never really the same.”
Wills grew up in various areas of Dallas - Pleasant Grove, Cedar Hill and Oak Cliff. At 16, he began dabbling in drugs. Someone older from his community recognized his intellect and recruited him away from street-related crimes into the world of white-collar crime.
“I was getting into a lot of fights,” Wills says. “This guy was like Hey Man, you’re too smart to be doing what you are doing. I’ll get you off of the street and show you how to make some real money. At 17, I had made $1,500 in a week – I looked at that money and thought I’m never going to be broke again – I was hooked.”
When he was 19, Wills went to federal prison for three years. The question of why are we here always felt imminent, he says. He often felt called to a larger purpose, outside of himself.
Time
After three years, he was released from prison and working at a warehouse moving boxes. It wasn’t long until his old life came calling.
“It was just like the movies,” Wills says. “I was in this dead-end job, and old friends started coming around with nice cars and money, and I got caught up in it again.”
Wills went back to federal prison for bank fraud - this time for nine years, spending a total of 12 years of his life incarcerated. He’s been out of prison now for two years. He is 38.
Wills is a Black man living in America.
It was the morning of the 2021 presidential inauguration when Wills and I connected, and as the pandemic wears on, restricted to talking via ZOOM, I had emailed him a few weeks prior asking for some time to visit. I had met Wills, albeit virtually, earlier in the year during Retreat House Spirituality Center’s Conversation on Racism series, Wills many times the only non-white person on the call.
As I began to explore racial healing, it finally dawned on me - Wills might be a good place to start.
The synchronicity of a white woman and a Black man talking on this particular morning - a morning where much of our country was celebrating the promise of a white man and a Black woman who have named racial equity as part of the mission of their administration - wasn’t something I could ignore.
Systems
I held back mentioning too much of the connection I felt between this day and our conversation. I was embarrassed a little. In my mind, it seemed like a very “white” thing to think - I’m doing such a good thing by talking to a Black man today, hearing more of his story.
And then, I realized that this was sad. A sort of damned if you do, damned if you don’t feeling entered into my thoughts, realizing how this kind of thinking can keep us frozen, unwilling and scared to take any action.
How are we, all of us, Black, white, brown, supposed to move forward if we’re always walking on egg shells afraid of saying the wrong thing?
Wills and I talked about it.
During his prison sentence, he describes a time when he invited various groups of men to participate in an exercise outside on the basketball court. In jail, people are segmented and segregated even more so than the outside world. Sticking with one’s race becomes a form of survival - associating only with those who look like and potentially think the same, hoping this might offer some protection. A fear of the other is an unspoken code of conduct. Stay with those who look and think like you.
How often do we think or say I do not trust the other, are they safe? Will they hurt me? Will opening up to them lessen my grip on my own, trusted and comfortable reality? Do we realize when we do this, or is it sub-conscience, maybe both?
In 2016, Micah Johnson ambushed and fired upon a group of police officers in Dallas, killing five officers and injuring nine others. Two civilians were also wounded. Johnson was an Army Reserve Afghan War veteran and was angry over police shootings of black men. Soon after this event, Wills says he felt inspired to open up some conversation around the topic of racism.
Wills invited fellow prisoners to meet on the basketball court. He says he has never identified as one way or another. Not all the way conservative, or completely liberal. He is comfortable somewhere in the middle, seeing both sides of most everything. I would call Wills a contemplative, and his way of being and thinking seemed to create a sense of safety that day on the court as both Black and white guys came out to talk. They trusted him. I wonder. What are some ways I might create safe environments?
“I asked all of the white guys to write down on a piece of paper in what ways do you feel Blacks are not heard? What are the challenges you think they face?,” Wills says. “And then I asked the Black guys to go through the same exercise. Then we came back together and shared our answers.”
We All Hurt
Wills says he notices that both “sides” are not typically invited to express their experiences, emotions and frustrations. Meaning, mostly, folks are just asking Black people - how are you hurting? Where and how have you been overlooked? He felt called, in prison, to ask whites as well as Hispanics and Blacks - how they were holding up. What was their experience like?
“The white middle-aged American man is the most censored voice in America right now,” Wills shares.
He noticed in prison and is still noticing that white people are labeled as racist many times just for being white - one of the reasons he organized the conversation on the basketball court. He wanted to give everyone a chance to talk. He also sees and hears about the social struggle as well pain and historical oppression faced by Black people. Wills has a deep desire for us to come together, to listen, to heal. And as he says, talk “human to human.”
This resonated with me.
I’ve talked to male friends and family members who feel they’re opinions and experiences aren’t valued. I think about our nation’s history of oppression - white men at the helm of this oppression - marginalizing and controlling Native Americans, Blacks, Hispanics, and other minority groups including women. While much of this oppression happened in this past, is it up to white men living in America to make amends, to heal these generational wounds?
A conversation I had with my dad comes flooding back to me.
I was eating dinner with my parents this past fall, all tired from quarantine and endless news cycles of bad. For some reason I brought up the election. Part of me wanted to take back my unsolicited conversation topic, but I also think a part of me wanted to get it out - and the dinner table, contrary to what I had always been taught (don’t talk about politics and religion over meals) - seemed like the time and place to do so. Why not? It was 2020.
“I just can’t vote for him,” I shared.
By him, I meant Donald Trump. I’ve always said I wasn’t political, but that started to seem like a cop out. As a spiritual director, a healer, someone who is taught to listen, to create space for Holy connection, I started to feel a different level of social responsibility - to better understand those who are marginalized and oppressed, so I guess you can say I started to become a little more political - at least enough so to bring it up over dinner.
“I am concerned with equality and equity for women, Black people, people with disabilities, and the idea of systemic racism is so important to me. I want someone in office who talks about that, who recognizes it as a priority.”
This did not go over so well.
“I worked for everything I have!” his voice raised. “Nobody gave me anything!”
Tears started to well up in my eyes. Tears because I felt the divide between me and my dad. I love my dad deeply. He’s a good, generous, honest and loving man. The heat in my chest rose up. Angry that he wasn’t listening to what I was saying and also angry at how hard he had had to work throughout his life. He had been working since he was 14, putting himself through undergrad and law school by working three jobs and at 68 is still working towards retirement.
“And, do you think the systems have been set up for me?” Dad asked. Wills’ observation rang true here - I could sense that my dad felt his voice was stifled. He felt hurt.
I thought - well, yes, kind of. As a woman who had spent 17 years working in organizations that were run by white men, a heaviness came into my limbs as I recalled times I was talked over in boardrooms, told I looked nice today and also asked to stay late and work because the other team members had children.
While I enjoyed and reaped the benefits of an upper middle class upbringing - I also know what it is to be marginalized. When working hard and showing up and doing the right thing isn’t enough to get your voice heard, to keep you safe. I had learned by experience that many systems weren’t set up for a single woman to easily work and live. It was exhausting. Is this how Black people feel?
They Light Up
What started on the basketball court for Wills, that day in prison, was him basically saying to all of the races represented - I see you.
“I started to notice a trend,” Wills says. “And it started with that exercise on the court in prison. Now, I talk to a lot of white men, and whenever I start the conversation with telling them that I get that they are misunderstood many times, they completely light up.”
My dad and I didn’t have the “I see you” talk that night during our initial conversation, but a few days later we did. I told him that I recognized his experience, and he said he recognized mine. The feeling of discomfort at the dinner table that first night was visceral. I literally felt anger in different areas of my body - the tears in my eyes, the heat in my chest and arms, and I could see that Dad had felt something similar.
This is what Resma Menakem, psychologist, healer and author of My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies calls reacting from our lizard brain. This is the part of the brain that causes us to freeze, flee or fight. In other words, it is primal and many times activated from a wounded place - an unhealed trauma.
What part of our stories did Dad I need to tend to? Why were we both so angry that night? What was causing two people who loved one another to sit on the edge of their seats, voices raised? Ready to fight.
In his book, Menakem shows us that recent studies and discoveries increasingly point out that we heal primarily through our bodies, not just through our rational brain.
“We can all create more room, and more opportunities for growth, in our nervous systems,” according to Menakem. “But we do this primarily through what our bodies experience and do - not through what we think or realize or cognitively figure out.”
That makes me racist?
Systemic racism has become a hot topic. Some use the term with fervor. Others cringe at the sight or sound of it. I’ve heard both Blacks and whites use it. Some believe it’s real and others believe it’s a political ploy. I’m still learning to understand the meaning.
A Black man has managed our families finances for more than 25 years. My dad hired him for his honesty, integrity, his faith. I have been a patient of a black ophthalmologist for more than ten years. I have Black friends. I don’t really think about race, or at least I didn’t until recently. Maybe not thinking about it is part of the problem. Maybe I am part of the problem.
According to a recent USA Today article, systemic racism describes systems and structures that have procedures or processes that disadvantage African Americans. Wikipedia defines the term as “the formalization of a set of institutional, historical, cultural and interpersonal practices within a society that more often than not puts one social or ethnic group in a better position to succeed, and at the same time disadvantages other groups in a consistent and constant manner that disparities develop between the groups over a period of time.”
I’ve started to wonder if my life has been easier because I’m white. I probably don’t even know how the systems have benefitted me.
Does that make me racist?
Part of history
“We live in a great country,” Will says. “But, folks forget the reality that America was partially founded on hypocrisy. All men were not created or treated as equal. The men who wrote that and said that owned slaves.”
This is a hard reality to face. As a white person who isn’t overtly or even consciously racist, am I responsible for dismantling systemic racism? What do I need to heal? Within my community, my family, myself?
Just this past year, I looked at myself and my generational history in a new way. I heard my grandparents use derogatory language towards Blacks - even though they befriended those of color. It was just a word, and my grandparents were good people. Is it up to me to heal this part of my history?
Menakem calls this “Body to Body” and “Generation to Generation” trauma and reminds us to not know what happened before we were born is remain forever a child. As someone who is deeply connected to my ancestors, this resonates with me, and I’m doing the body healing work recommended by Menakem in his book.
What traumatic events directly affected your mother? Your father? What traumatic events affected your grandparents? These are just some of the questions Menakem asks in the somatic practice sessions of his book.
I am also trying to at least be aware of ways in which I’ve benefitted from being white. I’m trying as a friend recently shared to be a good ancestor.
This is what was so painful for my dad. He at first thought my acknowledging the need for racial equity meant I didn’t notice all the ways he had worked for the good of others including himself and our family, his community, people of all colors. This simply wasn’t the case. I was asking him, as I’ve been asking myself, to notice those parts within himself that might have had an easier time getting a college education, a job, becoming respected in his field and profession because he is a white male - the fact that he has never been pulled over for the color of his skin.
That visceral night at the dinner table, Dad and I accessed places of trauma within ourselves. Places that hadn’t been heard or listened to. His history of work, my history of oppression as a woman. And, while we eventually “heard” one another, it hurt to get there. This process of working through these moments is what Menakem defines as clean pain - where we choose integrity over fear and standing in that fear with integrity and moving towards the unknown. The alternative path is responding from dirty pain. Dirty pain is when we respond to fear and conflict from our most wounded parts, which creates more pain, both for ourselves and for other people.
Wills describes a time in prison where he was feeling lost. Emotionally, spiritually, it was all too much. He describes going into his cell, putting a towel over the bars to the outside and looking in the mirror.
“You have to make a change,” he remembers. In this moment, his healing process began - his feelings toward his history, other races and himself began.
And Wills reminds me:
“Let’s all try to look inward at what part we can play to bring us closer as humans.” Amen.
Retreat House is working on a three-part series exploring systemic racism. The second piece in this series will highlight more specifics on Wills’ story, and the final piece will explore conversation between Wills and Turner as, together, they explore and talk about the complexity, pain and nuances of generational and systemic racism.
Beginning, April 8 from 7 - 8:30 p.m. VIA ZOOM, Retreat House Spirituality Center will launch a 24 week study and somatic practice around My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Together, this cohort will discuss the themes and exercises contained within the book. The idea of generational and personal trauma will all be considered and held in safety through the practices outlined in My Grandmother’s Hands.
Seneca Wills is currently living in Dallas and works as a personal trainer and yoga teacher in Deep Ellum. He is also the co-founder of Social Medialess, a movement encouraging society to spend time away from social media. To learn more or get involved, email Seneca.
An Invitation to Heal: Racism in America was written by Emily Turner, a writer and trained spiritual spiritual director. She would love to hear from you.