"The most unnerving thing about rich guys who only hang out with other rich guys is that they often really honestly cannot imagine that their first instinct about something might be wrong." (Science communicator / entrepreneur / podcaster / everything Hank Green)
I’ve mentioned the American Sign Language class I took in my small church’s basement one summer during college. The teacher was Robin, the church’s gentle ASL interpreter; the class was a motley group of teenagers, college students, and middle-aged adults. By the second week, all of us young people noticed an alarming trend among our parents and the other grown-ups. In small-group practice, when someone corrected their grammar, they muttered, “well, Robin didn’t teach us that.” (Narrator: She had.) When an adult answered a question confidently but wrongly in the large group and was gently redirected, they got pink-faced and round-shouldered. After class, they complained bitterly about the teaching—which, to my mind, was clear and well-paced. All of us full-time students, pretty accustomed to making dumb mistakes in front of classmates and teachers, were like
OK. Now, as a middle-aged woman (!!!), I have more understanding and compassion: my neurons don’t fire as fast as they once did, and to try to pick up a new language in the presence of perky, quick-thinking teenagers would make me…very irritable. But at the time, I was just worried. These adults were all capable and smart, leaders in their homes and workplaces. Why were they so brittle as learners?!
Humility made actionable
Last week I wrote about unboxing and consenting to use our superpowers, even if their origins are sticky, even though they’re potentially destructive, because we need all hands on deck.
This week: a swing in the opposite direction; a corrective; a “yes, and/but.”
I recently told a new friend, an experienced anthropologist and Christian missiologist, about my dream for (majority white, majority ex-evangelical) women to get off the bench and confidently “use our dubious superpowers” in the struggle for justice. He, diplomatically but firmly, responded that white do-gooders aren’t usually, um, in danger of not enough confidence in social-justice endeavors—that, in his experience, one of the most important reminders for us is (not his words) “shut up, stop trying to be the boss, learn, and help.”
Right. Yes. Of course.
The “superpowers principle” is my attempt to redeem some dicey mental habits. It’s not a blank check to charge into the social justice struggle and unleash my precious LEADERSHIP and ORGANIZATION and MORAL CLARITY with wild abandon and an assumption of good intentions.
The thing is, reminding myself/us to “be humble” in our social-justice endeavors…just doesn’t feel actionable. It’s squishy. Of course I know I shouldn’t sally into a room and take over, even if I am—and of course I say this with Christlike humility!—the most adorably organized person there. (Y’all know that feeling; tell me you know that feeling. The adults in my ASL class knew that feeling!) And since Table living requires following the leadership of people who’ve traditionally been marginalized, I truly am trying to listen, to learn, to be a worker bee instead of expecting to be crowned the queen.
So, instead of “be humble,” the principle I see as a great balance for use those superpowers is: consent to learn in public. As I’ve mentioned before, I learned this phrase from the Native scholar Adrienne Keene.
As a Native person in a predominantly white grad school, Keene found herself expected but unprepared to “have perfectly formulated, well-reasoned, non-emotional responses to…misrepresentations and instances of racism.” Her blog, Native Appropriations, was a place to gather and develop her and others’ thoughts. “Consenting to learn in public,” she writes, “has meant a lot of growth, and a lot of mistakes. But I found my voice and in the process learned how to apologize the right way, how to admit I was wrong, and how to move forward without feeling like a total failure…I became braver.”
It’s what the adults in my ASL class needed. It’s what Hank Green’s “rich guys” need. It’s what I absolutely need when I’m out in the world, doing Table work (or writing about it).
It means keeping a learner’s posture; not assuming my first instincts about how to improve this!!! are right or good.
It means genuinely listening to other people before talking, and trying not to edit while they’re talking.
It means: when I say something dumb or my superpowers’ shadow sides show up and out, and someone calls me on it, refusing to quit or shut down. It means apologizing, learning how to do it better, and then practicing doing it better, just like I would as a student in a language class.
As Adrienne Keene says of consenting to learn in public: “It’s probably utopic, definitely not easy, and it hurts my feelings a lot of the time.” Yep. Red-faced and round-shouldered—but continuing to show up, committing to lifelong learning.
How about you? How does this hit you? Do you have specific memories of using your superpowers for ill in a social-justice (or other service) environment, being corrected, and Learning in Public, either gracefully or not? (I’ll start: my penchant for BULLET POINTS and DEFINING NEXT ACTIONS has definite bright sides! But I’ve needed multiple public reminders to let other people say their piece, please, before trying to whip everyone into a to-do list. On one occasion, another group member texted me: “it sounds like you just want to be in charge of this effort. Are you trying to take over?” Um, oops. Pink face. Round shoulders. Heart racing, stomach dropping. The good news is that I’m still alive to talk about it.)
I think the next action (hahaHA) here is: get back into student mode.
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