[Hi! You are receiving this email because you signed up for my (Kerry Makin-Byrd’s) newsletter. This is a little essay but my hope is to continue a two-way conversation. Please reply with feedback, requests, or complaints. All welcome. -Kerry]

Dear White woman who asked Indigenous authors to explain white feminism,

We are at an author talk celebrating two Māori authors. You are a White woman who steps up to ask the first question, beginning with your pepeha (Māori introduction including your connections to people and places). I was impressed by your te reo, distracted by wriggling guilt about how much I still have to learn.

But after many minutes of talking, your question (statement?) boiled down to this. “It hurt my feelings when you called out white feminism as racist, wrong, and exclusionary. Please address this.”

These authors responded briefly. They didn’t enable or reinforce. This was their time, their space, their venue for celebration. It was not the time or the place for them to provide education to entitled white women.

Dear white woman, how did you feel as they offered a clipped answer? I don’t know how you felt. But I have a humble guess based on how I would have felt if it had been me. (This has been me in the past and will be me in the future, asking something out of ignorance mixed with well-meaning and sprinkled with em-powered overpowered condescension).

I would have felt miserable, embarrassed, confused…like I wanted to melt into the ground. I would have felt lost and at a loss, as I want dearly to make the world better, to evolve from my racist shell and yet were given such clear feedback that my question was unwelcome and (unknowing to me) wrong.

Guilt and shame are useful emotions that serve a function

Sio maybe you felt guilt and shame. Let’s not shy away from those emotions. They are useful and powerful.

Two things are true*: 

• In that moment you were doing what you knew and thought of as your best 
• and we as white women can do better, MUST do better.

Guilt and shame serve functions, they give us feedback about what we care about and what behaviors aren’t working to get us closer to what we care about (ahem, asking for education during an author event instead of doing it ourselves).

We can use these emotions to fuel continued growth

(Brief aside, broadly I think we’ll get a lot more traction long term by using hope, inspiration, compassion, and connection as our fuels for continued growth. *and* realistically guilt, shame, embarrassment, and sadness will come up as we keep trying and getting it wrong and iterating again. So let’s use those little emotion caffeine shots as we can.)

In those moments of guilt and shame it is tempting to skirt responsibility, to blame the presenters, to blame confusion or unclear wording. Instead, let’s challenge ourselves to dig deeper and learn more.

Some things that may be useful in our continued growth:

• Practice self compassion (both tender and fierce) so you don’t collapse into a stuck place of shame, blame, and unhelpful defensiveness; here’s my favorite brief intro https://self-compassion.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/KN_SYW_Fierce-map.pdf
• Google intersectional feminism and learn more (https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2020/6/explainer-intersectional-feminism-what-it-means-and-why-it-matters)
• Learn more about how white feminism has enabled and reinforced racism (a local example https://thespinoff.co.nz/atea/19-09-2018/lets-not-forget-that-maori-women-had-the-vote-long-before-europeans-arrived) so we can learn from our past and make different mistakes instead of the same ones (then keep learning and growing!)

Finally, my first teachers (personally) on this journey have been non-white artists. I feel dumb and scared a good bit of the time and I want to use my privilege for good. 

Reading Cane River https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/5167  and The Bluest Eye https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11337.The_Bluest_Eye (among many others) builds my capacity for perspective taking; it allows me briefly to see things differently than I experience them in this body with this personalized life history. There is a special power in momentarily experiencing the irking burn of white women’s condescension though the eyes of a nonwhite narrator. 

This practice builds my courage to keep going, to step out of my own privileged personal ease, and keep working to grow and learn. Here’s to hard work, doing better, and fighting systematic oppression, especially what we have internalized and perpetuate.

Warmly, Kerry

*Ngā mihi nui (thank you with gratitude) to the people who keep creating art:

Emma Espiner

Anahera Gildea > pointing you all to Pākehā talking 'the reo'

Becky Kennedy

Toni Morrison

Lalita Tademy

Let’s hangout

Fun Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts events coming soon:

Soweto Gospel Choir

North of 40: Mid-life Breakthrough with , Emily Perkins, , hosted by Stacey Morrison

Glorious in her skin: Sandra Ciscneros in conversation with Tayi Tibble

When ACT Isn’t Simple: An ACT in Practice Workshop with Dr Kerry Makin-Byrd, May 2024