Examining Fragility

As a counterpoint to Eleanor Porter’s Pollyanna published in 1912, which I wrote about earlier this week, there is Margery William’s The Velveteen Rabbit, published in 1922. In the decade between the publication of these two popular children’s books, World War I happened. It’s not hard to imagine that the tenor of the world in the intervening years between the two books influenced the core message of The Velveteen Rabbit—also known as “How Toys Become Real.”

The most famous passage takes place in the nursery—a conversation between two toys: the title character and the skin horse:

…

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

““It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.

…

“It doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.” This line has been humming in my mind in recent weeks as I’ve spent more time examining my white fragility, which is defined as: “A state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves.”

Fragile is not a word I’ve previously identified with. In my self concept I am strong, not fragile. I can run marathons and carry large backpacks over high mountains. But this isn’t about physicality. This is about the inner landscape of my human experience. And looking here I am starting to see my own fragility.

Across the board, on all topics, I am averse to criticism. I feel intense shame if I am “called out” for something I’ve done that is hurtful. A word I do identify with is: sensitivity. I am a feeler. Of all the feelings. On very high volume and saturation. But as the discussion on racism continues, and I keep trying to look a little deeper, there is a distinction between fragility and sensitivity. Not all white people may identify as sensitive, but white Americans who have been soaking in the bath of white privilege for centuries, and who haven’t done any unpacking of their white experience likely have white fragility. My aversion to getting feedback that I need to hear is a fragility problem, not a sensitivity problem, ultimately.

In her LongReads article, “Whiteness on the Couch,” clinical psychologist Natasha Stovall, “looks at the vast spectrum of white people problems, and why we never talk about them in therapy.”

Sometimes you read or hear something that pins you to the wall. This sentence was one of those for me:

“Yet the field of psychology, so intimately involved in all matters of the white heart, is nowhere to be found. Despite the outsize drama that whiteness brings to the public scene, it is still not much more than a cognitive wisp in most white Americans’ daily brainscape, including those of most, but not all, white therapists.”

Also from the article:

“In the 1960s, a group of black psychiatrists petitioned the American Psychiatric Association to add “extreme bigotry” to the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, citing the frenzied, often homicidal violence against civil rights activists. The APA rejected the petition, making the claim that “extreme” prejudice was so normative among American whites that it was more of a cultural phenomenon than an individual pathology. (An interesting piece of intellectual jiujitsu — who makes up a culture if not individuals?) Harvard professor and psychiatrist Alvin Poussaint has suggested that more intense strains of racist belief should be classified as a psychosis, specifically a subtype of Delusional Disorder. He described his patients who “projected their own unacceptable behavior and fears onto ethnic minorities, scapegoating them for society’s problems.” Poussaint interpreted this scapegoating as a symptom of deeper psychological dysfunction that presents a danger to the patient and those around them. He found psychotherapy to be an effective treatment: “When these patients became more aware of their own problems, they grew less paranoid — and less prejudiced.” Poussaint has called for guidelines to help mental health providers recognize “delusional racism.” Otherwise, Poussant warned, “delusional racists will continue to fall through the cracks of the mental health system, and we can expect more of them to explode.”

The connection between fragility and privilege is clear. The world, ultimately is a scary place for “people who have to be carefully kept.” And for those who have had the privilege of being “carefully kept” by a society that has institutionally favored their identity, there is intense fear about loss of privilege and giving up the “goodies.” (And of course the world is even scarier for those who have not been privileged, and whose fears come to pass with regularity). But there are no guarantees and there is no ultimate security blanket in life, even if you have the resources to build a fortress with high walls and a big moat. Each human life will include suffering. Ultimately, it is better to become less fragile and more real, to be able to survive the vicissitudes of the human experience no matter who you are.

There is so much fear from white people around giving up privilege. Fear even from white people, who care about social justice. But Stovall’s article asks white people to consider in fact what gains there might be from giving up privilege.

Stovall writes:

“Therapists rarely think to question the role of racial identity in their white patient’s lives, but Benjamin Franklin noted white people problems back during the wars between indigenous tribes and settler Europeans. He puzzled that freed prisoners of war, Native and European, generally chose indigenous life over settler ‘civilization.’ He diagnosed a problem in European culture, in whiteness: ‘With us are infinite Artificial wants,’ he wrote.”

“With us are infinite Artificial wants.” (capitalization his)

I had a friend say to me a short time ago that I am generally circling around the same question in my blog: my desire to live all the lives, my “grass is always greener” pathology. And it’s true. And as I’ve noted, it is a terribly privledged lament. I’ve started to wonder if I can trace the origin of this difficulty of staying content, in what is actually an incredibly good life, back to an excess in privilege. And here, the memorable lyrics to “Food, glorious food,” a song in the musical Oliver, sung by the workhouse boys: “Rich gentlemen have it boys, indigestion…”

To be clear, not all white people experience the same level of privilege—not even close. Economic disparity, and your own individual constellation of privileged or disparaged identities (including race and sexual orientation and body size and physical capacity and mental acuity and relationship status and religious orientation…on and on). All of those flavors of privilege and disadvantage are important to examine. But for today, I am spending time with white privilege and the attending white fragility.

And I am finding myself wanting to become more real. More resilient. Less fragile. Less prone to indigestion and to the cognitive dissonance that arises from wanting to be good, and knowing that in some particular, and significant ways, I am not. And knowing that this work can be of benefit to the world, and to my own life.

The question that necessarily follows is HOW?

Here Stovall quotes, psychoanalyst Melanie Suchet: “The dismantling of white authority is not a smooth process. There is no linear absolution, (for whites) the colonizer within can never be shed, only disrupted again and again.”

Stovall quips, “like any therapeutic process, the healing of whiteness involves significant ‘discomfort,’ — mental health’s favorite euphemism for emotional agony.” And she suggests mindfulness as part of the path. A way of attuning to the habits of our mind, of pausing long enough, to not walk down the same road again. And perhaps a twelve step programs of sorts focused on whiteness, where white people can muddle their way through without adding more emotional labor to the BIPOC community. And stopping the racist behaviors—first, and foremost—even if it remains a life’s continual work to develop new channels in minds and hearts.