…And how identifying as a good person isn’t enough
I am the neurodivergent parent of a neurodivergent child, but before ableism became the target of my ire, I was an outspoken and active intersectional feminist. I spend a lot of time writing and talking and coaching about the white supremacist patriarchy and how it hurts us all, but it’s mostly been from the perspective of a cisgender white woman. I try to speak to other women like me to help them see how they’re impacted by the system, and how they can empower themselves and others to use their privilege to make things better. But I’m not an expert in anything related to gender and dismantling systems other than my own experience. I’m an eternal novice, and there’s nothing perfect about that.
My imperfection became abundantly clear when I started advocating for my child. While I am an expert in being his mom, I don’t really know about his experience. I know what I observe and what he tells me, but I’ll never understand how everything affects him. I’ll never always get it right. And it’s the knowing that I’ll be constantly learning, that I’ll never become perfect at understanding his experience, that makes me a better ally. Because when someone else messes up and I see it and redirect them, I know they’re just like me - imperfect. Then I can use compassion, not just empathy, to bring change to light.
My son recently came home with a school assignment that made him feel like, once again, his teachers were just going to pretend he and his fellow neurodivergent classmates did not exist. The matter of factness of his daily reality was heartbreaking. And I knew that in order to change that reality, I was going to have to say something. To draw attention. To gather the facts and present them in a way that would be received with open minds. I had to assume the best of the people doing harm, and put my imperfect self in their shoes. My biggest challenge was that the administrators believed the teachers to be very good people.
I’ve been the problematic well-meaning white lady enough times to know the well-known “very good people” are often the biggest barriers to progress. When someone’s whole persona is based on being really nice, they’re less likely to call someone else out for fear of making them feel bad. They also create a barrier to being called out themselves as people wonder, “How could that person be perpetuating oppression when they’re so nice?” These same people are often self-proclaimed perfectionists, with a sort of pride in getting things exactly right. But you can’t be perfect and be a good ally, because being a good ally requires admitting you’ll never get it exactly right.
When I reached out to the school about the work my child felt harmed by, I did as much research as I could. I imagined how the assignment was envisioned and why no one thought through its potential impact. I thought of how I feel when I get it wrong with my son, how he corrects me with the purest logic and most casual compassion, and aimed to channel that into my response. Here’s this child giving us the gift of his knowing, I tried to express, let’s all listen to him and learn because we all have so much we don’t know.
I knew my email would make their pulses race and their stomachs drop. That they’d feel guilt or shame or annoyance at being shown this big mistake pointed out for them by a child, through his mother. I knew I could be the pain in the ass parent. I could be opening up a can of worms, or putting a target on my kid’s back. They might try to fight me on it. There could be something I was missing or really wrong about. His “very good people” teachers could feel very bad during a time when teaching’s extra hard. I sent it anyway.
I get better every time I learn I did something wrong and am treated compassionately as I learn, even when the lesson involves cold, hard truth about the harm I caused. I also made a mistake yesterday, and I’ll probably make one tomorrow. But today, my kid gets to feel whatever he feels about the situation without needing to fix it himself because I chose the discomfort of my own imperfection to speak up on his behalf, and even more so on behalf of all the kids who won’t tell their adults how they feel. I chose the mess.
As an emotional intelligence coach, I regularly tell people that empathy is a feeling or experience, not an action. You can have empathy and do nothing at all, or maybe wring your hands, or talk about what a shame a hard thing is, without making anything better. There are many very good, empathic people who are not good allies because they don’t want to cause a fuss. But what we tolerate, we perpetuate. To be really good, we have to be okay with looking bad while the people who are harmed get to feel whatever they feel about the situation without also having to fix it themselves.