Unlearning White Supremacy: A Spirituality of Racial Liberation with Alex Mikulich ’84

Alex Mikulich, Class of ‘84, was our guest presenter. He shared his thoughts and reflections from his soon to be released book Unlearning White Supremacy: A Spirituality for Racial Liberation.

• Discussed Thomas Merton’s work “Seeds of Destruction.” There are three seeds that prevent whites from being truly anti-racist:

  • Illusion of white superiority and innocence

  • Illusion of self-sufficiency and prioritizing profits over people

  • White fears and projections which result in a false sense of self, false sense of others and a false sense of reality

• Merton’s key point: “People who believe they are white must cross over to take sides with and for Black people in America.”

• Crossing Over to Take Sides

  • This phrase purposefully evokes images and thoughts of:

    • Israel’s liberation from Egypt

    • The Good Samaritan crossing Jericho Road to care for the man beaten to die (Luke 10: 25-37)

    • Dr. King – transforming the Jericho Road

  • Dionne Brand, “A Map to the Door of No Return”

    • In Benin there is a monument signifying the point of departure where captured Africans were loaded onto ships to be sold away. This was a one-way trip.

    • “What interests me primarily is probing the Door of No Return as consciousness. The door casts a haunting spell on personal and collective consciousness in the Diaspora. Black experience in a modern city or town in the Americas is haunting. One enters a room and history precedes. History is already seated in the chair in the empty room when one arrives. Where one stands in a society seems always related to the historical experience. Where one can be observed is relative to that history.  All human effort seems to emanate from this door” (page 25)

    • Based on Brand’s work, participants were put in breakout rooms to discuss the following: 

      • What is happening in your mind, heart, and soul as you reflect on the Door of no Return?

      • How might living in historical consciousness of the Door of No Return change us individually and collectively?

  • To Cross Over to Take Sides begins with this understanding:

    • Crossing over to take sides with and for Black people is not as simple as invoking notions of human dignity, equality, and solidarity

    • Franz Fanon, “My purpose is quite different. What we are striving for is to liberate the Black man from the arsenal of complexes that germinated in a colonial situation.”

    • Until we who believe we are white shift consciousness to view the world from Black perspectives, we will not be able to free ourselves from the arsenal of complexes that afflict us in anti-Black white supremacy

  • Four Practices to Cross Over

    • Practice 1 – Epistemic Disobedience: to face the lie of white supremacy within our own being and society; and to unlearn and undo white supremacy with and between white people in predominantly white communities.

    • Practice 2 – Civil Disobedience: must question the assumptions of the empire and disobey the white supremacist rules. But this is not a call for delinquency, but rather epistemic and Gandhian like disobedience.

    • Practice 3 – Lament: Biblical theologian Walter Brueggermann explains, “authentic praise and Thanksgiving of God is rooted in lament.” Lament is a critical starting point to defy the god of white supremacy.

    • Practice 4 – Radical Dying and Dispossession: John of the Cross the Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book 1, Chapter 13, “To come to possess all, desire possession of nothing.”

    • Second breakout session

      • How do I & we cross sides to end anti-Black supremacy and create the possibility of liberation?

      • How might we create the possibility for racial liberation at the College of the Holy Cross and our wider society and world?

After Meeting Conversation – a small group discussed how we can increase participation in CHARA and our monthly meetings

• Invitation Challenge

  • a few members committed to reaching out to other alums to attend the next meeting 

  • One member committed to creating a template that all CHARA members can use to entice their alumni friends to attend our next meeting

• Reunion Committee

  • CHARA will plan an event during our Class of 1992 reunion weekend