Hold Space for Being the Bad Guy

When setting boundaries makes you the villain—but honesty is worth the cost.

I have an urge to push back when someone is too complimentary about my equity and social justice work. I fear being placed on a pedestal, where people assume I always get it right and always do the right thing, because I don’t. I know I don’t and I know that I always won’t. And then what?

What will people say when the girl who talks about equity and social justice says something transphobic? What will people do when my take aligns with oppressive ideology?

Because it will happen. I won’t get it right all the time. I’m living and growing in the same homophobic, racist, patriarchal society everyone else lives in. I’m not so naive as to believe those forces haven’t shaped me and don’t impact my point of view.

I Am Biased

Recently, I helped a colleague with their dissertation by completing the Implicit Association Test. This is a test that shows how quickly you associate positive or negative traits with Black and white faces. I’ve taken it before, but here I was again getting a dose of humility.

The results were the same as the last time I took the test:
I have a slight preference for white faces.

Ugh! And I hate that form myself.

Here I am, a Black woman who’s built a career around challenging white supremacy and building an anti oppressive practice, and I have a slight preference for associating positive attributes with white faces.

How embarrassing!

Admitting You Have a Problem

Most people know the first step of Alcoholics Anonymous: Admit you have a problem.

Sounds simple, right? Yea, until you have to do it.

There’s something soul shaking about acknowledging that you don’t have it all together. That you’re flawed and imperfect. That despite your best intentions, you aren’t immune to mess.

And in this case, I have to admit that I am biased. I don’t want to be. I feel cringe and anxious simply typing this out. But if I don’t name that I have a problem, I can’t address it, and I care more about addressing and repairing my bias than I do about lying to the world and pretending that I have it all together.

In the classroom with students and in the therapy room with clients, I see this all the time. It’s hard for us to admit our own mess. There’s a knee jerk urge to downplay our shortcomings and to perform for the world our flawlessness. We fear others knowing that we don’t have it together, believing that if they know the true, imperfect version of us they may no longer like us - because the most vulnerable version of us is unworthy of live (whew! That’s a whole can of worms beyond our discussion here).

But here’s the uncomfortable truth:
You’re not perfect. I’m not perfect. None of us are perfect. And that’s ok.