Debby Irving

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Debbie Irving is a racial justice educator, author and public speaker. She is also the author of Waking Up White, a book that tracks her journey unpacking her white identity. Thanks for coming in.

Debby Irving:

Thanks for having me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So, white identity, that's such an interesting thing to even have to grapple with, I think.

Debby Irving:

Well, I didn't know I had one actually until the age of 48 when I went to take a course called Racial and Cultural Identities. It was a mandatory class when I was just starting out to get my master's in special ed. And I thought, mistakenly, that I was going to learn the racial and cultural identities of black and brown people so I could be a better teacher in racially mixed classrooms. And I was floored on the first day when the professor told us that we would each be doing our own personal racial and cultural identity dive. Because I honestly thought, well, what am I going to be doing? I didn't know I had a racial identity.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Do you think that we are almost uncomfortable, if we are white, to feel as though we have a racial identity? Well,

Debby Irving:

not everybody in any racial group experiences everything exactly the same. But are some or many white people uncomfortable? I think yeah, I think you're right. I think people are uncomfortable because, well, for a lot of reasons. One is that there's this idea in the United States that we're all individuals and we make it or not on our own. And white people are very much able to buy into that and think we're all just individuals and What I. My own successes or failures, it's on me. And so we don't see ourselves as a group, and we don't know most white people. We don't know what the stereotypes are or the group images are about us as white people. But we are very familiar with grouping other people. So having stereotypes about all black people, all Asian people, all Latino people, all Arab people. So the idea of being in a group, I think, is what's really uncomfortable. So if you say a white identity, a white person has to, for the first time, maybe think, well, I don't identify as white. Italian, I'm Greek, I'm Irish, I'm English. But white's a real thing. It's a real category with a whole experience that goes with it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I remember one of the anecdotes that you brought up in the book was about Native Americans, and when you were a child asking, where did all the Native Americans go? And I believe your mother's response was something that probably we've all heard before. But tell me a little bit about that. Tell the people who are listening that story.

Debby Irving:

Yeah. And there's so much to unpack in this one little exchange. So the exchange went like this. I said to my mother, where did all the Indians go? And she said, and my mother was a really lovely, warm, compassionate woman. And she. She said, you know, it's really sad. They drank themselves to death. And first of all, one thing to note there is that I was a little kid and I was curious, which is the most wonderful thing about human beings. We're all actually curious. But I think we learn to be less curious over time because of fear of saying something stupid or wrong. And I sure learned in that moment. The conversation went odd, a little bit, which I talk about in the book, but it ended up being a conversation that made me never want to ask a again like that, because the answer was so uncomfortable for me. It continued to be about Indians being not that they got really dangerous and they were drunk. And my mother told me a terrible story about a drunken Indian who went on a rampage, who killed a family. So all of that I now understand is not. Is widespread mythology. And my mother wasn't lying to me, but she was teaching me a version of history that she'd been taught. I'm sitting here looking behind you at the state of Maine behind you and thinking, you know, my family is an old Maine family. You know, we got a land grant up in Houlton, Maine, and this entire state and this entire nation of what we now call United States of America was once indigenous land for hundreds and hundreds, thousands of years. And that history was never taught to me. I was told that the Indians couldn't handle liquor. And later I think I learned that they couldn't handle European disease. And so there was a real manufactured myth of a people who. Oh, and that they lived in the wilderness, that they were uncivilized. All of that is untrue. There is a really rich history of indigenous peoples in the United States what became the United States. And unfortunately, there's a really horrific story about what happened to their way of life and to the land that they were so attached to. And that has everything to do with people like my ancestors and descendants of my ancestors who engaged in. We don't talk about it, but it's really a terrorism, a warfare akin to terrorism. So, boy, that's a lot we can unpack from that one question. So I was right as a little child to wonder whatever happened to all the Indians? And how sad for me, I think that I got an answer that was by a well intentioned woman with a lot of love in her heart that perpetuated myths that made me go on to continue to be in a state of ignorance.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You also spend a fair amount of time talking about the sort of pull yourself up by your bootstraps positive mentality that is really, it is actually a big part of, I think, white culture, although maybe other cultures as well. But damaging that really can be that this idea that if we just work really hard as individuals, then we are going to succeed and that we should always put a happy smiley face on everything. But what if you're from a cultural group that that's not the way they approach things?

Debby Irving:

Yeah. So when you say not approach things, are you thinking about a culture where, you know, working oneself? I mean, are you thinking about different work ethics or are you thinking about the way that that one phrase, that one framing can work differently for people across different groups?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I think what I'm saying is when I've had conversations with people who are, for example, I'll just say Italian and my family, which tends to is French and Irish, we're a little bit more conservative in the way that we interact. But I've been in situations with an Italian family and there's high volumes, there's a lot of back and forth, the conflict is dealt with in a very different way. And so what may initially come across is a little overwhelming for me because I came from the let's all be happy, let's all be harmonic and let's look at this in a really positive way. They do it differently because they are working through things in a knot. Let's put a smiley face on something and just move forward.

Debby Irving:

Right? So that feels a little different than bootstraps for me. What I hear you talking about is a cultural norm. So what you experience in your household is what I experienced in mine, which is, we're gonna put a happy face on. Buck up. Look on the bright side, be optimistic. That's a cultural norm around avoiding conflict. And also what goes hand in hand in that is the idea of emotional restraint. Like if you are unhappy or if you're angry or sad, that's not for public consumption. Just go do that in private, and we come back and behave a certain way in polite company or shared company or company, whatever you want to say. But it gets positioned. So what you and I experienced is very much aligned with what's called the dominant white culture. And that's the culture that we're all asked to understand and engage within. When we go into the classroom, when we go into workspaces, when we're in a hospital setting, we're in the bank getting a loan. There is a way of being that's seen not only as one way of being, but as right. And so for me, growing up, if I had seen that Italian, and I did see Italian families who, you know, would kind of knock down, drag out over things in their household, and I was really judgmental about that. I didn't see that as another cultural way of being or one that might even be healthier. I saw it as a flawed way of being. As people who weren't emotionally restrained and hadn't learned that conflict, you know, avoiding conflict was actually the more civilized approach. So, yeah, so that really what you're starting to tap into with that question and that observation is the idea of cultural norms. And that can work really well if you're raised in a house that fits that and can work against you. If you're raised in a different kind of a household, or if the norm is that we're supposed to be avoid conflict, avoidant and emotionally restrained. Think about the judgment I used to cast on black and brown people who were trying to say, I'm experiencing discrimination. It feels terrible. And instead of being curious, now we're back to curiosity and listening and saying, tell me more. I would judge them for being angry. You're too angry. You're complaining. You're A.D. you're stirring the pot. It's comments like that that are keeping this problem alive.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I Think. And I want to go back to the bootstrap thing, because I think you're right. It is a separate thing. But I also remember you saying that one of the ways that you would deal with people feeling discriminated against was just to say, oh, no, I don't think that that's what they meant.

Debby Irving:

Right. Yeah. So someone would say to me, you know, my check or, you know, my check didn't get cashed at that. Your corner store. I would. My thought wouldn't be your kid. Like, wow, what? I've got to go investigate that. It would be. No, no, no, no. They do that because they've done that for me. So I was so stuck in my own experience as a universal experience is how I now understand that I just couldn't hear truths, that I didn't want to be truth. As it turns out, there was discrimination all around me. I could have observed, but I turned a blind eye to it. And I did have some colleagues and friends, superficial friends I now understand, of color, trying to share discriminatory moments with me. And I just couldn't hear it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You know, when I hear what you're saying, I have had experiences like this and gone back and looked at myself a few years back or even a few minutes back, and it's, like, horrifying to me. I mean, I feel. Because I would never want to intentionally hurt someone or intentionally try to shut them down or intentionally, I don't know, engage in this dominant culture. That's so hurtful, but it still happens, and it's so uncomfortable.

Debby Irving:

And, you know, I am 10 years into this. It was 10 years ago this month, or maybe nine years ago this month that I started taking that course, racial and cultural identity. So I am 10 years into a 247 learning curve. And if you could see my hand, I am not changing it at all. It's a very. It's a black diamond uphill. I still do things. I still behave in ways. What's different is that I now am surrounded by colleagues and friends of color. They're not superficial relationships. And I do have people point out to me, or I will feel that feeling, that ugh. Feeling in my stomach and realize I've said or done something that may be hurtful and might just be a sign of my ignorance. And so that's a difference that I can catch myself and that people. I have trusting enough relationships where people will reflect back for me. And I know never to be defensive. Even when that feeling arises, I know to say what just happened. This is a learning Opportunity. Why did I do that? Where did that. Why didn't I know that? Why did I react that way? So, yeah, that really never goes away. The only thing I think feels different for me is that I've. I'm not even comfortable with the discomfort, but I'm taught I'm tolerant of the discomfort, and I really, really understand. Okay, this is a moment. Just stick with it. Learn.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Let's talk about the bootstrap thing, which I think is really interesting because it's this idea that especially. I think you put it out there as kind of like a New England thing where you. If you just go in and you just work hard, you can make your way in life, and any success that you have gained is a result of your hard work. And that was something that you learned over time, wasn't entirely an accurate representation of reality.

Debby Irving:

No. And I go to the Midwest, and they think they're the ones who invented the bootstrap theory. And I go to the west coast, and they think they're the ones. And I went to Canada. They have it there, too. So the bootstrap theory is a universal. It's part of what's called United States master narrative. So every country has an identity and a story that they tell about themselves, to themselves and to the outside world. And a big piece of the American master narrative is that the playing field is level, that anybody can come here and just work hard and you can make it. And if the going gets tough, we've got bootstraps so we can pull ourselves up. So it's very much woven into that level playing field concept. And it's where a lot of times you'll hear the word, we're a nation of immigrants, which I want to challenge. We're not a nation of immigrants. We are a nation of immigrants and enslaved Africans who were brought here against their will and indigenous peoples who were already living here and are trying very, very hard to still fighting every day for sovereignty and land rights. So that's who we are. A nation of not just immigrants. But that immigrant idea that you can come here, you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps. That felt really real to me because I was surrounded. I grew up in Winchester, Mass. A white suburb north of Boston. I was surrounded by families who had a story that went, you know, my great grandparents came here from Italy, Ireland, Germany, France. They had 2 cents in their pocket. They didn't speak a word of English. They were treated like dirt. And look at us now, a couple generations later. We worked hard and we made it we achieved the American dream. And so the level playing field and the bootstraps theory of working hard really does work for a lot of people in many ways. The United States and this great melting pot idea, the reason it's problematic is that it excludes a lot of people who are so marginalized and targeted, targeted with barriers to not be able to access the American dream, that it makes them look like losers. It makes it look like they didn't work hard enough, like they don't want to work hard enough, like they want to live off the government. And so it allows a whole group of immigrants who are able to eventually become white turn and judge and say, my family did it, why can't yours? Without knowing all that's gone down in terms of erecting and maintaining barriers to housing, lending, education, food supply, medical care, transportation that many communities of color experience, that white people don't even know about or have to know about.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You gave the example of the GI Bill and how that was really, it meant different things to different people, depending upon essentially their skin color.

Debby Irving:

Oh my God, that blew me away. And you know, if I could say one thing that I, that people say to me in the book blew them away, it's that because there is this idea, this is again that level playing field. So the GI Bill, which for anyone listening, GI was the term used for veteran back after World War II. And the GI Bill was a set of benefits offered by the United States government to returning veterans. And it had a housing component and it had a higher ed component as well as a couple others. But my father went to Harvard Law School on that bill. And my parents bought their first home in Winchester, Massachusetts for $17,000 on that bill. And I thought it was available to everyone. It turns out the GI Bill mostly excluded the black and brown GIs because there were 1.2 million black GIs, there were indigenous GIs, there were Latino GIs, and there were Asian American GIs. And the reason black and brown GIs were mostly unable to access it wasn't because it said it was a white only bill. It was because there were pre existing barriers in our society. So for instance, I'll just speak to the housing piece at the time, the Federal Housing Authority, when it created the mortgage in the 1930s and set out to develop a big part of the New Deal, a big housing expansion all across the United States. The mortgage was created to help facilitate that. And the mortgage said that private banks and some government lending agencies were suddenly going to be in the business of making loans to everyday People to go buy everyday homes. This is a completely new endeavor. And the FHA said, you know, we want to be careful that all of us lenders manage our risk. And so we're going to think about what are good loans and what are bad loans. And they created color coded maps of cities and neighborhoods and towns that outlined who lived where according to racial lines. So the practice was called redlining, because outlined in red were neighborhoods where black and brown people lived, and outlined in green were neighborhoods where only white people lived. And then there were two other gradations in between. And this all stemmed from one phrase in the FHA guidelines that said the presence of even one or two non white individuals can undermine real estate values. So that meant that keeping white neighborhoods white was the only way, in the imaginations of the people who constructed this policy, that keeping white neighborhoods white was the only way to keep housing values, maintain and escalate, maintain and build equity in homes. So the GI Bill was only good in white neighborhoods. So Black and brown GIs could not use the housing portion of that. And you think about, well, yeah, that was back in the 1940s, and here we are in 2018. But the wealth transfer that happened, you know, $120 billion went from government coffers into the hands of private individuals through the housing portion of the GI Bill. And that's in 1940s dollars. And 98% of that went to white families like mine. So that house in Winchester that my parents bought, you know, they. They upgraded at some point and bought a bigger house and then ultimately sold that for a million dollars 40 years after that first $17,000 investment made possible by the government. And when you look at the white, black, or you could just call it the racial wealth gap today, you see how much more money white people have on average. And, you know, once I would have explained that as white people were harder working, smarter, more intelligent, more responsible with their money. And now I just see it's an inevitable outcome of policy after policy. I've just named one policy after policy that's diverted resources and rights and access to white people disproportionately.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How did that feel to you when you learned that your family had benefited and you had benefited and other people weren't benefiting from it? Given that you were studying this, I felt duped.

Debby Irving:

I felt really duped and angry because I really love the idea of a level playing field. I love the idea of being part of a country where it is a safe harbor where people can come to this country like my Irish Ancestors did, you know, from a time of famine and find a place, find a home and, you know, work really hard and make it. And when I realized that that American dream that I was so invested in really wasn't available to everyone and that there was some real. There was greed and mal intent, it wasn't just good people not knowing better that there was some real. There was a lot of manipulation happening in ways that made me suddenly not proud to be an American. And I go back and forth between that. I just. There's so many beautiful things about this country and yet we as a country are not living into. We're not walking our talk. And what bothers me much more is that there's a denial of that. You know, I said to my family over the holidays at one of our holiday dinners, I said, what's worse if somebody wrongs you or somebody goes on to deny the wrong. And even the youngest kids at the table were able to say, oh, somebody denied. Like if someone does something wrong and admits it, you can fix it. But if they deny it, that makes it so much worse. And that's what I'm really stuck on. That's why I. That's the work I'm doing is to try to figure out how to move white people to owning what we. Now we're back to that first question, white identity. Why people don't want to own it or why it might be uncomfortable. There's a really tragic history inflicted on many people by not every white person, but by this whole idea of white as a race, whiteness as a way of being. And it's just harming so many people. And I would argue it's even harming white people.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I'm fortunate because I have children who are in various levels of education and so I've been able to, through them see this evolution in how we are approaching education on subjects like, I don't know, let's say imperialism. But it also creates a lot of questions for me because, for example, I live in Yarmouth and Yarmouth is a town that had a lot of Native Americans at one point and a lot of friction happened and there were people who came to settle the land and there was fighting and people died as a result of it. And the Native Americans became known as the ones who had done the bad deed. And now we have a settlers cemetery where this is the. The narrative is that here's all this violent stuff with these violent Native Americans and they wouldn't just give us the land. So as I'm trying to even make. I was Trying to just do an Instagram post about a cemetery that I ran past. I didn't even know what to call it because it's not really the settlers cemetery. Does this make sense?

Debby Irving:

Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I mean, we don't even really have labels around a history anymore because it's almost so unclear as to how we're supposed to interpret things now.

Debby Irving:

Yes. And, you know, so what has. This is a little bit like the game of telephone. Like we are so many generations removed now from what actually happened. And we rely on, you know, this is the winners tell the history. It's part of that. But even then, it's as if the history has just gone away. It's whitewashed in a way that it's. It's amnesiatic. And so I think sometimes, you know, when I talk to people about trying to just be curious enough to understand what you don't know, I think about, well, think, imagine, like, imagine walking into a party and something terrible happened there two hours ago, but you have no idea that it happened. And no one's talking about it. But the dynamics and the tensions in the space are still going to be there. That's what's happening in this country. All of the dynamics born of that are still among us. It's why we tell the history we do. It's why we get anxious and fearful and defensive and sometimes violent when the history gets questioned. But we've got to go back to that original history so that we don't repeat it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So how. How do we do this? I mean, I think you're right that history kind of goes to the victors, but it's mostly the people who could read and write at that time. We may not have all the access that we need to past information by non victors.

Debby Irving:

There is so much information on the indigenous front alone. Indigenous people are walking in and among us every day. And that's a culture that already lived by oral culture, oral history, storytelling. So it's a matter of will. It's a matter of wanting to know. How do you tell your history in your community? Indigenous history is very much alive. Black history, it's Black History Month, very much alive. There are, you know, we've got Chicano history. We've got so much history that is very much intact, right down to original documents. You know, there are treaties we can look at, and there are people who can make meaning of it. And so it's a matter really of dominant white institutions, our media channels, our educational institutions, our cities, our governments being willing to open up the lid and say, let's take a look at this. So, you know, I would recommend. There's an amazing book called the Indigenous People's History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz that I just finished that took me about three months to read because I could only handle about five pages at a time because it was so different than the history I learned. You know, there's Howard Zinn's book about people's history of the United States. There's Ron Takaki's book, which is called A Different Mirror, which again, is telling many different people's version of history. So those are all. I mean, Indigenous People is a book by Roxanne dunbargay is a deep dive into indigenous. But you can get these kind of survey books, Howard Zinn's and Ronald Takakis. You can take a deep dive into any population you want. And there is simply no shortage of voice and storytelling and original documents telling the story of what happened in this country.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So the information is out there. I just can't necessarily go to the Wikipedia page to find it.

Debby Irving:

You could, sure. You can get a long way by Googling. I think the biggest challenge is for people who are new to this understanding that I would say we've been robbed. I was a history major in college. I feel downright robbed of an education. My culture shortchanged me, my education shortchanged me, my family shortchanged me. So the whole idea that we don't know what we don't know is that's sort of a paradigm shift. Once people are willing to make the paradigm shift and say, okay, so I was taught that black men were criminal and thugs and that black women get pregnant, have babies, and live off the government and that Mexicans are rapists and lazy and that Muslims are terrorists. And can you suspend all of that myth making that lives in you? And this is what I've had to do, because all of it lived in me and some of it still lives in me in ways I have to manage. Can I suspend that long enough to go in search of and take in information that's not that counters that. It's a intellectual and emotional challenge. And yet when we don't take it, we just hold in place the status quo, which is immense inequity. And when I say it hurts white people too. You're a doctor, right? Yeah. So this whole idea, when we're talking about, remember we were talking about Italian family and the whole idea of bottling up emotion, which is the way I was raised, it's incredibly unhealthy. And the dominant white culture asks a lot of everybody, including white people, to not show vulnerability. Act tough, act smart. Show what you know. Be tough. Don't show weakness. Don't get angry. Don't rock the boat. All of those things put us in a state of complying with the status quo that hurt us in terms of our spiritual, physical, emotional well being. So if anyone is listening and needs an incentive, it's really I feel like I'm 58 years old and I have more energy and more vitality and more curiosity than I've ever had in my life. Just by pursuing what happened to me when I was asked to be white, what did I have to give up? And I'm reclaiming my humanity.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I enjoyed your book quite a lot. I'm glad that I took the time to listen to it. It was an audiobook, so it was fun to listen to the voice that I'm now talking to. I've been speaking with Debbie Irving, who is a racial justice educator, author, a public speaker, also the author of Waking Up White, a book that tracks her journey, unpacking her white identity. For anyone who's interested, it's really, it's an uncomfortable read, but it's extremely educational and I came away feeling a lot more curious and I tend to be curious. Anyway, I appreciate your coming in. Thank you.

Debby Irving:

Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been great.

Debby Irving:

Com.