white fragility | The Direction of Intention

It’s Only Natural [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on September 23, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

This is a photograph of diversity: thriving tomato plants, basil, rosemary, cilantro, parsley, peppers, and autumn clematis. Look closer and you will spot bees, caterpillars and garden spiders. The chipmunk trail runs directly behind the bench. It is a tale of interconnectivity. Biodiversity is nature’s secret of success. Symbiotic relationships make the garden flourish.

Monoculture, on the other hand, all but guarantees a system’s collapse. It is true in nature. It is true of us as well; as human beings have learned again and again when soiling the nest, we are not separate from nature. We are not above it all. We are one thin ozone away from annihilation.

The word “symbiotic” comes from the Greek word for “living together.” Our democratic experiment is a test of human cultural symbiosis. For those of us who value actual history over made-up dross, it is undeniable that innovation has always thrived at the crossroads of cultures and the USA is an intentional crossroads.

White supremacy has been an ugly thorn in our democratic saddle since the nation’s inception but thankfully, until now, has never held the reins of power. As we watch the ICE horror story of racial profiling – astonishingly permitted by the Supreme Court, the assault on DEI, the erasure of people of color from our history, the vilification of Democrats (the party of diversity), we are witness to the insane attempt to force a monoculture into existence. And, as the insane – and inane – attempt at whitewashing our very colorful nation progresses, we step ever closer to our system’s collapse.

White fragility is at the epicenter of white supremacy. It claims to be a master race but fundamentally fears looking at its face in the mirror. It flees criticism. It touts being atop a pyramid built upon the labor and innovation of everyone else. It purports to represent the average citizen while embracing the economics of oligarchy (neoliberalism) and the politics of division. It knows how to pillage and rape and rig the game but understands almost nothing of building true strength, power, community and unity. It doesn’t have the first idea of the reality of symbiosis; it swirls in the fantasy-strut of mythical cowboy independence.

It is not a mystery that our democratic garden is in danger of dying. Perhaps, if we survive this race to destruction, we will at last be able to look in the mirror, see-embrace-and-deal with our full history. We will insist on building our home on the truth. All of it. Perhaps we will rise from the ashes without the idiotic idea that any race is superior to any other and truly, fully embrace the beating heart of our democratic union: that all people are created equal, that all people are protected equally under the law, that it is our experiment in diversity that makes – and has made – this nation great all along.

Symbiosis. Diversity. The same relationships that make our garden thrive will make our nation thrive. It’s only natural.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE GARDEN BENCH

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Filed under: Identity, Perspective, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: artistry, biodiversity, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, DEI, democracy, Diversity, history, Kerri Sherwood, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, monoculture, neoliberalism, oligarchy, relationship, story, studio melange, the melange, unity, white fragility, white supremacy | Leave a comment »

Our National ABOUT Page [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on May 2, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

This quote by Reynolds Price has been on my ABOUT page since I began blogging:

“A need to tell and hear stories is essential to us – second in necessity after nourishment and before love and shelter.”

Since I already know what I am about (mostly) I rarely visit my ABOUT page. I’d all but forgotten this quote was a constant presence on my blog. It is the flag I planted, as much for myself as for others, so I might always have a north star, a way to locate and find my way HOME. I carried it in my pocket long before I enshrined it on my site. I remember typing it into the little “about” box – it felt like a declaration.

Lately the quote has been poking at me. It wants further consideration. It has renewed relevance in our current circumstance.

The disparate bubbles that we occupy, MAGA and WOKE, are stories. Although the characters are different in the respective bubbles, the overriding story is the same: there is a threat to our way of life and the threat is the other bubble.

Although I believe the MAGA bubble is filled with dangerous fascism, they believe the WOKE bubble is socialism run amok. Occupants of both bubbles follow their news-of-the-day as if it was essential, true. Both narratives fuel the division. Both bubbles tell the tale of a heroic fight for good over an evil villain.

This is the third time in our history that these bubbles have formed; irreconcilable narratives housed under a greater umbrella-story, ironically called The United States of America. Robin Diangelo wrote the story of white supremacy requires black inferiority. Conversely, the struggle of equality-for-all is pitted against the story of white supremacy. It is nearly impossible to reconcile the combating sub-narratives: the Manifest Destiny story of god-given superiority (MAGA) with the All Men and Women Are Created Equal (WOKE) story. Our national narrative, our essential umbrella story, is of this struggle for identity: superiority for the few or equality for all. So, here we are.

A need to tell and hear stories is essential to us because stories are the glue that hold us together. Stories are essential because they define “belonging”. In a nation of immigrants, with a long history of bloody fighting over this question of belonging, what might it take for us to recognize that this fight is the greater story that defines us? It is the legacy we perpetuate in our grappling; it is the trace we leave in time. When will we see that the loss of freedom, the collapse of love and shelter is the cost of our shared narrative of seeming irreconcilable difference?

We’ve built our house on a volatile fault line.

However, there is a greater narrative available. It has been on our national ABOUT page since the beginning of our nation. It is our motto, our north star that will guide us HOME. It is printed on our currency. What might it take for us to rise above the bubbles and embrace the story at the center of our rhetorical ideal? What might we need to reconcile to live fully the nourishing story of e pluribus unum?

[this may be my favorite piece by Kerri. If you’re feeling angst or overwhelmed, do yourself a favor: take a short life-break, close your eyes and listen]

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about TRACES IN THE SKY

The Storyteller emerges from the forest.
Lucy & The Waterfox
http://www.kerrianddavid.com

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Filed under: Identity, KS Friday, Story | Tagged: artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, e pluribus unum, equality, fascism, freedom, identity, info bubbles, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, MAGA, Manifest Destiny, Robin DiAngelo, story, studio melange, the melange, white fragility, white supremacy, woke | 1 Comment »

Teach The Moment [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on April 17, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

As I watched the curtain of grasses sway I thought they’d make an excellent set piece for a production of The Tempest. Their movement was hypnotic. I had the good fortune to design a minimal-budget-production of The Tempest several years ago and used huge pieces of driftwood and a bamboo curtain. I loved it.

The Tempest was on my mind because earlier in the day while doing some research I bumbled across the question, “Why is The Tempest a banned book?” The answer is a very sad statement about our times, the reason our nation cannot seem to mature: “The Tempest,” one of the playwright’s classics, is among the books removed, as teachers were urged to stay away from any works where “race, ethnicity and oppression are central themes,” the website Salon reported.

In our nation race, ethnicity and oppression are the central themes of our history: “246 years of brutal enslavement; the rape of black women for the pleasure of white men and to produce more enslaved workers; the selling off of black children; the attempted genocide of Indigenous people, Indian removal acts, and reservations; indentured servitude, lynching and mob violence; sharecropping; Chinese exclusion laws; Japanese American internment; Jim Crow laws and mandatory segregation…” (Robin Diangelo, White Fragility)

You’d think we might want to encourage teaching The Tempest and other great works so we might consider and discuss the full scope of our history. So that we might learn about ourselves. So that we might become capable of addressing and putting to rest the ugly fear – rooted in race, ethnicity and oppression – exploited for gain by the Republican party, that gave birth to the MAGA movement. It’s the Confederacy by another name.

In a nation of immigrants, you’d think it might be a first principle to teach our children about race, ethnicity, and oppression so we might learn how to reach across – and put to rest – division rather than perpetually recreate it.

The AI overview provided another related and currently more salient reason to teach The Tempest: “The main message of Shakespeare’s The Tempest is that forgiveness and reconciliation are preferable to revenge and punishment, especially when it comes to the restoration of social order and personal peace.“

If social order and personal peace are the goals, our current path of revenge and punishment will not take us there. In the play, Prospero chooses release from his island prison through the power of forgiveness and redemption rather than perpetuating his imprisonment by seeking revenge.

In this teachable moment Prospero’s choice is an analogy worth teaching: a path provided to us by a play written in 1610 by one of the greatest poets of the English language; a way out of our national-soul-imprisonment.

I suspect that is why The Tempest and other great works of literature dealing with themes-that-matter are being banned. In the minds of this administration, continued imprisonment, revenge and punishment seem to be the goals.

Angels At Our Side, 24″x48″, mixed media on board

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE GRASSES

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Filed under: DR Thursday, Identity, Transcendence | Tagged: artistry, banned books, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, ethnicity, forgiveness, history, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, oppression, race, reconciliation, Robin DiAngelo, story, studio melange, teaching, the melange, The Tempest, white fragility, William Shakespeare | 3 Comments »

An Outrageous Fantasy [David’s blog on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on April 2, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

To fuel our escape fantasy of a thru-hike on the Pacific Crest Trail, we periodically wander around REI and fake-shop for backpacks and sleeping bags. We test shoes and ask questions about sun shirts. We scrutinize hiker stoves and sporks and water filtration options. We discuss the merits of tents. And, since we have no actual knowledge about any of it, we laugh at our made-up opinions. We delight in pretending.

I’m updating one of my favorite Horatio observations. He’s said (and I’ve oft-quoted) that the tension in these un-United States is between those who espouse an “every man for himself” philosophy and those who maintain that “I am my brother’s/sister’s keeper”. My update? The every-man-for himself crowd is actually, more accurately, believers that some-people-are-better-than-others. The tension as revealed in our present day is between those who believe in equality and those who do not. We are witness to the struggle between those who think government should work for everyone (brother’s/sister’s keeper) and those who believe government need work only for the superior few.

Consider the full-court-press now underway to demonize and eliminate DEI and the lifting of federal building bans on segregation. Consider the inundation of legislation aimed at inhibiting a woman’s right to vote. Witness the explicit dismantling of social programs and the social safety net in order to provide massive tax cuts to the wealthiest citizens. The whitewashing of history. The ugly and empty rhetoric about restoring “merit-based” hiring, implying that all people of color, all women, advance and have advanced not because of their skill or talent but because of their skin color or gender. In other words, an agenda firmly rooted in advancing the mythos of white male superiority.

The privileged few pushing down the many in order to elevate themselves. It’s Ayn Randian nonsense. Pushing others down is the first action of a drowning man. It’s an arrogant fantasy, laughable, like trickle-down-economics, shackling the majority to uplift the make-believe-white-superiority of the corrupt few. My long-ago colleague, Ana, called it “vampiring”.

It’s white fragility.

At REI we inevitably wander over to the section beneath the corrugated sign, “EAT”. We discuss eating dehydrated meals. Eventually we conclude that on the trail we’ll require a chef to drone in our meals each day. A basket will arrive in the morning with baked goods, scrambled eggs, and hot coffee. There will also be a sack lunch in the morning delivery. It would be too much to ask the chef to make three deliveries a day. At night, a hot meal arrives – with wine, of course – since the chef can accurately track our location.

We laugh at our outrageous fantasy since we know it is an outrageous fantasy.

We wonder why the red-hat crowd remains blind to their outrageous maga-fantasy. They’re laughing as their heads are being systemically – and obviously – pushed beneath the water by an oligarch and a weak flim-flam-man. Vampires, both. How long before the red-hat-crowd realize that they are being sucked dry, that their outrageous fantasy is not laughable, that the not-so-funny joke is on them, too?

read Kerri’s blogpost about EAT

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Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Seeing | Tagged: artistry, Ayn Rand, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, DEI, fantasy, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, MAGA, merit based, rei, story, studio melange, the melange, vampire, voter rights, white fragility | 1 Comment »

Teach The Full Story [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on August 15, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

Viewed from space, the earth is round.

That simple fact has led some truly dedicated reality-deniers to the startling conclusion that the earth is flat. They argue that it’s absurd to think that half the population of the earth lives upside-down. Of course, no one has yet been able to prove that there is a top or bottom to the universe so it’s anyone’s guess which hemisphere of the earth is right-side-up and which is up-side-down. Be careful on those vacation cruises not to sail too close to the edge.

The Republican party in these un-united-united-states have become the political equivalent of flat-earthers. Cherry-picked half-data spun by a dedicated-nonsense-media into a Flat Stanley reality. Two-dimensional thinking in a three-dimensional world. It’s a problem. It’s a scary problem. The good ship USA is on course to meet the edge while the captains on the bridge wrestle for control of the steering wheel.

What is the steering wheel? The story we tell ourselves about ourselves. Our history. The Manifest Destiny story is meeting the realities of demographics. The party of white-dominance is in a panic to maintain its story of supremacy. They’d rather run us over the edge than let this richly diverse nation fulfill its promise. Fulling the promise begins with telling the full story. In Florida, the governor has literally banned the schools from telling the full history of this nation.

In other times, more clear-headed times, these laws would be acknowledged as authoritarianism. In our times, it’s marketed as the Republican response to “woke-ness.” In other words, education is the enemy. Stick your head in the sand. Hear-no-evil-see-no-evil. Proclaim the earth is flat or be prosecuted.

It was inevitable. The rhetoric of “All men are created equal” would someday need to reconcile the reality of a system built on the institution of slavery. Our forefathers wrote about it as the single greatest threat to the survival of our nation, this vast difference between our rhetoric and actions. In a school – capable of teaching our history – that would seem to be a very important and timely history to explore.

Systems do what they are designed to do and ours has performed as intended, elevating one group while suppressing others. It’s in our legislative record. It’s in the writing of our founders. It’s history.

For the second time this week I’m using this phrase: As I learned in school, systems are living things and will fight to the death to maintain themselves. We are watching a system – our system – fight to the death to maintain itself. In this fight, it will lie, cheat, scratch, steal, bite and squeal. It will incite fear. It will turn citizens against other citizens. It will whip up division and demonize those it brands as “other.” It will toss away all ethic and morality to maintain itself. It will make laws to protect itself. We are witness to it. We are participants in it.

The national story will maintain itself as flat, or, at long last, take a hard look at itself and change.

I was truly alarmed when I read that teachers in Florida are afraid to teach the history of the United States.

Our nation is round. Plump and full of rich diversity with a rich complex history. It is, after all, the reality of our nation, the story we are living. It is the reason for our successes – cultural crossroads have always been places of innovation. Perhaps it should be the story we at long last embrace. Perhaps, rather than muzzling our story, legislating for white-fragility, we will someday – as a nation – be proud of our iridescence and work to tell our full story rather than the flat-lie the reality-deniers are asking us to swallow.

read Kerri’s blogpost about BE

Filed under: Edges, Education, Identity, Merely A Thought Monday, Story, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, culture, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Diversity, education, flat earthers, Florida, forefathers, history, inclusion, innovation, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, slavery, story, studio melange, teaching, teaching history, the melange, USA, white fragility | 1 Comment »

Don’t Go Home [on DR Thursday]

Posted on June 4, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

House on Fire. 2004-ish. Watercolor. And, yes, I was all over copying Guernica.

“The continual retreat from the discomfort of authentic racial engagement in a culture infused with racial disparity limits the ability to form authentic connections across racial lines, and results in a perpetual cycle that works to hold racism in place.” ~ Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility

I confess to rewriting this post. What I wrote initially was pedantic and preachy. So, this is a second go-round.

We’ve been hearing this question much in these past days: why don’t things ever change? Here’s an answer I learned in school: a society is a living system and, like all living things, it will fight to the death when threatened with change. Why we can’t seem to “solve” our problem with racial disparity and the dehumanization of black people? It’s built into our system. The system, a complex and living thing, will fight to the death to keep the injustice securely in place.

That’s a heady answer and somewhat hopeless. Its abstraction makes it a safe and somewhat antiseptic response.

I lived in Los Angeles in 1992. My apartment was in the hills so I had a good vantage point to watch the rioting and the city burn. When it felt too unsafe, I fled the city. I had a safe place to go.

A few years later, working with a school district, the head of the Black Student Union asked me to come in and work with her students. MLK day was fast approaching and the students, preparing presentations for the day, were in rebellion. They were mad. They didn’t want to read speeches about peace and justice when those ideals were nowhere on their horizon. I thought it was my job to help them give voice to what they wanted to say. It was my first conscious lesson in my white-blindness. The frightened parents of the students descended. I’ll never forget the mother and father that pulled me aside, saying to me, “You don’t understand. If they say what they want to say they’ll be killed.” Their terror was real. They had to teach their children a lesson that was the opposite of what my parents taught me.

To call it a problem is to reduce it to the level of mechanics. It is to pretend (or hope) that a few changes in the law or better policing will do the trick. To treat it like a problem guarantees that we’ll recreate it. This is not a problem, this is a pattern. It is a cycle. It is a relationship.

The pattern is currently in our faces. The pattern is not only the death of another black person. The pattern is also what white America chooses to do – or not do- with the knowledge of it. What is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves that makes it possible to stand in the fire with people of color during the protests but walk-on once the fire subsides? It is simply this: I get to go home. I get to drive out of LA when things feel too unsafe. I have someplace to go. I get to go home when the officer is prosecuted or a law is changed or a commission empaneled, dust off my hands, and say that I did my part.

Why don’t things ever change?

I was stunned when those parents pulled me aside. At first, I couldn’t believe that they were going to silence their children when their children had something so important to say. It made my head spin. And then I went home. And then I realized that they couldn’t go home. There was no place in this “living system” where they were safe. That was what they were trying to tell me. It was what Martin Luther King was trying to tell us. It is what the protesters in the streets today are trying to get us to see/admit/realize. We are watching a living system built on racial division and inequality fight to the death because change is knocking.

What if we realized that we cannot simply go home and forget about it?

read Kerri’s blog post about HOUSE ON FIRE