Being a Mixed-Race Pagan Today

When everything started with Ferguson I wasn't going to talk about it.  When people started protesting I wasn't going to talk about it.  But you know what, with all that's happening at the moment I think I really need to talk about it.

Little ol' me

When most people look at me they don't think, "Oh, she's a latina" or "she's mixed-race" because I look pretty ethnically ambiguous.  I grew up comfortably middle-class in a liberal white bread suburb, and because I didn't look different enough for most kids to see me as "other" I wasn't really aware of race until I got older.  Of course, I also thought it was completely normal to have tostones and pasteles along with roast beef for Christmas dinner. 

However, as I got into my teens my mom started telling me stories about growing up in segregated military bases and having to sit on the upper balconies in movie theaters and having to use different drinking fountains.  It was a hell of a shock to me to think that my mom had been subjected to such insanity and the idea of anyone being treated differently because of their race was just unthinkable to my Edmonds bred mind.  The reality of her experiences were so foreign to me that I really had trouble processing them at all, let alone with any kind of relationship to my own ethnicity.  The only times I've ever had someone call my ethnicity to attention were when I was in all Hispanic neighborhoods and people spoke Spanish to me too quickly for me to understand - hardly a problem.  I've been lucky enough never to have faced prejudice because of the color of my skin (for religion, lifestyle, and fashion choices sure, but never race).

Me with my Panamanian/Puerto Rican mom and my Russian Jewish dad in 2003

My incredible good fortune along with my six of one half a dozen of the other genetics makes talking about race really hard.  Which side of the fence am I on?  My mom always called me heinz 57 sauce because I'm a mix of so many different things.  I always just called my ethnicity "slush."  I can certainly talk about white privilege because I grew up having it.  Although I am a Latina (my genetic need to feed people to show my love can attest to it), I feel like claiming my heritage is disingenuous because I never really suffered for it (unless you count some oddly skewed cultural views).  So if I stand up to speak against racism and inequality, where I am standing?  No, you don't have to be oppressed to speak out against oppression but it still feels really weird, like I'm claiming something that isn't really mine. Being mixed race makes thinking about race really complicated, let alone talking about it.  

So what does all that mean for me as a Pagan?  It means I feel an incredible amount of sympathy for the issues faced by Pagans of Color, but that I feel like a bit of an imposter going to things like the Pagans of Color Caucus.  While I'm certainly not an activist by any definition, I feel like it's my responsibility, as someone who just needs to spend some time in the sun to be obviously ethnic, to speak out against injustice.  As Pagan and an animist I see these renewed (or I suppose not renewed, just spotlighted) prejudices to be incredibly harmful not only to those who suffer them directly, but for everyone whose energy is poisoned by them.  As a Pagan I believe that nature is a living thing to be venerated and respected and that such incredible injustice and suffering can only be blasphemous to the sanctity of the earth.  That means I have to stand up and do something about it, but what? 

What can I do to help with this enormous, culturally systemic problem?  How much of my own upbringing is part of the problem?  If I can hardly think about my own race how am I supposed to stand up for someone else's?  Beginning to see the big problem here?  If I were a healer I'd probably start doing daily workings to change the energies that fuel the problem - but I'm not.  If I were an activist I'd go to protests, hand out leaflets, and get in people's faces - but I'm not.  I'm a shadow worker.  That means I tell bald truths and bring people out of their comfort zones.  That means that I can't lie to myself about my own privilege and prejudices. 

So this is me being really, really honest.  Talking about race makes me uncomfortable because I'm uncomfortable with my own race - because I have a really hard time determining what it actually is.  But in times like these I need to get over my own issues in order to help others.  Seeing people lose their lives because an authority figure was scared of their race is utterly reprehensible.  To see those authority figure let off without penalty makes me sick.  As an attorney the utter miscarriage of justice is incomprehensible to me (I mean seriously, just read the laws).  As a human being the entire situation makes me despair.  Something about how we are educating people in power and how we are training our law enforcement officers is wrong. 

Being irrationally afraid of someone because of a lack of understanding or empathy is the beginning of a slippery slope of fear and violence.  We are all human beings and need to be treated as such.  Being treated as a human being with thoughts and feelings should not be based on your race, gender, orientation, religion, or any other factor.  Are you a human being? Yes, then you have the right to live your life.  Where is the difficulty in that?  So yeah, I pretty much hate this.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)

Shadow Magick and Compassion

I've been doing shadow work for so long, I sometimes forget how ooky it can seem from the outside.  Yes, shadow work is dark, difficult, and sometimes scary.  And yes, the magick that derives from all that work is potent, sharp, and has the potential to break things.  But the darkness isn't the point.  The ooky spooky scary bits are there because if you want something special you have to earn it.  The ookiness is a means to an end, not the end in and of itself.  Shadow magick isn't about being angry and dark and wanting to hurt yourself or others - and if you approach it from that point of view you will either change in a hurry or deal with the consequences.  For the Shadow to work for you, your intent actually has to come from a place of compassion.

It's easy to hurl your anger into the darkness; but shadow work isn't easy.  Real shadow work is about facing the darkness and having compassion for it.  It's about coming face to face with your flaws, with your fears, and both forgiving yourself for your weakness and forgiving the world for allowing the thing you fear to exist.  It's not about conquering your fears; it's about learning to live with them.  Shadow work is about seeing yourself and the world around you clearly, warts and all, and learning to accept that truth.  The only way I've found to accomplish that without going completely mad is to learn to have real compassion. 

When I tell people that I'm a "black witch" or a "shadow worker," they will usually either say "what does that mean" or they will completely freak out.  The freak out is rare and it always surprises me a little.  You see, I don't tell just anyone that I'm a shadow worker - people whose only exposure to the spooky is television will inevitably react uncomfortably - I generally only tell other practitioners and I generally expect other practitioners to be able to look at my aura and realize that I'm not evil.  Sadly, that's not always the case.  There are always those folks who were taught that anything outside their particular brand of magick is evil (anyone who calls themselves a white witch will always react badly to someone who calls themselves a black witch, regardless of what either one means by those terms), and they do not tend to like me very much.  It's always a little disheartening to see that kind of knee-jerk prejudice in my own community.  I expect an abrahamic fundamentalist to object to what I do, I don't expect it from my own people.  It always makes me sad when people who should know better never bother too look beneath the label to find out what shadow workers actually do.  Maybe it bother me because my own reaction to something I fear is to find out all I can about it (this almost always alleviates me fears), so I have trouble understanding why other people don't do the same.

You see, people who are afraid of shadow workers are actually quite ridiculous.  It's almost impossible to become adept at shadow work without developing a deep rooted sense of compassion and understanding.  An adept has to learn to look at their own flaws every day without melting into a useless heap on the floor (this can be rather difficult), and one of the side effects of this skill is the ability to see those same flaws in others.  And let me tell you, it's really difficult not to feel at least some compassion for someone (regardless of how awful their behavior) when you see that their doing it because they have the same damned flaws you've got, that they just haven't dealt with yet.  It's hard to sustain anger with someone who you can see only lashed out because they don't know how to handle their own pain or fear.  This doesn't mean shadow workers all turn into Mother Theresa - hell no - but it does mean that our knee-jerk reactions aren't terribly violent and don't usually last very long.  The only "curse" a shadow worker is likely to lob at another person is one to make them see themselves more clearly and to develop a better understanding of what their doing - nothing more than what we voluntarily do to ourselves every day. 

Sure, the process of becoming an adept at shadow magick is difficult and often painful, but that doesn't make us bastards or masochists or anything else.  All it makes us is honest people who don't lie to themselves.  To be afraid of us just means you're afraid of yourself and we remind you of what you aren't willing to do.  Fear is a natural and healthy thing, just point it in the right direction.