Ladders in the Sky: A Psycho-Spiritual Process for Unbelonging from Whiteness

Abstract

This dissertation proposes a pathway for White people in the United States to become liberated from a culture of whiteness that cut its teeth on anti-Black racism. I focus primarily on the Black–White paradigm to represent two ends of a spectrum in hopes of providing insights into dismantling other forms of racial oppression. Martin Luther King, Jr., defined racism as “a philosophy based on a contempt for life. . . . [It] is total estrangement. It separates not only bodies but minds and spirits.” The struggle against racism is a matrix for psychological, social, and spiritual transformation that resists dualism. Though important, I assert that it is not enough to perform anti-racist acts. Rather, we must undergo a transformative process of becoming antiracist. Applying an integral liberatory lens, I articulate a psycho-spiritual process of unbelonging from a culture of whiteness. The process is akin to Jungian individuation and moves through stages: apocalypse, education, elucidation, catharsis, and transformative action grounded in transpersonal love that challenges misguided ideals of hyper-individualism and racial superiority. Building on James Baldwin’s insight that fear of dying fosters irresponsibility for the complex and beautiful conundrum of life, the process I develop calls upon White people in the United States to overcome their fears by symbolically dying, or unbelonging, to a culture of whiteness. My methodology is autoethnographic as I examine my ancestry to place the self in a larger social and political context.

I aim to disrupt “ontological expansiveness” and epistemologies of ignorance by speaking truths about our racialized history. Embracing a radical, transpersonal love teaches us to see and be with the wounds of whiteness and White racism to facilitate meaningful, lasting repair and explore the tension between what is and what can be.