A recent screen capture from a no longer active X user (@indicamindica) stated “You can be a good person and still hurt people unintentionally. You’re human.” The user continues “I dislike how there’s this idea that good people do no wrong. We all do wrong and will continue, it’s part of being human. The issue is when you don’t hold yourself accountable and do the work to change.”
I love this post and feel that this is about inner reflection and self-accountability. For many of us, this concept is central to our decolonization practices. Realizing our humanity, coming to terms with who we are as carriers and transmitters of culture, and realizing no matter how “good” we are, that harm can and is easily done by each person. Any people of privilege will unknowingly cause harm to those who don’t carry the same privilege because we are by and large unconscious of how we have been enculturated and what we say and do from that point of privilege that enforces the systems of inequality.
Additionally, it is problematic to believe that a person is either good or bad. That strict binary holds no space, or grace, for a person to be human. Good = maintains privilege while bad = removed from privilege. So when discussions of racism or other harm are had, many white people (or people of privilege) get very triggered, because they believe that they are “good”. Racism is “bad” so, it is therefore impossible for a “good” white person to be racist (“bad”). This goes further into the notions of good = white and bad or evil = black, which helps to enforce racial divides and racist thinking. Good people do not get harmed, bad people do.
We can see this play out in victim blaming of all kinds. Good girls don’t get raped, therefore you must have been bad or done something wrong, because if you were purely good, you would have been safe. The kid who was bullied and beaten up at school and then suspended, because good kids don’t get into fights, and only bad kids get bullied. Likewise the perpetrator could not have caused the harm because they are a “good” person, and therefore simply could not have been guilty in any way – because that would move them from the binary good to the binary bad.
If we do away with a strict binary understanding and cultural definition of good or bad, and instead realize that we are humans with behaviors, thoughts, emotions, programing, and motivations, we no longer have to be trapped in the good versus bad dichotomy. We free ourselves from the harmful boxes that keep us from growing and letting others grow and be who they are showing us that they are.
You want big shadow work homework – deconstruct your bias of good versus bad and the absolutes which keep us from changing and creating a better world.