Oregon Voices Podcast: Episode 17- John Lenssen: Identity, Whiteness, and What Was Lost

Before you can know where you stand, you have to know what was taken from you to get you here.

John Lenssen has spent a lifetime studying how identity forms, deforms, and finds its way back to something true. In this second conversation, he walks through the frameworks that shaped his thinking, from Erik Erikson's Eurocentric model taught as universal truth, to William Cross's stages of identity development for people of color, to his own pointed critique of white racial identity theory and why he refuses to let privilege acknowledgment be the finish line. The real work, he argues, is not about unlearning. It is about showing up.

The conversation moves into territory most people never get the language for. Katherine traces what it means to spend your whole life defending your existence before you even understand why. Eric describes the moment in 2020 when the lens turned on his own history and he found a Union officer on the census who owned five human beings, a fact his family had always known and never once told him. John connects it all to the European immigrants who surrendered their languages, their names, their cultures, and their solidarity with other working people, all to purchase the protection of whiteness. That bargain hollowed something out. This episode is about what was lost inside it.

They move through Bacon's Rebellion, the St. Patrick's Brigade, how the Irish became white, and why multiracial solidarity keeps getting dismantled the moment it starts to take root. Katherine names the cycle from the Fourth Turning, eighty years of the same fear in new clothes, the same dog whistles, the same contraction after every brief opening. John draws the thread back to where it always leads: when people actually know each other, love each other, build something together, history does not have to repeat.

This episode is about identity as survival, as loss, and as the thing that might actually save us if we let it.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:09

From the clothes to the line. We've been talking about the same online. Kitchen table feels like town home. We don't fit in the shopping ball. So we do this show and we said it all. It's next.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Hello, welcome to Oregon Voices. I'm Catherine Watkins and I'm here with Eric McGuire. And last episode we had John Lenson and we had such a great time that we decided to keep him for one more episode so that we could talk about identity. So I would love to open it up to John to give us an explanation of identity development, the importance of it, and anything else that you feel that our audience needs to know. Because you know, a lot of people are on their voyage of who are they? And right now it's it's getting to be undeniable that we have to look in the mirror and really decide who are we, where do we stand? And so if you could just give us some insight about identity development, that would be great.

SPEAKER_02 1:16

I love this topic. And it's it's near, I think it's near and dear to all of us because we all have identity and complex identities, and we're all in areas of growth in terms of identity development. So first piece I'll share is that in college I was first exposed to identity development. And we learned from Eric Erickson that there are these stages of identity development, and it was taught as if it's universal, that everybody goes through these stages. And again, that's part of whiteness. You know, it's a Eurocentric construct of identity development. And it's also very individual. It's not really rooted in the identities of collectivist cultures, but that was that was normalized. And then because of my work and and my connections, I I worked at the University of Washington Office of Minority Affairs and Oregon State University Educational Opportunities Program, spent a lot of time advising and counseling students of color, just because that's that was my focus, and that those were the jobs I had, and my heart was there. And so I became exposed to William Cross's, you know, stages of identity development for people of color. And it's foundational, you know, for for this work. And and he talks about the different stages, and I won't, I won't go through all of them, but it was very um helped me understand my students better and um to not see them as a static identity, that identities are are evolving, and especially for people with complex identities. So if you are a person of color and you are a female and you may be lesbian, then Kimberly Crenshaw's work on intersectionality really speaks to those identities, actually, and not just that they intersect, but there are multiple forms of oppression at play at any any moment in time. And and then I became really intrigued in my own racial identity development, not just normal human development as I was earlier taught, but there's there's something called white racial identity development.

SPEAKER_04 3:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 3:37

And I became very interested in that whole process, looking at my stages and but also seeing how other people, you know, other white people develop in their in their stages as a result of learning, as a result of experience. And one thing that I've learned is that it's I'm old now, and and and I'll I'll just say what I think and believe, because some of the earlier models on white racial identity development I actually critique. And some of these models talk about that the stages of white racial identity development are about privilege and unlearning privilege. And you kind of reach, you know, the the highest stage of identity development when white people understand their white privilege and unlearn that and push back against their white privilege. And there's a part of me that that hasn't been the focus of my life. My my life has been more around action and anti-racism, multicultural, you know, solidarity. And yes, certain stages of uh knowing the privilege of what it means to be white is very important. And knowing that there are different stages that we that we go through as white people, very meaningful. But the the the final stage isn't for me, isn't just acknowledging that I have white privilege, or it isn't even uh an i I reject the the work of somebody who's very well established in the white anti-racist you know field. I reject the work of Robin D'Angelo, who focuses on on white fragility. Yes. But what I what I really embrace is um the stages of development around white anti-racist activism. It's more of a sociological model and less of a psychological model. And Mark Warren wrote a book of white anti-racists called Fire in the Heart, but it traces the development of people that he was in contact with who were activists. And so when I think of my identity development, and my my identity is like everyone's very complicated on the surface, and this is real because the surface is the foundation, I have privilege in every dynamic. Yes, you know, except one now, but white, male, heterosexual, cisgender, I didn't really have upper class privilege. But the area where I have less privilege today, and it's complicated, is that I'm now part of the elderly. So there's some age discrimination.

SPEAKER_04 6:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:24

But for me, that's all also balanced by life history. And so as someone who has a lot of privilege in all these different dimensions of my identity, I'm not defined by my privilege. My life is impacted by my privilege, and my consciousness of that is important. But my my my growth and my job is is not just to acknowledge that privilege. It is really to show up and to be a part of movements and to be in interconnected around multiracial solidarity. So in in terms of my racial identity development, I kind of push back on and and I'm spending more time with white anti-racists. So going back 15, 20 years ago, I I would always prioritize my relationships with people of color. And just in the last 10 years or so, I'm reaching out to and spending more time with white people like Eric. I've you know, I'm really encouraged by by by you, Eric, in terms of your work and and your activism. And that gives me hope for the future because white people have to step up in this time. And I'll get off my soapbox. Um, but yeah, that's a little bit about me identity development.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

Well, it's interesting that you, as you were talking, I just the word defense came into my head. And I was thinking about like how much identity is rooted in the defense of your existence. Yeah, you know, and so as a person of color, um, especially a mixed race, um, people always asking, you know, what are you? What are you? What are you? Um, and then as a child, um, I was very much a tomboy, and this is still a time where they were forcing us to wear dresses, and you know, you weren't a lady, even though I was four, I'm not a lady. Um, and so having to fight, I want to wear pants, I want to go play with all the other boys. And so it was just like this continuous defense of who you are. And so going back to what you had said in the last episode about Ted, you know, if you didn't have Ted, in which you were in a position of defense, somebody was doing something wrong to your friend. If you didn't have that, you know, what would it have taken for you to start cultivating you as a white American? And so, yeah, I was just really thinking about how if it's the air you breathe, you know, until it's challenged, until there's a law against it, you get the luxury of just existing, you know.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

So yeah. Well, I can speak to the luxury of existing for 52 years in that fog of, you know, I I agree with John, and the word privilege doesn't usually hit with me either. I grew up in a blue-collar working class with products home. So there was not a lot of extra stuff um in terms of just wealth or or money. But I got to live my life without exception, unchallenged. I was, I I got to do everything I wanted to do. I got to go to any school I wanted to go to. And I was not the world's best student when I left high school. So in that regard, I, you know, I went to state schools, and but I never was pushed back upon. I could do whatever I wanted to do. And and that kind of all came from just as I was mentioning in the last episode, just this idea of socialization. Who was I socialized around? Um, and what was my day-to-day life like? What were the celebrations in my life? How did I become accustomed to those? Um, and never even exposed to anything different. And I I think that the moment that I realized that I had been living in this world of dominant culture, I guess, white supremacist culture, that I never had once had to consider what I was doing because it was normal. I was normal. Everything else was different. And I thought that I was doing my my bit for racial justice by teaching social studies. That that was my gift. And so that is really where the the shift occurs is that um in 2020, when we all kind of came, or when I came to a realization that I had not been seeing the world for what it was. I had been seeing the world for what it had been for me. And so um my identity shift comes both personally and professionally in that, you know, my own kind of mental health took over a part of my life that needed to be addressed. Welcome, I welcomed that. But at the very same time, my professional identity was being questioned by me in that, you know, I was not teaching the things that you mentioned already. Like, why aren't we teaching these things to our children? And so, you know, teaching about the coup in Wilmington, teaching about the Red Summer, teaching about the Tulsa massacre, I didn't teach about any of those things. Not only that, I did not know about them.

SPEAKER_04 11:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Because I was never taught them in my high school in Cottage Grove from the textbook that we lived in. Right. So just all of these things kind of pile on one another. And the the great thing about all of this is that once, you know, I talked about this, I think, in our first episode, I talked about the the scene, scene on white podcast and him turning the lens on himself. And once that lens gets turned and you see the world for what it is, it's not something you can reverse. And you talked about this kind of burning in the heart, and that's the first time I ever really experienced that no matter what I did from this time forward, I was gonna step into these spaces where white people were because I had that privilege. And I started to understand all of the privileges that I had as I walked the society. And then you're at kind of the tip, almost the tip of the iceberg in terms of your privilege in society, minus wealth, I suppose. But anyway, so the so yeah, I I the idea of identity is so critical to folks that look like me, starting to come to some realities about, like, for instance, I did not know that, you know, when my when my parents split up when I was two, I was not aware of the fact that I was kind of farmed out to different places all over the place. And so, in terms of having someone consistent in my life that could teach me about emotions and teach me about how to deal with situations and problems, that didn't really exist. And so you grow up that way and you take on this identity of you think that you think is normal. And it gets further and further embedded into who you are, and you think that that's then that's your identity. So um it's one of the reasons I'm so passionate about this podcast and about this effort, is that I'm I'm really am prepared to really question people that continue to hold on to the status quo into in this state and step into that pathway of not only kind of breaking down what those structures look like, but the people who run them as well. So I don't know if that really explains my pathway as part of it, at least, um, in terms of my own uh like why am I doing this? Like, why am I putting myself into this space? And this is the reason why, is because I I feel like it's it's my job right now to be doing this work um and to bringing people in from our state to share their stories about how they're impacted by this situation.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

Yeah, and it's really interesting, you know, being a literature teacher, um, you know, you're dealing with different cultures and traditions all throughout literature. And then you ask children, you know, share yours, you know, what do you do? And you know, bring it in, let us see pictures. And so many times I'll have students say, I can't participate, I don't have a culture. And I'm like, oh, you got a culture, you know, but you just gotta, you gotta talk with your family and see what those things are. And they're like, we're just white, there's nothing there. And I'm like, oh, geez. You know, and so especially in the um in 2020, I think we really had an opportunity to get a grip. You know, George Floyd just really made it unavoidable. Um, and so we could have really done some corrective measures at that point. Um, and so there was a lot of reactive uh requests from districts to, you know, do this. We're gonna be an anti-racist district and stuff like that. And so um, you know, hearing that message from my students of, I don't have a culture, and I'm like, you do. You just have to examine it and be allowed to examine it and decide what you like and don't like and take and don't take from it. Um, I said, but you also have to go beneath your whiteness. And so I created a lecture that we had done at some point when we were doing a lot of, you know, anti-racist seminars and stuff for um Beaverton District um in 2020. And so I created a lecture on going beneath your whiteness and saying that, you know, you have to acknowledge like all the components of whiteness, but realize what was lost for your ancestors to have that declaration of white. And so you have 190 white countries. You know, if you're looking at Russia, you know, all the subsects and everything like that. So you have 190 Eurocentric identities that you could actually go and do a DNA test, find out what countries are you, your family really from, and then start researching and find the culture that was stolen from you. You know, that you have just as much music and dance and food and practices that everybody else has. But if they were um Italian and they came here, they were treated horribly until they finally surrendered and said, okay, we'll act this way. And then they assimilate into whiteness. Irish, you know, so many from the European continent, where it's like they they modified their names, they changed it altogether, they modified how they looked, how they acted, just so that they would not be picked on, just so that they could survive. And so now you have it where you have all these people that are like, I'm just white. It's like, but there's so much more. And aren't you curious? How are you not curious? You know, just this idea of like, I it all started at the settle settlement.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

And it's like, yeah, that's a really good point because I did actually go back and research. Um, that was one of the very first things that I did, is I wanted to know where my family had come from. And although my grandmother had has massive quantities of lots of papers and things, none of it's super organized. And so I finally stumbled upon a relative from Kansas who had cataloged everything from my father's side of the family. It started in 1772 from a servant from Dublin who shows up in Philadelphia. And so that intrigued me to follow that pathway of those descendants all the way to myself. And there were things in that, um, in that process that my family had already known that no one had ever told me. And so that made me even more like, well, boy, this is this is really, it's kind of a cover-up in some ways, because my family knew that you know, my descendants had fought in the in in the Mexican-American War, and then was a high-ranking official in the Civil War on the Union side. Him and his sons fought together. And on the census that this union officer owned five human beings. And no one had ever explained that to me.

SPEAKER_04 18:45

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 18:46

And so that and and all this time, it's during COVID. So I am I have the luxury of staying home with my kids, doing my job, trying to help them go through school, but also for me to be processing all of these things that I'm finding out about myself and my family. And so that was a big help for me to kind of think about the uh think about what you said, which was like, what did they give up once they got here to be who they were? Yeah. Right. So, and in some sense, in some cases, I know there's a great documentary by Raul Peck. It's called Exterminate All the Brutes. And if you haven't watched that, um, but he has a very interesting section on the Scotch-Irish and and how they were purposefully brought to this country to do what they did, which was to take over that frontier as brutally as they needed to do so. And so my family's fully involved in that process all the way down.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

Well, and that's the thing, too, is like if you're looking at the need to keep that separate, right? Because if you have all of these white people filling their culture, they're going to have an affinity with people of color who are still keeping the fires of their culture, even though they've had systematically been told, you know, you're not allowed to speak this language anymore. You can't do this. And so if white people were allowed to keep their cultural roots, it's kind of unavoidable to turn an eye away from people who are treated bad because of their cultures. Right. And so I just kind of think about that. It was like, you know, the effects of the Bacon uh rebellion, yeah, where you had people of color and white people fighting together. If you're looking at um, um he was an abolitionist white. John Brown.

SPEAKER_04 20:41

Sean Brown.

SPEAKER_00 20:41

John Brown, thank you. You know, and it's like that's definitely not the white they wanted around. And he was putting it all at risk and killing people who were willing to be brutal to African Americans. Um, and so you've got all of these opportunities, but then they serve as examples of why we've got to cut this down even more and starve white people and so that they don't have connections. Yeah. You know, and it's just sad.

SPEAKER_02 21:11

I think it's really profound when you talk about white Europeans, non-English in particular, giving up their culture and their language to become American. And and you mentioned the part of that that I think is is that I I just want to highlight and appreciate that you brought it up, is that many of these um ethnic groups were also discriminated against, you know, strongly and violently. And so part of the the deal was that if you give up your heritage and you act like an American, then you will not be discriminated against. And but to know that history and to know our histories of discrimination is so important. Important in this time.

SPEAKER_04 22:01

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 22:01

You know, that we're not just talking about identity development in a moment, but over time, what was lost, and but what was also lost was the solidarity.

SPEAKER_04 22:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 22:12

There and and and the the sense that you know we could we could do something together. And and the Bacon Rebellion is is one of many examples that are very rarely referenced. And and even the book How the Irish Became White is such a powerful, powerful story. And yeah, I just appreciate that you that you brought that up.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

Yeah. Well, one of my favorite stories, I don't know if I've shared this with you or not. I think I've shared it with you, John, but uh one of my favorite stories is the story of the St. Patrick's Brigade, who uh were Irish soldiers who came to the United States. They weren't soldiers when they came here, they were immigrants. And so they were immediately sent to the frontier um to fight in the Mexican-American War under the generals that were in power, which would have been English descendants. And so they came to the point where they literally refused to fight against the Mexican government because they were Catholic. And so they took all of their munitions and their guns and they went to the other side and they helped them fight back against the United States. Many of them lost their lives for that and they were assassinated or executed, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_02 23:29

But and that's such a necessary and powerful story around identity, because for many of them, their Catholic identity was powerful and primary. And to be at war against their brothers and sisters who share that same powerful identity connection. Yeah.

unknown 23:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

Well, and I'm also thinking about um, you know, I taught American literature for maybe 20 years. Um, but I would always start out with John Crevacour's um A Letter to a Farmer, What is an American? And he's the one who talks about the melting pot, but then he kind of starts talking real dirt about Eastern Europeans, you know, and so you already start seeing that distinction in early American literature of what is a proper European, acceptable immigrant, and what we need to keep away because they're, I think they would say pests or vermints or like they'd use horrible degrading language.

SPEAKER_02 24:30

And there's the genetic inferiority that is attached to that. And that's the language coming from our government again, you know, in in this time that we that we live in, you know, the the the rapists and the criminals and the bad blood. And and yeah, that's so it's so pervasive.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

Yeah, and I'm um reading a book called Um The Fourth Turning. And so they're talking about like how time unwraps within like 80 years. And so you see like the recycle of the same old, same old. Because you know, I'm I'm now 51 and I'm like, didn't we already do this? Why are we doing this again? Um, but it's the cycles, and so we are now in the fourth turning, which is the crisis point, and so you know, just looking at the the language that is used, you know, they're eating their dogs and cats and stuff like that. It's just like all of these little uh whistles, dog whistles, that are just so reminiscent of the 1960s, which is so reminiscent of the 1920s. And it's just like you keep on looking back, and it's just like we get a good pocket of like maybe 10 years or 15 years where the pressure's been off and like people are starting to like come together, everyone's got a coke and a smile. Um, and then all of a sudden, politics comes in and it's all of a sudden, oh, identity politics. And it's like, what are you talking about? We're we're existing, we're alive, we have an identity, yeah, you know, and so why are you villainizing identity?

SPEAKER_02 26:06

It's such an important question, and I think we know the answers, but it's important to bring that forward. I'm going back to you you mentioned the melting pot. And and in my diversity work, and going back you know, 40 years, we would we would say, well, let's let's be a salad bowl, not a melt, not a melting pot. But given the shifting racial demographics in the United States, the idea of the melting pot is scary to the the white supremacists.

SPEAKER_04 26:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:41

It's a false metaphor anyway, but they don't embrace it. Yeah. Because when white people become the minority, they feel like, and and this is working class white people, because they're hearing this and so they're buying it, they're feeling like they're losing something, that they're losing out. And that's such a false message that we need to counteract every single day.

SPEAKER_00 27:05

Well, and it's just so rooted in that fear of they're gonna treat me the way that I've been treating them. Where it's like there's always gonna be a population of mean people, no matter what race, right? But a lot of times what you're going to have is of course, we're not going to want to do what was done to us because we know how that feels. This is not about revenge. This is about moving forward. This is about unity. So I understand the fear because yes, you've been hiding behind 400 years of using police tactics, slave patrol tactics, genocide tactics, uh internment reservations. And so you're you're worried that that's all going to come back to you. But it's 2026 and we know better. And we, if we are allowed to learn our history, then we know that it could repeat, but it could also just deviate because we're now conscious of it.

SPEAKER_02 28:04

And I love that, and this brings us back to the earlier theme: the the necessity of multiracial solidarity. When we know each other and we work together and we rely upon each other, then that history will not be repeated. Yes. Because it's grounded, it's rooted in respect and it's rooted on in connection. That we we we know each other, we we love each other, we we actually intermarry, right?

SPEAKER_04 28:32

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 28:32

Yeah, and I just to go one step further, I think that's one of the that's one of the things that really fires me up is to, is to break through that next level of the multi-racial solidarity work, is to get the people that are doing that work into the leadership. Yeah. That that's like one of the huge parts of this podcast and and having this message out to Oregonians is is that we have to start replacing the people that have been in power that we recognize, whether they're, you know, it's 50 years ago or now, they they they need to go. Um and we need people that see the world as it is, not as it was.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

So yeah, and it's really interesting moving up here, um, hearing people talk about, you know, globalization and globalism and stuff. And I was like, well, we're on this planet together. Don't we want to see what's happening outside of the United States? Don't we want to have connections with other countries? And now we're going back to such an isolationist experience where like not even other countries want to mess with us because we look kind of crazy, you know.

SPEAKER_02 29:44

And it's and it's the it's the contradiction of isolation and world domination.

SPEAKER_00 29:51

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 29:52

Because that's necessary for the survival of American capitalism, right? You know, is is to not lose ground as a world power. And and so it's it's how can we be into isolation and America first and still be be uh invading Iran and Venezuela and threatening Greenland and Mexico and it's it's yeah, it it actually makes sense, but it goes against the normal logic that is out there. Yeah. If people don't see how this is all connected, it's saying, Well, I thought that you know Donald Trump says that we're not gonna go to war with other nations and we're gonna be a peaceful nation and and we're gonna make America first and America great in an isolationist way. Well, no. No, right the plan.

SPEAKER_04 30:46

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

And I think it's obviously becoming more and more about the grift and and everything everywhere all at once, and then don't look over here because we're we're doing something that we're not supposed to be.

SPEAKER_00 30:59

Yeah. Well, and I think that's something that really infuriates me is that it it's getting harder and harder to hide because technology makes it where it's just you can send things out, flash in things. Like everyone could be informed in a blink of an eye, but even in the face of evidence, people will say, no, it's not. And you just feel like you're dealing with the six-year-old who got their hands stuck in the cookie jar, and you're like, you seriously have crumbs all over your face. No, I don't. And you're just like, I don't, I don't even, are you okay? You know, like, are you in your right mind because you're lying and you're saying reality is something totally different? But, you know, and I and I I know you don't like the the um the tenets of uh of whiteness, that document where it's labeling everything. But within that label of like all of these elements of whiteness is so much contrasting uh existences, like how can you be all about assimilating for the greater good, but then you have exceptionalism and you have individualism.

unknown 32:04

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 32:05

Full full of contradictions. Yeah. And you know, maybe for future podcasts, you know, going deeper, you know, and and there's so many narratives that you that you really want to bring forward, so many voices that you want to bring forward. At some point, I think it's it's important to distinguish between white supremacy, white culture, and whiteness. Because part of whiteness as it's been defined, you know, in the academic community, is whiteness uh actually in involves uh the whole notion that there really isn't racism and that this is normal and this is okay. It's it's the it's the everyday normalization of white supremacy. That's a key tenet of whiteness. There are a lot of people who are part of white culture but that don't absolutely embrace that whiteness. And so just talking about how that plays out is is important, maybe down the line.

SPEAKER_01 33:06

Yes, exactly. Excellent. Um, that actually you kind of already answered what we think is going to be our last question for all of our guests, which is who do you think we should be interviewing? And you gave us a couple of names already, but that's a great exit out of this episode, which is really helping people in the state understand like the differences when we talk about all these things and not conflating them all together at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

Yes. This was such an amazing experience. And I'm so glad I finally got to meet you because I've seen your face for like over 20 years. Um, and I've just never been able to meet you in person. And you're just a lovely person. So thank you so much for joining us. And I uh could we could ask you back sometime?

SPEAKER_02 33:52

Oh, we will. As I said earlier, I'm honored and I'm a little bit embarrassed.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

Well, oh no. We appreciate you being here. I'm just so grateful that you this is foundational to what we're doing here. So we are grateful for you coming in today and spending part of your Saturday with us. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 34:09

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 34:10

All right, that is the end of this episode of Oregon Voices.

SPEAKER_00 34:14

Thank you so much for joining us.

SPEAKER_03 34:18

We take the room if the wheel goes fire. We go sing it so it's taking your mama take it.