If I thought I needed to properly be in the right headspace to write what I feel, it’d probably never happen.
Like many of you, I’ve sat and watched at the complete horror of our country being torn apart. All I feel is rage. Rage at how the hell we got here.
If you’re white-this blog is really for you. I invite you to sit with me for a few minutes. Take a deep breath and try and keep your mind as open as possible.
I wish I didn’t even have to say it in that manner; as if there’s a presumption that we need to be talking about this in any other form than complete truth-because we are in a bad place.
For now-I’ll just tell you what I wish.
I wish we hadn’t been lied to in school. Our history was not the truth. We were given a paint-by-number version of our history. One with pretty colors and happily-ever-afters and that’s bullshit. We have some ugly truths and our biggest sin was and always will be, slavery.
If, as a country, we lie about our past and who we are and what we did, then laying claim to the belief that,”all men are created equal”, just meant for all white men. The context of what happened to black bodies at the time, never actuated to any truth to that notion.
We’ve been taught to believe that The Civil Rights Act meant that people of color had equal treatment under the law. Slavery was over. We’d reached a new dawn and our systems of oppression would be broken down. Another lie.
Slavery took different forms through the years. Modern-day lynchings became the six-o-clock viewing of police brutality, once cell phones came along. The Reagan era ushered in a war on drugs that saw for-profit prison systems, filled with black and brown bodies. A single joint might mean five years or more in the slammer. Voting rights conveniently stripped and a record meant obtaining employment was difficult.
We ascribe to the notion if we vote a certain way or hang out with certain people that we couldn’t possibly be the problem. We are the problem. Complicity has always been the problem.
How many times have you cringed when a friend or colleague or family member said or did something that you knew was wrong and you allowed it? You let it go by because you didn’t want to make a big deal of it? How many of us have allowed it?
Some of you will say,”I didn’t say it and I can’t control someone else’s actions”, but when you allow it you’re permitting the cycle of racism, therefore you are racist.
Gasp! I know-some of you are freaking out and pissed, swearing you aren’t, because you have friends of color. Here’s the good news…you have a chance to be anti-racist. Tell your old Uncle Hershel that he’s a jackass for saying what he does. Tell the client sitting in your chair that “doesn’t understand why everything’s about race” that she doesn’t get to ask that because she’s a white lady who’s never had to fight for anything. Tell your neighbor who made awful comments about “those people” that he’s a shithead and you hope he realizes he’s being one.
When you hear people talk about white privilege, that’s what they mean. We have the privilege of not sounding threatening or wondering how someone will take that, so speak the hell up. It really is that simple. Beginning to dismantle the system, starts with the basics. The very basics. It starts with calling it out whenever you see and hear it. Film the cop when you need to. Step in. Step up. When you see all white people on a school board or all white teachers in your schools, ask where the representation is. Demand diversity for leadership in your cities. Back candidates of color. Listen to them. Ask questions.
I was talking before about what I wish. I wish we could be the beautiful melting pot of United Colors of Benetton, but we’re not. Our country has proven that. We all want to say,”but I’m colorblind”, and that’s where the bullshit starts. We all see color. And we need to. Until we can live with the truth of totally being in the space where we hear and see people of color and their trauma-we will never change. They should never have to live in a world where every moment of there lives have to be filmed for us to believe their trauma. It’s like constant victim gaslighting and it has to stop.
As white people, we fight for our reproductive rights and we scream with our outraged breath when our kids get blown away at school but black bodies keep dying and they are right in front of us. What will it take for us to get enraged about that? And why aren’t we? These are our friends and our kid’s friends and our colleagues and neighbors and human beings and we have failed. When we choose to protest all the other atrocities committed and cannot be bothered to get involved with this, we have become complicit in the unraveling of the very fabric our country laid claim to be. We were the country where Lady Liberty welcomed the masses but there was always a caveat implied that the welcomed were mostly those of a certain hue, matching that of the conquerors.
Now, after all the deaths and the wrongfully imprisoned and the daily oppression that exists-even now-we express our distaste for the manner in which those who are suffering dispense their pain. “The looting’s too much” I’ve heard some say. But so was the kneeling. The Tshirts worn by football and basketball players; you didn’t like that, either.
John Hope Bryant, who is the founder of Operation Hope and served on the Advisory Council for Financial Capability for Youth under President Obama said this about the affects of looting-“I subscribe to the simple premise that rainbows only come after storms and I see a shining light emerging after the dark night of tragedy and tears.” Dr. Martin Luther King, while always calling for peace, described the civil unrest that happens as riots being the language of the unheard.
Some of you have asked what to do or how to help. There are so many systems of oppression to dismantle and it’s difficult to know where to start.
While politicians aren’t saviors and they can’t fix what’s inside of us, we must hold them accountable. When you excuse the behavior that’s happening in the White House right now, you’re part of the piece that has to be dismantled.
I live in a purple district, on the verge of going blue. It’s been that way for the last two elections. With change comes pushback. I was surprised to see that even within the party I align with, when it comes to matters of race, we still have a long way to go. Many in my community, while technically on the “side” I affiliate with-if they’re challenged about behaviors or instances of racism within our own party, we’ve been called out, blocked from media platforms and simply been told to shut up about that conversation. This leads to the permissiveness and complicity of allowing racism to still exist.
While our leaders will never be our saviors, we must ensure that they are accountable to us. And when I mean “us”, I mean that communities of color don’t just need to be let in the room, they need to be leading the table. When your friends of color talk to you about who they’re supporting and why-listen, then support that, if you really want to help make change.
In my district, our current Congressman is an old white guy who hasn’t shown up to represent any of our district in years. He wouldn’t know a town hall if it bit him in the ass. His opponents happen to be two women. One-I’m a die hard supporter of, and the other is just like him and never shows up to anything. When communities of color are screaming and waving their hands and saying they have ideas and solutions and would like help implementing those things and one of the challengers decides to just not show up-that says everything you need to know about how she’ll represent communities that are oppressed. She won’t. If she doesn’t show up on the good days, she damn sure won’t show up on the bad ones. It’s not enough for them to perform lip-service. That’s just good marketing. The woman I support has staffed her entire campaign with women of color and she goes into spaces they tell her to that need the work. The other one won’t even answer a tweet.
Holding our leaders and elected officials accountable by voting is only the first step. Once they’re elected, we must serve on boards, use our voices, money and privilege to demand that we will not allow what has been normalized. Black men and women dying because they are existing while black, cannot and should never be something we become numb to.
2020 has been the kind of year where you want to put it back in the bottle. Sage it into oblivion. Close your eyes and hope it just stops. There’s nothing like a good pandemic to remind us of the fact that black and brown folks are still dying when they don’t need to be. They are dying of COVID at alarming rates, but this is nothing new in the healthcare world. Look at the statistics and the quality of care they receive and the access to care they have and you’ll see why.
As our country burns from failing to recognize and heal our origin sin and the world falls from a death we cannot see, it reminds me that the current administration is reflective of all our weaknesses.
Failed leadership by a man who stoked the embers of racism before he ever took office, accusing his predecessor of not being an American citizen. Neo-Nazis are “very fine people”, while centuries of oppression and expressions of that trauma are deemed committed by “thugs”. An administration that permits white men clad with an AR-15, whining for their civil liberties being violated for wearing a mask, while spitting in the face of police, unscathed and George Floyd is murdered with a knee in his neck while in handcuffs, face-down on the ground.
Trump might be a metaphor of every horrible thing we are and never stopped, but he’s just the reflection of what our country’s been for years.
It’s ugly, isn’t it?
sharkmomma 