I spent yesterday wondering what I can say or do. How do I
speak to what's happening in the world right now? While my heart breaks, and my
sympathy is limitless, anything I say feels trite- like the boilerplate social
media 'thoughts and prayers' that do nothing to help after a school shooting.
Any words I can think to post, while absolutely genuine,
seem tainted by the fact that I am a privileged white woman who has no real
first hand knowledge of the kind of shit and abuse suffered by an entire race.
I can't.
By virtue of being born with an easy skin color, my
heartbreak and my sympathy are secondhand. My fear for the safety of these
mothers' sons will forever be a distant cousin to real, everymorningwhenIwakeup
fear. My empathy- my ability to imagine myself in the shoes of another- will
always be just that. Imagination.
And my rage- oh- my rage. It's incandescent, nuclear-hot,
screaming, smashing, vein-popping rage.
AND I HAVE NEVER SUFFERED.
So is it any surprise that minorities in America (and in
Canada- let's not fool ourselves, my maple-sucking friends) are
burn-the-motherfucker-down angry? They have spoken for years. Politely at
first, and with increasing volume and intensity as time went on. And NO ONE
LISTENED.
Now?
Now they scream. We want to scream with them, but we need to
refrain.
Because for the love of God, it's time to LISTEN. TO HEAR.
To learn how to teach our children to be better than we are. To find out how to
improve the world that people with the 'wrong' skin color (I'm being facetious,
please don't email me) are forced to share with us.
To come face to face, as I have in recent years, with some
incredibly unpleasant aspects of ourselves, and our quiet racism. To really
hear, and internalize, what is being said, and despite our deep down desire for
it to be NOT ALL WHITE PEOPLE, realize that it REALLY IS ALL WHITE PEOPLE,
whether in outright racism, tacit approval, or silent complicity.
To stop spouting, and pontificating, and theorizing, and
sympathizing, and to shut up with our second-cousin-twice-removed piousness,
and JUST FUCKING LISTEN.
We, the privileged white few who have somehow decided
that we are in charge, need to STOP SPEAKING AND LISTEN.
And the words we need to hear, and to then share with our
children, are the words of those with first-hand experience.
So click on the link below.
And LISTEN.
https://www.facebook.com/themanacho/videos/272134207491609/