Weep

There is a storm in front of us, White people, that we are being asked to walk right into the middle of for the good of the whole. 

I am a White person. I am writing to other White people about work we need to do collectively. 

For the first time in my life, I wept for the state of relations between POC and whites in my country. I sat down and bawled. I bawled for my own lack of awareness or concern. I bawled for the realization that it has taken yet another brutal death of an African American man, George Floyd, for me to wake up enough to actually feel something real, something personal. I bawled for my complicity in this situation that BIPOC have been broadcasting an awareness of for decade upon decade.

I bawled and I am glad.

It was needed and necessary.

It’s needed and necessary for me to feel these feelings, come to these realizations and recognize why this JUST KEEPS HAPPENING.

There are a number of important causes that need voices to rise up in unity and shout about, until those who aren’t listening find that their ears begin to open and they start to hear a whisper of truth, of the need to change the world. Of THEIR NEED TO CHANGE THE WORLD.

This is not ‘someone else’s’ fight. THIS IS MY FIGHT! This is your fight! Are you human? It is your fight. Will you join?

This is about patriotism. This is about love of country. This is about love of the world, it’s people, the environment. There are so many things that need our attention, like the environment, but if we are continuing to kill each other because of difference, how can we even hope to heal the ecological situation. We need unity for that.

So, today, I am inviting you to join me on some pretty gut-wrenching work. Today, I am asking myself to evaluate how I have thought about every event that gets reported where ‘racially motivated violence’ or ‘racially motivated police brutality’ or anything similar is reported.

What have been my automatic responses about that? Have I assumed that there was in fact a racially motivated harm done? Or, have I assumed that this is some political ploy perpetrated by an untrustworthy media or group or something? Have I been unable to feel pain for the victim because I wasn’t sure who was really in the wrong after all? Was I reserving judgement in favor of the oppressor rather than the oppressed (often dead) until I could be ‘certain’ that the brutality in question wasn’t warranted.

Why am I asking this question? Because I am not unbiased. I have a bias, whether or not I recognize it. And one of the ways I know this is that I took a bit of time to evaluate which are the voices that I’ve listened to over the years? When I took stock of voices of influence in MY LIFE over the years, they have been almost altogether WHITE. So my bias is a white bias and that means something. That means that I haven’t often enough listened to the voices, stories and heart cries of people whose experience of the world has been radically different than mine.

These are the questions I am asking myself. 


How do I respond when I hear about racially motivated violence? Why do I respond as I do? Have I been influenced by anyone in particular in this matter? Who? And what does this indicate about how I feel about these incidents of violence?


What voices have spoken into my life over the course of all the years (media, books, family, friends, mentors, leaders, music, leaders)? Can I identify whether I’ve listened to an equal number of voices of color as to white voices? If I can’t say that is so, why? (furthermore, there are more POC in the world as a whole, so in reality, the percentage could arguably be higher in POC if I were actively practicing diversity of information acquisition.)

If you made it this far, thank you for listening. If you want to tell me some about your own journey surrounding these issues, I’d love to hear from you, either in the comments or via private messaging.

May we somehow find peace in our world.

Comments

Popular Posts