"Not everything that has been faced can be changed but nothing can be changed until it is faced."
~James Baldwin
OK 2020 clearly you are determined to wake us up in every way you can. Have not been happy with you thus far but maybe, just maybe, the lessons you are sending our way might just steer that arc Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of over 50 years ago when he said
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Justice, however, does not come flying through your cell phone-there is no app for that.
So how does change happen? How do you dismantle 400 years of hate, anger, intolerance, trauma and racism. You can't. Racism will not disappear in a week or two, a month or two, year or two or decade or two. It does not leave us with just outrage and protest and prayers-if only it could. There is no flip of a switch. No instant makeover of a society, or its residents.
Racism is systemically embedded in every corner of our world. It surfaces in very high profile and horrifying ways, as we have seen again and again and again and again... til a nation already exhausted and in fear for where this society is heading has stopped, moved outside their lockdowns, and exclaimed collectively, painfully, and with clear purpose-enough!
Racism, however, does not begin or end on the streets. Perhaps it is when it isn't making headlines -when someone crosses the street, when someone is followed around a department store or has to wait to be served, when someone is walking in a park to be with nature, when someone just attempts to live their life and is threatened for the simplest of acts...all because of the color of skin, this is when racism can be seen for what it is- normalized. Shopping while black, eating while black, driving while black... breathing while black-all a "crime".
Over 50 years after Selma and we are still here. The surface may look different, there may be opportunities there weren't 50 years ago, but the institutionalization of racism remains and one could argue has strengthened. With every step forward there is a counter step driven by ignorance and fear.
Step back and ask how much sense that makes. We know people who live in white skin don't get followed, pulled over, denied access, turned down, let down, shut down. Their children are safe. Their opportunities are never impeded because of what they look like. Their lives are never in peril because of the color of their skin. They can live their life-there has never been a moment when their life was questioned, when their life didn't matter!
As a kid I believed something very simple. If I took a crayon and colored in my skin I would be just like my non-white friends. Easy stuff. The only difference, and I never saw it as a difference anymore than liking different flavored ice cream, was a pigment issue. I continue to walk through my life that way, but while I still like the idea of raising kids with this benign "theory" in the hope they will always carry it, as I still do, it took til I was in college to understand that I am not the same, crayon or no crayon. I can never be. I have never experienced life as a person of color.
I learned this lesson that changed me forever while sitting in a lecture hall in a course on Women and African Americans in American Cinema. We screened a film that portrayed a white police officer raping a black woman while her children were in the next room. Shocking, sickening, heart breaking...for the women of color in that room it literally left them torn to their core. Many had to leave in physical and emotional distress. While I sat and watched friends get up and leave that hall I sat there. I stayed. I was disgusted by the scene but I wasn't broken or traumatized by it, it wasn't part of my experience. It was horrific and it haunted me, but it was on a screen not on my street. I was, and am, a comfortable white woman, with a heart and a brain for social justice, but not the experience of personal injustice. From that day I understood that though I can be infuriated by wrong, fight my heart out for right, study history, try to teach that history and work to repair that history, I can never own the experiences I have not lived... and there is the ONE difference I acknowledge. No one will ever keep their eye on me as I walk through Bloomingdales. No one will ever ask me why I am sitting somewhere, going somewhere, walking somewhere. No one will ever question my right to be. I can go through my life without fear of who I am being an issue for anyone. I will always be able to breathe.
"Nobody's Free Until Everybody's Free...
It is time for America to get it right"
It is time for America to get it right"
~Fannie Lou Hamer
So what do we do next in this extraordinary moment. Does a generation of instant gratification have the patience and the tolerance to sustain the work that has to happen for change to take hold. There is no magic wand here, no fairy godmother of racial justice, no Instagram or Tweet that erases and builds for you. 400 years of history to swallow...but first that history needs to be understood and accepted and then throw the doors open to reveal what that history has left in its wake. You have to change systems, you have to change the culture, you have to change people's understanding, their minds, their hearts. You have to actually stop right where you are right now and look, and listen , and talk. None of this will be easy and there are so many you will never reach but it is the work everyone must do or we lose the moment we have to influence that arc, to make sure those lives lost mattered.
I believe and always have that change happens from outside in, and my hope is that is what has begun. This has to start at every level, institutional and personal. Criminal Justice reform, police reform, corporate responsibility...in sports, retail, food and hospitality, schools,healthcare...if you start with systems and institutions you begin to move the needle. Dismantle the school to prison pipeline. Examine the inside structure of organizations and then make the changes no matter how simple at first to be fair and equitable. Ensure that everyone has access to clean drinking water, nutrition, education, fair wages, safe streets, quality healthcare and information, and that no one is ever denied the fundamental right to vote. Overwhelming, perhaps, but if we start under our own roof, in our own yard, on our own street, in our own community, in our everyday life...maybe we do have a start!
Will you change the anger and hate -no, but that comes with a resetting of the norm and acceptance of what that norm must be. It comes when the people making decisions, the people who are charged with change and the implementation of change, reflect that change. It comes when each of us make the conscious decision to learn, to listen to care and to simply do better.
So, why be hopeful amidst such ingrained hate and racism that seems to have no end? Hope I see is the only choice here. Even with hearts and heads in the right place our generation never got it right but we made promises and there is a generation that wants those promises kept!
Yes, I am hopeful, but I am also white so hope is yet another thing that I am privileged with and I recognize that hope is not something that anyone of color reaches for easily. Maybe the faces in the streets this past week will help. Maybe the acknowledgment that there is in fact so much work to be done and that so many are realizing they have to do that work will spark the global conversations that implement change. Maybe a world that has been forced by a pandemic to stop in place can see that we simply cannot go on as we have.
What do we do? Well, a hashtag alone won't do anything but get you a cool T shirt. A yard sign on your lawn or a bumper sticker doesn't do it either, though far be it from me to discourage expression-go for it! This is going to be a bit more heavy lifting than a donation too-though go do that as well!!!
Ask yourself the hard questions-look at your life and your living. Be uncomfortable with the answers and then be better from what you see and what you learn and what you can do to move your own needle forward.
Have the hard conversation with your friends, your family,yourself and especially with people of color.
Learn the history. Know the ugly truth of this country and know the heroic lives that have worked to push through and break open spaces once denied.
Listen. Listen. Listen. It is through listening to the stories and experiences of those who live the truth of racial injustice as much as they breath that you can even begin to understand how much ground there is to repair.
Though my crayon box is always filled with color,and hope, I know a color blind society may never happen but my belief is at this time, and for every time, that we can come to a norm that color does not define anyone's right to live their life. Does this generation that gives us such hope right now have the courage and the stamina this will take? They are a generation that has only known dramatic events, all witnessed on their phones. Yet they know how to use that technology to mobilize, influence, speak up and yell out. They do not want a status quo they want a future. So, they are in charge of the very brave and bold task of realizing this hope. They either understand, or are willing to do the work, and to speak out that Yes! Black Lives Matter, because they know that all lives are connected and that we cannot say all lives matter until in fact, all lives matter! All people of color have a history, and experiences that must be seen, acknowledged and recognized and held as sacred as any person's life and experience. Start there and we start the work to change, and that is my hope.
"America changed – and has always changed – because young people dared to hope. Democracy isn’t about relying on some charismatic leader to make changes from on high. It’s about finding hope in ourselves, and creating it in others. Especially in a time like this. You don’t always need hope when everything’s going fine. It’s when things seem darkest – that’s when you need it the most.
As
someone once said – hope is not a lottery ticket; it’s a hammer for us
to use in a national emergency; to break the glass, sound the alarm, and
sprint into action.
That’s
what hope is. It’s not the blind faith that things will get better.
It’s the conviction that with effort, and perseverance, and courage, and
a concern for others – things can get better.
That remains the truest part of our American story."
~President Barack Obama to the Class of 2020
Resources for Teaching and Learning and Talking:
As a children's media creator I have always believed that one of the best ways to introduce kids to hard subjects, or to have hard conversations, at any age, is to start with a story, a book, a film a play, a piece of music...that centers around lives and experiences that can be shared and discussed. Certainly with young children books can connect the dots and help them see their own world through the eyes of the characters in the stories, and that absolutely can be held true for kids of all ages! Here are some great places to explore and support in their great work to help us all start conversations!
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