The first thing I wrote in my journal this morning was “God, I am sad and weary.”
Over the past few days, ultimately over the past few months, there has just been so much visceral hate. The hate stems from racism, the hate stems from the pigment in someone’s skin, but what has made me so weary is that there are so many people who can’t hear how crazy it is to hate for this reason. Would you throw out an orange if it was a bit brighter from the rest? I sometimes just can not wrap my head around the hatred. It seems so visceral that yesterday I was overwhelmed with a sense of hopelessness that I have not felt in a long time.
Once again I am reminded that I have white privilege, ultimately I could go to sleep and never think of any of this again. I am choosing to see this racism, I am choosing to see this hate. I don’t live it. I have raised a black son, but I don’t live it. Weary, hopeless, I don’t have the right, I need to pull myself out of this and remember that I am an ally and I don’t get to quit. I need to find hope.
What I have come to truly understand in a way that I never have is that the rising up of this hatred, because it is being encouraged by the leaders of countries, is just the rising of what was always there. These feelings are not new, they were buried. Buried beneath social politeness of racial slurs, racist jokes, beneath government policies that treat black and brown bodies differently, beneath brotherhoods and sisterhoods of clubs and police forces with far too much power, buried by good meaning folks who have black friends and thought racism was dead. What we are experiencing as a society is a mirror of who we are in the people we call radicals. I am not one to get political, but I have always said Trump didn’t create this, as a society we created him. Our deep underbelly of hatred has emerged, what are we going to do about it?
This is where I have found my hope. You can not deal with anything unless you can see it and face it. The unseen enemy is the worst kind of enemy. My hope is that most of us despise this mirror of ourselves so much that we begin to make real changes in our lives. I don’t know what those changes could be for you, but I do know that a great place to start if you believe that you have white privilege is here.
There are many items on that list of resources and I try my best to either listen to something or read something every day. I also take that information and try to find a Canadian source that might be directly related.
My hope is found in the quote at the beginning of this blog by Richard Wagamese. Is to begin to see everyone through the eyes of wonder, to connect and to understand the person beneath the persona. The person with the beliefs that differ from me, the person I know was born in the same image as God as I. To understand and to know who they are, to understand their hatred. My desire is to connect people to other people so that they can begin to see each other beyond all of the social media rhetoric. I don’t know exactly how this looks yet, but it will be my small piece in trying to bring peace. My feeling is that the only way to the other side is understanding, we tried burying it all and look at what happened it arose once again from the smoldering ashes above.
I feel sad, weary, rageful, hopeless and hopeful and I think that is a good place. I do have great faith, maybe that helps too.
In love, light and laughter
Karen
