Those early explorers, navigators who sailed by the seat of their pants, their compass was a star and their map was the sky. They could say literally what I often joke, “I am not lost, I just don’t know where I am.” Now in the days of Pandemic, it is not a joke. When I wake up and look around, evert day looks like the day before; nothing but deep water in every direction. I know the sun up’s in the east, down’s in the west and at night, one particular star marks north. It is hard to know where you are in a storm so we pray for fair weather. In the days of Prince Henry the Navigator, you needed safe harbor somewhere along the way, a place to take on fresh water and ride out storms. This odyssey, this series of wanderings and hardships puts shelter from any number of storms high on my wish list.
I have a FaceBook account but it’s under an alias, with only 9 friends. I might click ‘like’ on one of their posts but I can’t remember the last time I made one of my own. Two FB friends shouldn’t be on there. I have enough contact with them without FB. The others, it’s about the only way I can check up on them. One of those is a sweetheart from Grand Rapids, MI. Last week she ‘Shared’ some clever insight that got my attention. When irony and sarcasm are coupled with a revelation, I pay attention. The movement, Black Lives Matter has opened white eyes that have been clouded over, either by self serving denial or simply overlooked in a fathomless, cultural blind spot. I have been emerging from the blind spot for a long time, even before the George Floyd murder. I don’t know the original source of the post but I love its economy, no wasted words, nothing left unsaid.
“Black lives matter ‘cause all didn’t cover Black when y’all said; All Men Are Created Equal. Black lives matter ‘cause all didn’t cover Black when y’all said; With Liberty & Justice For All. Black lives matter ‘cause y’all still struggling with the definition of all.”
What made this one different; Covid-19 and George Floyd exploded simultaneously on the same stage. Many if not most white people consider themselves allies with people of color. Their sentiment would seem to be: “Those people demonstrating, I hope they keep it peaceful and they get what they want but they don’t need me.” They talk the talk but feel no need to walk the walk. What the pandemic did was to strip the pretense of emotional distance and physical safety away from the white majority. Infection and a failing economy are very real, waiting just outside the door. With everyone either disempowered or at risk, the disproportional Covid-19 infection rate among people of color is both obvious and significant. Hundreds of years of prejudice and systemic inequality has left African Americans at large (13%) of the population, predisposed to the virus. Adjusted per capita, by age, Blacks have been dying at a rate more than 3 times greater than whites.
Without warning, too grizzly to defend and no time to fabricate an excuse, the video of George Floyd’s killing swept the internet and aired on every news program, we’ve all seen it too many times. It is not this murder that energized blacks and whites alike. George Floyd was the catalyst that triggered a response to tens of thousands of similar murders that stretch back to reconstruction, back to Jim Crow and the ever active masters of white supremacy. It affected me enough to explode my blind spot. A lot of us discovered our blind spot. If this is my country and I matter, then Black Lives Matter as well. I know, I know; all lives matter but the white ones are not subjected to the school to prison pipeline, not systemically funneled into predatory payday loan offices, owned by the same white people who own the bank where they can't qualify for a loan. They are not exploited by local courts that use bail bonds to punish the poor, to meet the city budget without raising taxes on property owners, not skillfully funneled into ghettos through housing covenants. This shameful story keeps on unraveling, it goes as deep into America’s dirty laundry as you care to dig. I love my country but I’ve moved through the blind spot and like losing one’s virginity, it can not be restored.
Now that I’ve stirred up shit that we (white people) have collectively, passively chosen to ignore, racists bigots who can’t function outside their comfort zone, they will craft arguments and logic that condemn me as a racial traitor. It validates pride with White Supremacy. “All they need to do is stop talking that jive shit, pull their pants up and stop killing each other. Blacks would do just fine if they start acting like white people.” Wow! There it is. Blame the victim; every playground bully, every lawyer knows how that works. Just sayin’ . . . we white people, we matter too but we can’t rationalize our failure to define the word, ‘all’.
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