With all the protests over the deaths of George Floyd and other black men and women, I am in shock once again that anyone could consider another human being as less than another.
Naive perhaps as this is nothing new, people have been looked upon, judged, and punished because of the colour of their skin forever. But I’m white and I’m privileged, and could easily live in a bubble of ignorance if I wanted to. (Privilege offers that choice.)
This issue is way too big to solve on this page, or anyone else’s page for that matter. It’s complicated and is fuelled by the emotions of years of ignorance and acceptance of what is right under our noses.
So I’m ok being shocked and sickened, and I’m ok voicing my outrage and disgust about what’s happening in our communities. As Desmond Tutu suggests, there is no room for neutrality. You see the injustice and you act on it, or you keep quiet and let it continue.
I am also ok looking at this issue from what each of us can do about it, where we can each take responsibility for our part of allowing things to have gotten so far away from what we know is right and just. We all know deep down what believe and value, right? It’s the fear that we allow to get in our way.
What might our collective world look like if we decided that regardless of race, gender, or religion, we were all the same? Human beings with beating hearts and loving families. Human beings with the need for connection, acceptance and love. Human beings with the same intelligence and integrity that we consider ourselves to have. Human beings with the same need for jobs, food, shelter and money in their jeans. Human beings with the right to respectful treatment by all social and justice institutions.
What might we be doing, how might we be treating each other on a personal and on a political level? We don’t have to be the one standing with a megaphone getting the crowd fired up in protest. We can do what we know is right for us.
No one thinks they are racist but this is another reminder to take a very long, hard look at the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that racism shows the up in your world and where you can step up and say a strong no to yourself and others around you about any kind of inequality.
With the divisions among us, a friend of mine shared that her heart is hurting from educating her 7 year old son on police force corruption and systemic racism. She says that he needs to know the world he’s in and we need to do better.
I agree. A collective no to injustice (big or small) is a collective yes to equality.
And we all need to do better.
xo Dianna
