“Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn.”
Those words from MLK would have hurt me and/or (I’m embarrassed to tell you) insulted me just a year ago… and then we witnessed George Floyd’s murder … not just his murder, but the way it came to pass, and not just the way, but by whom - by a policeman. A policeman, and 3 more policemen standing close by.
How much could we learn from those 8 minutes if we consistently exercised our truest intention to comprehend, to venture into feeling, to move beyond comfortable compassion towards and into the empathy that exhausts the heart while it does the work of healing our roots, healing the wounds we don’t even know that we have, that we live with, move with, walk and talk with?
I don’t know the full and complete answers, or if there even are full and complete answers, but I do know that the more I listen, the more I read, the more moxie I muster to learn about the America Black people live in, compared to the America I live in… the more I succeed at catching myself in “programmed” conclusions and responses… the more adept I am becoming, slowly but truly, at reframing, even UNframing previously foregone conclusions and responses … I am gaining a liberation I never knew I needed… waking up to the manipulative programming that’s been woven into the commerce, the education, the society, the recreation, the blood and the bones of everything that I never paid attention to … ever … at all.
Please stay in touch via Facebook or Instagram.
--- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/onewhitewoman/message
Share this post