His Take:
So, life is kinda sorta slowly getting back to the way it was before the pandemic. Where I live we still have a lot of restrictions (I can’t tell you how many times people I don’t know have taken my temperature with one of those things that scan your forehead) and back home, there doesn’t seem to be any. I hope everybody uses common sense, respects others and for the love of God, please wash your hands. But, it was during the pandemic that everything seemed to go ass over elbows.
It started with the murder of a man by a real shit excuse for a human being. That led to protests, that led to looting, which leads to millions of dollars worth of damage done. There’s a clip on Youtube of people smashing into a Best Buy, running in and coming out with really big TVs, speakers, etc, and that Best Buy was less than three miles from my house. Somebodies gonna have a nice Christmas. It was during that time that Sue emailed me and asked “What’s it like down there?” I answered “Like the movie Robocop only with no Robocop”, and that was pretty accurate. Businesses boarding up windows, closing (and NOT due to COVID). It was a big mess. I think that the worst part about it is that in a few years, people aren’t going to remember so much the name of the man who was murdered, they’ll remember the looting and turning over of police cars and frankly, the chaos that was caused due to his murder. That’s truly the sad part.
And when the people of this country need to change to reflect that all men are created equal, everyone seems to be focused on how inappropriate the least important things are. Maybe the Quaker Oats company could put a few black kids through college who deserve to go but can’t afford it. HEY!!! How about donating some FOOD to some lower-income neighborhood shelters and residents.
Even though we've started a dialogue, we've still got a long way to go before ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony, and spoiler alert, that's never going to happen. That's the sad truth. As long as people look different in some way, there's always going to be bad feelings on somebody's part. We need to take baby steps before we try to full-on sprint.
To some up, everything’s a giant shit-storm and it’s gonna be that way for a while. But I believe deep in my heart that we’re going to come out of this better and hopefully, we’ll all be a little more tolerant.
Her Take:
Before we really dig in here, I’m going to ask you to pause for a minute and think about how really, amazingly well you did in the genetic lottery. Overall, that is. Your extremely low levels of melanin has plopped you firmly among the luckiest people, certainly in the United States, and possibly in most of the developed world.
Me too for that matter.
Now, yes, you and I have hard times. We might have a chronic illness, addiction, problems with our mental health… all kinds of things that make us feel decidedly unlucky… but basically never will the problems we’re having be related to the color of our skin. So pink, so privileged.
Yes, I’m being glib. I know. The fact is that I want to scream at you and then hug you and then cry and then scream some more and finish it all off with another long hug, more screaming, and some ice cream. I’m a little beside myself right now.
Last month (from the time I’m typing this) a police officer in Minneapolis knelt on the neck of a man named George Floyd for 8 minutes and 46 seconds and George passed from this earth. George’s soul departed his body on the street, in the middle of the day, all on camera.
At this point, people have been protesting across the country for over a month. There’s been looting, violence, and people arguing about statues while also maybe at least 5 black men have been lynched. Lynched. In 2020.
How are any of us supposed to know what to do with that information?
This is not a brag (believe me, it’s takes an embarrassing turn) but I had the chance to participate in a small protest here in my little Central Wisconsin town. It happened before they had arrested and charged the man who killed George Floyd, and, at least at that time, that’s why it felt right to protest. This is a very white place, and, predictably, it was a very white protest, but we showed up, held signs, and it felt like the first time in my life that I had ever consciously used my white privilege to do something useful.
Now, to be sure, I’ve definitely used my whiteness (and, I guess, Karen-ness) to say things like ‘Let me speak to your manager.’ and ‘Is this how you people do business?’ without realizing it. In fact, I realize now that in the 748 years I’ve roamed the earth, I’ve felt pretty good about speaking up when my appetizers are cold, I get fries instead of onions rings, or there’s something wrong on my bill, (Yes, these are mostly food related examples… I see that… now..) but I haven’t done a hell of a lot (or anything) with my annoying justice warrior tendencies to actually make the world better.
That’s all on me. You might be white too, but I’m owning this one fully.
So, standing on the corner near the courthouse, holding a sign that said ‘End Racism Now’ (because I didn’t know what to paint on my sign and that seemed like something people couldn’t really disagree with.) was my chance to finally do something knowing that, as a white-lady-of-a-certain-age the most I would get was a shake of the head and a wry smile from the police if I even encountered them. That’s White Privilege.
There was chanting (It was my first protest. There’s probably always chanting, but I don’t know.) and one of the chants was simply ‘SAY HIS NAME’ and the response was ‘GEORGE FLOYD!!’. So I yelled, as best I could, along with everyone else, but I wasn’t very loud, because every time I was supposed to yell, I started crying instead. I wanted to appear strong and resolute, I really did, and I wanted my voice to be heard, but every time I had the chance all I could hear in my head was ‘He’s dead. A cop killed him.’
Another thing the crowd chanted was ‘No Justice, No Peace’, and I mostly failed at that one too. At first it was because I was trying to say the words, and also trying to process what they meant..
No Justice, No Peace.
It took an irritatingly long time for my brain to understand that I was saying (shouting) that people will keep protesting, keep fighting, until something is done. And it took even longer for me to understand that, yes, we were talking about George Floyd in that moment, but it was so much more than that one moment, and it was going to be a seriously long and painful fight if we were truly going to ever see Justice. I stood on that street corner, yelling as best I could, all the while finally realizing that that George Floyd was not the first black person who died at the hands of police officers who may not suffer consequences.
It wasn’t until I had that all worked out in my head that I could start to consider what I was going to do about it.
Before we get there, you may be wondering how a George Floyed Protest in my tiny Wisconsin town was received, and it’s probably not what you’d expect. Just like everything in the world, there were a few loud and angry detractors. People who took the time to shout things that most of us couldn’t even hear over the sound of traffic or understand anyway so, as much as I’m glad they got the chance to exercise their freedom of speech, all I could hear was that they were being hateful and it was pretty easy to ignore. Especially because the VAST MAJORITY of people honked (in a happy peep-peep kind of way), waved, gave us the thumbs up, and smiled. People my kid’s ages, people my age, people my parent’s age and beyond. There was a short, tense moment when I thought a VERY elderly man was going to run into some of the group but it turned out that he was trying to negotiate the roundabout in a station wagon pulling a trailer and roll down his window to give us a thumbs up at the same time and he just wandered a little too close to the middle. It gave me hope to see that the people of my little Wisconsin town understood what we were doing and supported it the way they did.
Hey, listen, I have a lot to learn, right? I’ve assumed for a long time (don’t ask how long, that’s rude) that I wasn’t a part of the problem because I haven’t done anything to cause it.
But there’s the rub, I also haven’t done anything to solve it. I’ve been afraid to say something when I hear a racist joke, because I don’t want to be ostracized… and, because sometimes the kinds of stereotypes I grew up with meant I actually did find them kind of funny. That’s not cool, but it’s the truth.
I’ve been afraid to learn. To seek out and understand the history of Black, Indingeneous and People of Color in America because it might make white ‘heroes’ look like villains. To look honestly at what people mean by the phrase ‘systematic racism’ because I might learn that I’m benefiting from that system.
That’s it, fellow White People, I was afraid. I still am.
But now I’m afraid instead that we’ll all waste this moment. That we’ll hunker down and pray for the protests to end so we can ‘go back to normal’... because normal is wrong.
So here’s what I’m going to do about it, and I invite you to join me:
- I’m going to actively learn what my white privilege mean and how I can use it to make the world better.
- I’m going to put my money where my morals are and find people and causes that are worthy of my investment.
- And I’m going to show love and compassion, not just to the communities of color that have been mistreated, but to other White People who might be waiting to take this same journey, and just don’t know it yet.
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