I’m in a weird place, blog-wise. I’ve enjoyed the 2020 re-boot, and I’ve been pretty consistent with my posts (at least one, usually two a month). But I missed June, despite a head full of thoughts (some of which I even managed to jot down in my journal). I’ve got at least four separate blog posts germinating, with bits and pieces of ideas scribbled frantically before I lose them to the Swiss cheese that is my memory these days. So far, I’ve assembled some random words comprising my take on human evolution, white male insecurity (that’s a juicy one), how pro-choice is the REAL pro-life, and, on the lighter side, the seeds of a piece on why I enjoy reading bios and autobios of artists, writers and musicians (among others – or, as we say in legal docs, inter alios).
But the bulk of my ruminating time has been spent on race relations and the despicable gaps in social justice in this country and what can be done to “fix it” – understanding full well that it ain’t gonna be easy to fix hundreds of years of broken. And here’s where my blog problem comes in.
I started my blog with the intention of sharing my thoughts with the world – not that I believed my thoughts to be any more valuable than anyone else’s (or that anyone would even read them, for that matter), but I had thoughts, and I kind of wanted to share them, primarily as a way of making a barely-more-than-insignificant contribution to the betterment of myself and mankind in the process. I mean, I have to do SOMETHING to make the world a better place – as far as I can tell, that’s why humans are on this planet: to do our individual parts to improve ourselves, somehow, to move civilization forward.
Unfortunately, the current climate is not the place for a 60-year-old white woman, who has lived in privileged white communities on Long Island, New York most of her life, to weigh in with her two cents about Black lives mattering. My two cents are less than insignificant, except as an ally and supporter of my fellow humans who might not have been as fortunate as I was in the accident of my birth. There are all these articles and Facebook posts asking, “What can white people do to help the Black Lives Matter movement? How can white people make a difference in this racist system so deeply embedded in the fabric of this country?” (and really the world, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves – there’s too much work to be done HERE and NOW let alone repairing the damage of centuries of worldwide European colonialism).
And I WANT to help. I WANT things to be different. The wrongness of how Black people are treated in this supposedly “free” country is viscerally disturbing to me. BUT IT IS NOT MY STORY TO TELL. We had a “town hall” company-wide Zoom call at my firm a couple of weeks ago, which was a positive gesture by all means, but a solid third of the speakers were white people (white WOMEN, mostly), who, in my opinion, we have been hearing way too much from all our damn lives. [An aside: I’d rather listen to women than men, but still . . . ]
Now is the time for me to LISTEN, to read all I can and absorb the stories and dreams and hopes of Black people in this country, to shut my mouth and turn off my right hand (so to speak) and just respectfully listen and hear what is being said by the people whose story it is. I hadn’t even realized there was a “Black national anthem” until I read the other day that it would be played before every game of Week 1 of the NFL season. And the first time I realized the significance of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” – the poem written by NAACP leader James Weldon Johnson in the late 1800’s that was later set to music by his brother, which is considered the Black national anthem – was in the beautiful Juneteenth Google doodle, of all places (drawings by artist Loveis Wise and narrated by LeVar Burton [https://www.google.com/doodles/155th-anniversary-of-juneteenth]). See what you learn when you listen?
A particularly good resource for beginning one’s listening/reading journey is Nikole Hannah-Jones. She spoke at a function sponsored by my company and I was so moved and impressed by her. (Also saw her a couple of nights later on “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah”.) A helpful introduction to her thinking and writing is her recent opinion column in The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/24/magazine/reparations-slavery.html) but she has also curated a comprehensive (and ongoing) compendium of writing and thought on the subject of slavery and its consequences in the United States called “The 1619 Project” (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html).
Other useful actions to do my part to be supportive: voting for the correct political candidates, making financial contributions to worthy causes, and speaking up in private settings where injustices are being done and horrible things are being said – maybe more out of ignorance than malice, although the damage is often the same.
But the big one, for now, is just to keep listening. And reading: I actually splurged on a New York Times subscription – it was $1 a week for four weeks; how could I resist? – and there is so much good writing in there, especially the Opinion pieces. Honor Jones, in her preface to the Opinion page in the Times on June 26, 2020, talked about how “too much opinion writing is about trying to make already outraged people slightly more outraged.” But she also said that the best pieces — in particular, the powerful piece by poet Caroline Randall Williams that Ms. Jones was highlighting, “You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body is a Confederate Monument” (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/opinion/confederate-monuments-racism.html?campaign_id=39&emc=edit_ty_20200626&instance_id=19774&nl=opinion-today®i_id=91333871&segment_id=31925&te=1&user_id=07f4d325b3799f81682f40699430d7cf) – “make readers see the world differently.”
In order for me to do that with my own writing, I need to do a lot more reading – and listening – right now. I will write when I am ready.
“Tell me more . . . “
Life Considered 