A Long-ago Graveyard of Privilege

I didn't grow up in Georgia. I grew up in Seaford, Delaware. Recent social intensities resurfaced a memory buried in a long-ago graveyard of privilege. White privilege. This post triggered a need to (start to) express that resurfaced memory. The memory may be flawed, and certainly narrow, but the essence, I'm confident, it's not.

I had to dig out my 1973 high school yearbook to find his full name. I had to. I remembered his first name, it was Leslie, and he was a senior when I was a freshman. He was a star academic and athlete headed to college... headed toward a future. Only he wasn't.

The short story goes like this: He went fishing with his to-be father-in-law. There was an accident. He drowned. He was a young black man recently engaged to his white high school sweetheart.

I remember the hushed murmurs of young and old alike that floated on the undercurrents in the underworld social structure of that little town. And that's as much attention as it got. Life, at least the whites lives, went on in usualness.

This teenage memory, buried in that ugly graveyard resurrected over these past few weeks. And with it the shame, the horror, the complicity of that little town. And of mine.

I hear and see a lot of talk about history these days. There should be, as the lies of the so-called victors, with all the shame, horror, complicity and worse are resurrected, and rightfully burned, and torn down to a rubble. A rubble from which, if we choose, we might build something else. Something better. Something just. Something that, when it weeps, it weeps with joy, with love, and not with shame, horror, and complicity.

There's more work for me right here in this memory, and elsewhere. If you're white and you're reading this, I ask you, no - beg you - to do the work as well.

🕊

With that, I bid you the capacity to carve out time and space to enJOY the last of the vernal breezes, and to light a blaze to the arrival of the summer sun that burns to ash all that does not nurture and sustain. All.

My White World - A Personal Perspective

For several years I've been consciously challenging myself to be a better person. Specifically, to be a better white person. And it is a challenge. I struggle with the racism that bubbles up from somewhere deep within my own entitled white genetics, my own privileged white life. I gotta own this shit if I want to add some value to this flawed world I live in. I gotta.

I realize it's always been a challenge. I just didn't realize how deep my own shit was buried. How deep my own shit was rooted. And I'm still digging. I wish more folks who look like me would do the same. I wish more folks who look like me would be willing just willing, for fuck's sake to discuss just discuss, for fucks sake race. After all, it's up to us to to make right what we've made wrong. And that truth alone is a truth that too many folks who look like me can't seem to even acknowledge just acknowledge, for fuck's sake.

Yeah. In the name of all that is sacred and holy, I swear I know two (maybe three) folks who look like me who are genuinely willing just willing, for fuck's sake to share candid words around the topic of race without getting all fragile 'n' shit.

I reflect back to the onset of the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the weird, awkward, vile 'n' vengeful exchanges that took place... an exchange expressed by a smugly smiling white woman, another exchange expressed by an indignant white woman who waxed woke, and not long after more than one exchange expressed by self satisfied blue liners who denied their own racist mantra, symbol (not to mention "flag desecration"), and their own racism. Such exchanges continue. They continue with subtly worded white arrogance of self-righteous entitlement to be racist while declaring they are not. Well, they are. As is the flag mentioned, sans the blue line, but that's a whole other disquieting deliberation.

Some of these people were acquaintances who I've since trimmed from my life. And others are folks I've considered friends, some who've been trimmed, and others who may still need trimming because they're consistently unwilling to make any acknowledgment of their own racism, let alone take any active responsibility for their own racism. They simply will not acknowledge acknowledge for fuck's sake that it's even a thing.

I want to cut them out of my life, yet I feel held by a hope that keeping a door open might yield some willingness, discussion, and acknowledgment that gives way to efforts to heal the wounds of our own making, efforts that are called for, and overdue. After all, I consider this group friends. But... maybe they're not. ::shrugs::

Yet, if we - the folks who look like me - are sincere in our desire to heal the system, we must be sincere in our desire to heal our selves as well.

In any event, it's exhausting. Even this small, personal stuff. If you have any pigmentation, I don't need to tell you that. If you look like me, I do.

I must.

And I will.

Whether you like it our not.

Because it's long overdue and there's too much at stake. Too much  for fuck's sake.

Even Nona Gaia says so.

To be continued, at my own pace, if I'm strong enough... and brave enough... 

Peace.  🕊