Unlike most, I've pretty much enjoyed this reprieve from real life. While I hate that I've lost people to the virus and others have taken ill, I can't complain about my personal existence through this time. I have not been as fortunate as others when it comes to the financial bailout, but I have had enough money to get by. Much like before the virus, that's how I live my life. There is, however, frustration mounting. It is not coming out of boredom or an inability to live normally, but one borne out of personal failure. Self-reflection, mostly positive, has taken place daily during this hiatus from normalcy, but then George Floyd was murdered, spawning emotions I've felt often, but not like this. How many times have I said, "Enough is enough?" How often, weeks later, was I saying it again?
Last night, I watched Ava DuVernay's 13th, a documentary on the 13th Amendment and its failure, due to a single loophole, which allowed slavery to continue, through a series of reforms, that simply renamed and rebranded our country's biggest flaw. The documentary brought together much of what I already knew and this is precisely what has stuck with me. If I knew this, and many others knew this, why is this "new?" Why is this documentary so important if it merely repeats what America already knows? The reason, if you've not seen it, is that it brings to light the systemic failure without blaming a political side. It isn't the party line or the individuals, but simply a system that is set up to fail the very people it claims to protect. As DuVernay explains in her interview with Oprah Winfrey (both the interview and film are on Netflix), reform is actually the problem. What is needed is reconstruction. Throughout the documentary, we're shown how the demonization of Black people was created with the birth of this nation (pun, firmly intended if you've seen the film) and has actually become so powerful that even black people believe it. The disparity in prison population is well-documented, but if there is a single statistic that comes from this film that will stick with you forever, it's that 97% of the inmates never had their cases go to trial. As Charles Rangel, explains, this is human rights failure.
So why does this frustrate me?
I'm going to be 50-years-old in less than a month and while I can proudly claim I've never been or felt the hate of racism, I've also enjoyed my whiteness to such an extent, I've allowed others to fix it. Clearly, they haven't. I've called out racism, but never once followed up with anything that could be considered activism. I've protested, although nothing like what we see today. I've written politicians, rarely getting responses. I've talked to Black people and tried to empathize something I fundamentally cannot understand/ This is where the frustration comes from. I can call myself an ally, a friend, a supporter and be there in body and or spirit. I can understand the history of a system built around oppression. I can understand the roots of racism, both individual and systemic, but I cannot understand the feeling. If I could, I would know what to do. I don't. I've begun to ask, embarrassingly, fifty years too late. The answers, so far, are not what I expected. "Spend money in Black businesses," Mentor Black youth," "Donate what you can," and oddly "Stop telling us to vote, until you understand how that system is geared to oppress us too."
What can I do? I know what we can do, but we needs everyone to ask the first question.
To do so, WE the People, need to realize, we've lived every day on this Earth living a lie. A lie instilled in us in schools, at home, in the news, and by every person in authority. We have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is our fundamental freedom as Americans. What they never teach us is that this is not for everyone. It is ONLY for us. US, us, White People!
I'm frustrated! What can I do?
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