Ensler writes: "Feigning ignorance or a lack of complicity is no longer
acceptable - we must all work together to counter endemic prejudice in
America."
Black Lives Matter protesters. (photo: Taylor Nyman/AP)
It's Time for White People to Reckon With Racism
By Eve Ensler, Guardian UK
13 July 16
Feigning ignorance or a lack of complicity is no longer acceptable - we must
all work together to counter endemic prejudice in America
It is time for a collective reckoning, a moral accounting, a radical
self-appraisal and calling out, fellow white Americans. Our explicit and
implicit participation in crimes against black people has gone on for too
long.
What allows us to justify murder? What selfish gene prevents us from
intervening in the face of blatant injustice? What history of lies and
distortions have we sold ourselves that keep us in our isolated boxes of
superiority and denial? What truth would we have to tell about ourselves to
unravel these strangulating tentacles of racism and violence?
What systems would we have to abandon or lose or claim as bankrupt?
Which one of us hasn't seen the outright slaughter going on in the recent
videos of police shootings, and the videos before them, and the lynchings
before them?
Who doesn't know the history of the very intentional policies that created
abject conditions that so many black people are forced to live in: the
poverty, the lack of opportunities, education, jobs, the exclusion? Which
one of us doesn't understand the daily terror that occupies the lifeblood of
every black woman, man and child in America which inhibits their ability to
breath, live and thrive? Which one of us hasn't noticed the prisons filled
with millions of black folks who are held and incarcerated at a rate 14
times higher than whites?
And if we don't see or know these things, why the hell don't we? Why have we
created and allowed such a distance between us and the black people around
us? Why have we inured ourselves to their suffering, their sorrow, their
fear, their desires, their dreams?
It's time now to put our white asses on the line for the freedom of our
black sisters and brothers - time to be willing to forfeit our privilege and
status; time to admit the failure of a racist ideology and framework. Time
to stop criticizing the tactics or methods or emotions of revolutionary
movements that rise with bravery, heart vision, passion, patience and heroic
kindness in response to the most grotesque atrocities, murders,
degradations, terror, isolation and exclusion.
Because nothing will change until we are all willing to shut up and listen
and serve, willing to stop making it about us: our feelings, our hurts, our
guilt. Until we are willing to say this structure that we created and
mastered has failed, to stop saying that agonizing and aggressive phrase
"all lives matter" when we know full well they don't, even to many of us.
Until we are willing to be wrong, willing to be lost, willing to be quiet.
Can we be quiet? Can we shut up? Can we just shut up for one moment, shut up
and stop talking about us? How the pain and righteous rage of black people
affects us? How blamed we feel, how no matter what we do it stays the same,
how they will never forgive us blah blah blah. Can we step out of the center
of the picture for enough time for a healing to happen?
Can we own our selfishness and fear and need for comfort and our desperation
for power? Can we give ourselves in service without directing or
determining? Can we walk behind black folks or beside them? Can we allow
ourselves to get close, real close, and rub up against the burning pain of
those we have abused and enslaved, raped, incarcerated, shot, lynched,
ignored and degraded? Can we die that death and not make black people
responsible for our guilt and neglect?
Can we stop punishing people we have harmed for reminding us we have harmed
them? Can we be that honest, that generous, that vulnerable, that humble
that we are able to provide support and kinship without being thanked or
getting credit? Can we serve without expecting to be worshipped? Can we stop
issuing instructions and offer our bodies for action instead? Can we make
this terrible wrong of racism the center of our thought and moral
occupation?
The truth is we are as much sinew as we are symbol. Our whiteness is our
skin color, but it's also a torn sheet draping the dead, a flag of privilege
that will not surrender, a town called separateness. Our whiteness is that
poisonous sky right before it rains, the color of shame.
So can we sit and be still for a minute and let the onerous truth and sorrow
wash over us? Then, in that cataclysmic silence, when we have touched into
the tidal wave of our responsibility, we will know what lengths we have to
go, what risks we will have to take to dismantle this mad hatred - and how
fiercely we will have to love to right this wrong.
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Black Lives Matter protesters. (photo: Taylor Nyman/AP)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/11/white-people-racism-am
ericahttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/11/white-people-raci
sm-america
It's Time for White People to Reckon With Racism
By Eve Ensler, Guardian UK
13 July 16
Feigning ignorance or a lack of complicity is no longer acceptable - we must
all work together to counter endemic prejudice in America
t is time for a collective reckoning, a moral accounting, a radical
self-appraisal and calling out, fellow white Americans. Our explicit and
implicit participation in crimes against black people has gone on for too
long.
What allows us to justify murder? What selfish gene prevents us from
intervening in the face of blatant injustice? What history of lies and
distortions have we sold ourselves that keep us in our isolated boxes of
superiority and denial? What truth would we have to tell about ourselves to
unravel these strangulating tentacles of racism and violence?
What systems would we have to abandon or lose or claim as bankrupt?
Which one of us hasn't seen the outright slaughter going on in the recent
videos of police shootings, and the videos before them, and the lynchings
before them?
Who doesn't know the history of the very intentional policies that created
abject conditions that so many black people are forced to live in: the
poverty, the lack of opportunities, education, jobs, the exclusion? Which
one of us doesn't understand the daily terror that occupies the lifeblood of
every black woman, man and child in America which inhibits their ability to
breath, live and thrive? Which one of us hasn't noticed the prisons filled
with millions of black folks who are held and incarcerated at a rate 14
times higher than whites?
And if we don't see or know these things, why the hell don't we? Why have we
created and allowed such a distance between us and the black people around
us? Why have we inured ourselves to their suffering, their sorrow, their
fear, their desires, their dreams?
It's time now to put our white asses on the line for the freedom of our
black sisters and brothers - time to be willing to forfeit our privilege and
status; time to admit the failure of a racist ideology and framework. Time
to stop criticizing the tactics or methods or emotions of revolutionary
movements that rise with bravery, heart vision, passion, patience and heroic
kindness in response to the most grotesque atrocities, murders,
degradations, terror, isolation and exclusion.
Because nothing will change until we are all willing to shut up and listen
and serve, willing to stop making it about us: our feelings, our hurts, our
guilt. Until we are willing to say this structure that we created and
mastered has failed, to stop saying that agonizing and aggressive phrase
"all lives matter" when we know full well they don't, even to many of us.
Until we are willing to be wrong, willing to be lost, willing to be quiet.
Can we be quiet? Can we shut up? Can we just shut up for one moment, shut up
and stop talking about us? How the pain and righteous rage of black people
affects us? How blamed we feel, how no matter what we do it stays the same,
how they will never forgive us blah blah blah. Can we step out of the center
of the picture for enough time for a healing to happen?
Can we own our selfishness and fear and need for comfort and our desperation
for power? Can we give ourselves in service without directing or
determining? Can we walk behind black folks or beside them? Can we allow
ourselves to get close, real close, and rub up against the burning pain of
those we have abused and enslaved, raped, incarcerated, shot, lynched,
ignored and degraded? Can we die that death and not make black people
responsible for our guilt and neglect?
Can we stop punishing people we have harmed for reminding us we have harmed
them? Can we be that honest, that generous, that vulnerable, that humble
that we are able to provide support and kinship without being thanked or
getting credit? Can we serve without expecting to be worshipped? Can we stop
issuing instructions and offer our bodies for action instead? Can we make
this terrible wrong of racism the center of our thought and moral
occupation?
The truth is we are as much sinew as we are symbol. Our whiteness is our
skin color, but it's also a torn sheet draping the dead, a flag of privilege
that will not surrender, a town called separateness. Our whiteness is that
poisonous sky right before it rains, the color of shame.
So can we sit and be still for a minute and let the onerous truth and sorrow
wash over us? Then, in that cataclysmic silence, when we have touched into
the tidal wave of our responsibility, we will know what lengths we have to
go, what risks we will have to take to dismantle this mad hatred - and how
fiercely we will have to love to right this wrong.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
