A: We grew up in a racist society. No matter how racist we think we're not, we’ve been pretty clueless. When I cautioned my kid to be careful at a protest, she said, "Well. Now you know how the parents of black kids feel every DAY." So. My mailing list is full of cool conscious primarily white women who sent their kids to diverse schools, and we likely have more black friends than our parents did, we've attended diversity trainings, we’ve read Toni Morrison and White Fragility and we voted for a black president, and of course no one on my email list would be racist, no way! But. The American system is permeated with racism. I believe it’s time to examine the stories we’ve believed about race. Unlearn them and understand where we got them. I think white women are afraid to feel the collective shame. I certainly am. It’s uncomfortable. I don’t want to know that I’m imbedded into a system that has caused suffering. But it’s also SO cool, because the collective is actually creating a more conscious world rather than playing out this horrible old story that we have outgrown, this old story that we were born into. Everything I just said, though, is considered hijacking the narrative. And it's also super privilegey to even have the IDEA that we can create our own reality. I can not imagine what it would feel like to NOT be able to create my own reality simply due to the color of my skin. Assuming that I can "create my own reality" is a privilege.
We were all born into this system and something about it does not work for "minorities" (see how we are writing a story in which there are more of "us," so "they" are the minority? It is just mind blowing to start to see the old stories we were taught, which simply don't work anymore.
I have experienced that We are One. And I understand that even THAT is super priviledgey. But the entire reason for yoga, as I experience it, is to have that knowledge, that felt experience, that humans are inherently Divine. And yes there are also some nice physical heath benefits too! So it is from that place that I want to share some enlightening but also entertaining suggestions. Most of us know nothing about history from a non-colonized perspective. The only way out is through. We are the ones we've been waiting for.
When “sheltering in place," for reasons I don’t actually understand, I felt compelled to learn about the Vietnam war. (I got really into it—major blog post coming soon.) So I was on a big 1968 retrospective during the lockdown, and when George Floyd was killed and the protests began, I couldn’t help but notice the parallels between now and 1968. Based on my deep dive into the ‘60s, here are some recommendations that offer a perspective that's valuable right now:
The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, free documentary on Amazon. Apparently, the FBI files have been opened because 50 years passed, and this film uses FBI documentation to illuminate the disparity between what I was taught about the Black Panthers as a kid (dangerous black guys, basically terrorists) versus what this organization actually was. It especially shows HOW THE FBI created lies about the Black Panthers that the newspapers then printed, leading every white person in the country to consider the Panthers dangerous. Actually, they were male citizens trying to peacefully protect their community from police violence. In 1968. Ultimately, the FBI broke into their pad and shot the leaders. (That could not happen with Black Lives Matter, because it intentionally has no mailing address and no official leader.)
13th, free on Netflix. This documentary is about the 13th Amendment and the prison industrial complex. Does that sound boring? It’s not. It’s lively and well produced, historical but also very current. The US has a surprising number of for-profit prison corporations, and they have to keep the prison populations high, because: stockholders. (Please make sure you are not accidentally invested in any of these barbaric places.) For-profit prisons are filled with people who couldn’t afford decent representation. And they have to work there. It’s practically legalized slavery. This illuminating and heartbreaking movie also explains the huge rise in the prison population over the last few decades. You’ll find out how Jim Crow laws are alive and well in the American South, and why the majority of black men in Alabama are not eligible to vote. I was taught that black men commit more crimes, but they don’t, actually. They just get picked up more often because they are perceived as more dangerous, which also just what we were taught--see the Black Panther documentary. The only thing that has changed since forever is that everyone now carries a video camera. Worth watching till the very end; correct me if I’m wrong.
The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson. Fascinating book telling true stories of three black families who left the south in search of a better life. It reads like fiction. The level of vicious racism these people were trying to flee is painful to hear about. Minor detail: early 1900s southern society considered the biggest threat to be black men raping white women, but guess what: actually, the rate of white men raping black women was far higher. (What the heck is that even about? Honestly it just makes white men look super insecure.)
American Values by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. This is a view of the Kennedys through the eyes of Bobby Kennedy’s son, Bobby, who is married to the woman who plays the wife in Curb Your Enthusiasm. (She’s adorable, and I follow her on Instagram because I love Bobby Kennedy Jr. inordinately much.) Over the years I have found that most people are either Kennedy-lovers or Kennedy-haters, and, well. Hi. You’ll be reminded in this book that there were tons of great ideas and a trend toward racial justice in the 1960s—which I remember well, because my parents were totally against it. “You can’t legislate equality!” they used to say as small-government Republicans who did not want the government messing with human relations—that’s overreach. But I digress. After MLK was assassinated, 110 American cities rioted. On the 6th day of the riots, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was passed. This book illustrates the great ideas of the 1960s and how RFK senior, speaking from his heart and not using speechwriters, was loved multiculturally, which was apparently just too much unity for…whoever shot him. It appears the family thought both RFK’s death and his brother’s were pretty sketchy. If you like Kennedy antics, the environment, and civil rights, this book offers a comprehensive and colorful picture. It shows how close we were to major racial progress in 1968. Too bad everyone who might have tipped the balance toward racial equality was assassinated!
If you are not into the 1960’s but you want to view race relations from an educated, hip, contemporary African perspective, the novel Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is just the book. All her books are great.
If you really want to challenge yourself, check out The Great Unlearn (@thegreatunlearn on Instagram, or rachelcargle.com).
A little action step: call Target, Whole Foods, and Walgreens corporate and use your white voice to demand they distribute goods to the south and west sides of Chicago, where unstocked shelves still prevail from the early days of covid.
Things to say to your Facebook friends from high school who just don’t get it:
> 1 in 3 people killed by a stranger was killed by a police officer. Unarmed black people are twice as likely to be killed as unarmed white people. There were only 27 days in 2019 when police did not kill someone in the US.
> Don’t ALL lives matter? YES. But black lives are the current focus. Only black lives need a protest. People shouldn’t have to protest for their basic civil right not to die. It’s not like it’s 1968 anymore!
> Don’t ALL lives matter? YES. But when the Boston marathon was bombed and everybody said “Boston Strong,” nobody said, “ALL cities are strong.” When someone posts about breast cancer, no one says, “But what about colon cancer?” Black Lives Matter is not an either/or proclamation. Americans traditionally rally round the group in crisis. That does not discredit or diminish any other group; it brings awareness and support to the group that needs attention. (Paraphrased from an Instagram post.)
> Police can’t even refrain from police brutality at a peaceful protest against police brutality. (Another Instagram post.)
> “I have friends who have been police officers, and I have friends whose spouses are or have been police officers. They are nice and not racist.” Me too. The protests are not about individuals. The protests are about the system of policing. (Police Departments are super funded and reforms do get put into place, but, for example, countless policemen covered up their badge numbers during the protests, and so many were not wearing their required video cameras. I didn’t see that on the news, I heard it from young friends who observed it firsthand in Chicago, LA, and NYC. )
> “It’s horrible that an innocent black man was killed, but destroying property has to stop!” How about: “It’s horrible that property was destroyed, but killing innocent black men has to stop!” (More from Instagram.)
Let's not wait for external evidence of change. Let's hold space for a shift we probably never thought we'd see in our lifetime. We don't even know what this new world is going to look like--I mean, how could we? But we can hold energetic space for something better, and open our virtual spaces to a glorious diversity. I have no idea what to even say about physical space, but when we CAN congregate again, it's going to be even better than it used to be.
IMAGINE.
“Our lives begin to end the day we become
silent about things that matter.”
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
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