 |
| My sister and Rev. Ricky Georgetown |
In many ways last weekend was the culmination of a lot of work and mental focus for weeks prior. My race training and all the concerns about potential injuries or illness are over…for now. The children’s consignment sale and all the work collecting and tagging and dropping off and picking up is over too. My efforts in both were rewarded handsomely with a five minute PR and a $420 check from the sale. So on Sunday I felt unburdened for a few hours and let myself mentally and physically veg a bit.
But I can’t do that for long. I’m an information hound and when something grabs my interest I do a lot of reading and thinking and sometimes wrestling with it. Several things have done that this week, not the least of which is the Trayvon Martin case. It keeps me up at night and leaves me in tears at random moments. I don’t know exactly why, but I find myself deeply affected when it comes to issues of race. In the past couple of years I have also learned that the Bible is permeated with God’s call for us to fight injustice. Racism in any form but especially the systematic racism that exists in our country is unjust. I have been very naive about things for more than thirty years. It took hearing personal stories from friends and people I know of profiling and discrimination for me to even start to believe that there is still inequality and oppression in the US. I know it’s true for women, so how come I didn’t realize it was true for people of color?
I think what hurts me the most about all this is the divide it appears to me to create. The divide is not along color lines, it’s among people who are willing to be sensitive and empathetic and learn and those who will continue to keep their blinders on and refuse to acknowledge something like white privilege. Being willing to learn and listen does not come from a place of guilt in me, which is what I hear detractors saying.
 |
| My awesome hawt mamas. |
This is all so much bigger than just Trayvon’s murder. People are now engaging in conversations about race all over the place and while I think that’s mostly good, I’m also seeing the ugliness of ignorance that has been kept hidden for years emerge. I see ugliness in the indifference of my Christian brothers and sisters who think racism is not worth fighting because really…we should be “over it”. Yes, we should be, but centuries and generations of prejudice don’t get erased in even one or two generations of better education. This thing is complicated…it’s not as “black and white” as some would like to think.
That’s one thing I’ve learned over and over recently…things are always, always, ALWAYS more complicated and nuanced than they seem. It’s true of the KONY 2012 campaign and foreign aid in general. It’s true of adoption, both domestic and international. It’s true of Christianity and scripture.
And it’s certainly true of people.
