Facebook Publication Date: 3/1/2022 13:03
A quiet welp, but a welp nonetheless.
How *do* we have this conversation?
How does it land for each and every cohort? Is a wistfulness allowed and acknowledged? Is there integrity that means to be intact here?
We, meaning North America, we understand oppression.
We understand subjugation.
We understand being relegated to second-class status.
We understand neighborhoods and entire cities can be deemed disposable, and therefore extinguishable, by an oppressor.
We understood the need to be seen and stood with.
Vocally. Overtly.
We understand that people can have no blood ties to an area; no blood ties to a people, but still affirm and assert the humanity of that people.
No shared history; after all, people named O’Leary and de Stefano and Walters and Degroot are not directly responsible or accountable to the people who are being, right leg, raised up, affirmed, and seen. They are right to do so.
But this is where the ‘welp’ comes in.
Only *certain* people. Really allow this to sink in. Truly confront this. And truly confront the overarching message.
There are cohorts here in North America who see this. Who see dominant culture. Who compare and contrast, and rightfully so, who compare and contrast their experience that is relegated to two months out of the year oh, and maybe a Cinco De Mayo or a black spring or two, but then who are then relegated to the sidelines.
We see this.
And the questions that this raises in and for cohorts not deemed emphatically and unequivocally human by vast swaths of those who claim European heritage are valid ones.
The irony is not lost on us as we finish the month that celebrates Black people, before we settle back to an enforced amnesia of the past, and continued subjugation in the present oh, and a future truncated and foreclosed because of North America’s collective turning away, denial, and minimization.
We understand dominant culture absolutely understand, when it chooses to, the need for material as well as metaphorical support and sacrifice. We see it all here.
But what dominant culture here in North America have collectively failed to do is to generalize all of this knowledge, these realizations, this empathy and compassion, to those whom they either face, or not, in their own claimed countries,every day.
Psychologically, it is absolutely understandable.
We feel for and empathize with and stand *for who we choose to*, but that choice has always had, and still has, an asterisk attached.
We feel for and sympathize with those *we are taught* to empathize with; those whose Humanity *we learn* to acknowledge and embrace.
And for those whose Humanity has always been called into question, whose personhood has always been conditional, those for whom empathy and compassion and solidarity from dominant culture has always been conditional and provisional an intermittent, this lack of generalization is a brutal reminder that the work that the vast majority of white people think is finished, is still extant.
Which brings us back to a wistfulness.
Allow me to tell you a story.
There is a woman I know who has had, let us just say, who has had, and still has, a ‘challenging’ relationship with her father.
I watched her break her bread into so many tiny pieces as she told me about the rejection and invalidation she received from him as early as her teenage years still continuing into her forties.
She is admirable and remarkable; a savvy woman, a resourceful woman, and she has indeed found the validation and the love she did not get from her father in other voices and other faces, but there has always been a hole.
The story that she told herself about this dynamic was that he was absolutely incapable of feeling the love that she needed, of being the friend and the champion that she needed, and in so doing she was able to find context and compassion for her father.
But then her father was blessed with a granddaughter.
And all that my friend had hoped for but never received was there in stark relief; the lack of love she endured; the contempt with which her father treated her standing in sharp contrast to the way her father treated his granddaughter, her niece.
All of the attention, all of the ability to be fully present and engaged, all of the positive regard that she never received.
On the one hand she was, and is, happy for the granddaughter, her niece.
Every child and young woman should receive what the granddaughter receives.
Every granddaughter should be met with shining eyes and an offer of cold soda.
Every granddaughter deserves to have the TV turned off and the paper put down so she can talk and talk and talk.
This is an easy pivot.
So, yes, a wistfulness.
It is possible to hold two things in one hand, and I dearly hope that one day dominant culture in North America will durably learn and internalize this truth. Instead, North America is doing what it is always done; cherishing and succoring one cohort at the eternal expense of others
It’s a false choice.
As it is possible to be an environmentalist, and also put equal effort and priority into a racial Justice practice, just as it is possible to love animals without invalidating and abandoning your commitment to brown and black humans oh, so it is possible to support what is happening in the Here and Now, with what has always happened here. This is a big deal. And make no mistake. There is indeed inadvertent harm being perpetuated.
It is possible for us to be in support and solidarity for a cohort of people while being wistfully knowing the brutal truth about the positive regard and solidarity will never be extended to us. Hear this well.
Black and brown and Indigenous people are having this silent internal conversation every day.
And it’s a conversation that needs to happen.
So we will have it here.
Your thoughts are welcome. And expected.
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