Editor’s Note: Lace on Race takes no partisan positions. The views held by this commentator on the upcoming election are her own.
Hey y’all. This is Laura. I’m supposed to write something to take my place in our Hope and Vision series. And this is hard for me, y’all. I’m not a chipper, buoyant, positive sort of person. Never have been. I’m so much better at worrying than hoping. And this year has just sucked so much out of me, even with all the good fortune I know I’ve had. I find myself looking forward… pretty desperately… to a new administration and a new year. And only one of those is guaranteed.
So, yeah, now that I’ve sucked all the life out of this room, I need to pivot. It’s not a guarantee, not a certainty, not even something I’m willing to accede as a probability, no matter what some polls say. But we might, just very well might, have a new president in the new year. It’s the one hope I do know I routinely have. Maybe it’s that my mind just can’t get itself around the alternatives, and maybe I don’t want to force that unless I have to. So. I hope for change. I’ve hoped for change for a long time. I hoped for change when we elected Obama. And now I’m still hoping for some of the exact same changes. We did not make enough progress before 2016. Progress has been lost since then. I hope for progress to come.
I hope we can all breath a sigh of relief soon, over the end of particularly heinous racial policies that were a worsening of what was already not where it needed to be… over the waning of the coronavirus pandemic… gosh y’all, I hope we can all just get a really good night’s sleep at some point in the next few months.
But more than that, I hope we wake up again. Because the work is not over, no matter who takes office for the next four years. The. Work. Is. Not. Over.
No election in the past has ever rendered continued work unnecessary, not even the election of our first Black president. Heaven help me, I have to own that I let myself start slacking when we reached that milestone. But a milestone isn’t like the end of a fairy tale, where we can take happily ever after for granted. A milestone marks an significant point along the path, but the path goes on. The path always goes on.
In 2008, some of us, myself included, yawned and stretched out and relaxed beside the tremendous landmark that Obama’s presidency represented in our history. We laid ourselves down in its shade like a bunch of racial equity Rip Van Winkles. We slept away for years when we should have been vigilant.
The Trump presidency, from its beginning, and culminating this year, has definitely jolted many, MANY white people like me into a wide awake awareness that the nightmare of racial violence and injustice never ended. It just stopped troubling OUR dreams. A new administration next year would, I hope, be a chance to refresh, to reset, to start hoping for… expecting… DEMANDING more movement forward, not just struggling to not lose more ground.
What I hope a new administration does NOT become is a sop lulling white people like me back to sleep. I hope we don’t become complacently confident that other people are now in charge of moving the stone we’ve so lately started helping to hold. Benefit from white supremacy will not cease to be. People who promulgate racism for power, profit, and prestige, will not evaporate. I will not be paid one penny less of my salary on January 21, 2021, and my peers among Black communities and communities of color will not be paid one penny more.
Lace began Lace on Race under the pall of these past four years. This has been the year that has seen our community balloon out in membership and action. Now we’re working on setting up our own dedicated space, where we hope our community will have deeper, richer, darker soil for those roots we need to plant and spread after we lean in, so that we can grow up and grow out.
My hope is that THIS is what we do, as the white members of Lace on Race. That we don’t bask in the sun at the foot of the orange tree and slip back into sleep. My hope is that we join each other in the orchard, AS the orchard. That we grow strong, and that we reach others. That our fruit nourishes a joy that is not founded in ignorance and oblivion, but in the knowledge that no celebration we feel will mark the end of our work here. We deserve to celebrate our milestones, absolutely. But each milestone marks a significant crossing, not a final destination, no matter how relieved we may be to see some lumps smooth out. White supremacy still informs our world. That won’t change in a month, a year, or maybe even many years. But it starts with us.
I hope we have seen the start of something durable and good out of so much pain. I hope we don’t go back to relying on others to keep watch and hold ground and move forward while we nap. I hope WE, HERE, at Lace on Race, stay wide awake and see this through.
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