When I search the banks of my memory, I see myself reading the next book that I am about to mention long before the racial injustice of our current times was occurring, or at least before it opened up to the light of public awareness. However, when I look up the actual date that I started reading Rage Becomes Her, it is in May as opposed to March as I originally thought. And why is this important? Because I thought that I was already immersed in "the work" by the time it became mainstream to do so. Because I thought that I was seeking out a higher ground and a higher knowledge before others were doing so. And because this kind of thinking allows us to stand on our moral high ground, which in essence allows us to stay and play small, and allows us to keep doing exactly what we are already doing. I thought that I had begun to seek out the gender that is often unheard from, a skin color whose stories are often left untold, or an open-mindedness that is yet to be grasped by mainstream culture. And I thought that I had begun to do so before George Floyd, and so many others, became a household name. While this book is an important book to read, the narrative of stories of people of color is disproportionately heard, and this is as a result of a system that doesn't carry certain voices to rise above the ashes of the noise that is our current societal climate, I was surprised to see that I was not as far along in the search for an inner peace, that can help cultivate an outer solution, than I thought I was. Which brings me to an important point...any time that we shy away from a particular point of view, a specific author, or a certain demographic out of a fear that we may ingest something that causes us to question who we are as a basis of who we listen to, what we believe, and who we see, we allow ourselves to be stripped of the opportunity for knowledge via enrichment, openness via empathy, and learning via streams and currents of love, similar to the blood that flows through the veins of each and every one of us. I am thankful for the opportunities that I continuously receive to learn more, be more, and do more. And I am grateful to know that when I am ready to learn and grow, new opportunities to see, hear, and experience authors, genres, and cultural landscapes that I haven't previously been exposed to continue to cross my path. So, as they continue to enrich my understanding of our current world, I will continue to bring them to you, in an effort to learn, share, and grow together. As Bryan Stevenson once said, "The opposite of poverty is not abundance. The opposite of poverty is justice." The more we can learn together about how to unearth the institutions of poverty and seek out systems of equality for all, the more we can walk together, hand in hand, lifting and empowering each other as we learn from each other and heal the poverty that exists inside of each and every one of us, poverty of learning, poverty of understanding, and poverty of grace. This brings me to the last, and most important, book that I have read regarding race relations and our blindness to them. I can't recommend this book enough, and I ended up listening to White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism over and over again, going back to chapters once more and then once again, realizing that
the more we are attached to the good vs. bad binary and assigning racist actions, attitudes, and beliefs to those who are bad, as opposed to realizing that the structures, society, and institutions into which we were born and thus required to grow up within, inevitably molded and shaped each and every one of us, and thus our behaviors, actions, and world view, the more we will perpetuate this outdated model. As Ibram X. Kendi so eloquently explains in the above video, once we are able to choose the lens of racist thought processes as patterns that we are unable to avoid, we are able to move past living in a world of default actions, beliefs, and avenues, and choose to unlearn what was previously taught to us, so that we can uplift others whose shoes did not have the same paths to walk, and to hear what they have to say and learn from those who are actually engulfed in the struggles of what solutions would be best to employ to help everyone find an equal and solid footing. I highly recommend watching, reading, and listening to opinions that fly in the face of everything that you were conditioned to hear, see, and do growing up, and to join us in the search for equality that is founded on the basis of honoring our similarities and celebrating our differences, so that we may come together to create a new way of being, doing, and seeing that is inclusive and expansive, enriching and engaging for each and every one of us!
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AuthorValerie Ellis, who is in alignment with the Black Lives Matter Movement and everyone whose life is impacted, now or before, by times of social injustice. Archives
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