Thoughts are swirling like Fall leaves on a windy day. But it's Spring in America. A time of rebirth, renewal, of May's green rush after a long winter. Even so, too much of our country remains covered in a blanket of distorted white, blinding in the glare of a twisted history that has refracted truth into a thousand pieces.
Too many of us are stumbling blind - blind to ourselves, to others, to the long years that have led to now.
How do we see clearly again? How do we see ourselves and one another for all that we are, what binds and what divides? How do we stand in the glare and face the dark, united? Do we dare to even try?
A Black woman I deeply respect and love once said to me - "Why do you get it when so many Whites don't?!" The pain in her voice was a discordant chord bruising my heart. Still does.
I didn't know how to answer her question, how to ease her sorrow. Still don't. Not completely. I will always be seen first and foremost as "white." She will always and foremost be seen as "black." Both of us will always be seen as female. As not "male."
It always starts there in this country, that far too easy duality. Always has. It erases us from all the colors of life, reduced to one thing and not the other:
The middle class versus the poor.
The able-bodied versus the disabled.
Straight versus Gay.
Youth versus the Elderly
Male versus Female
Humanity versus the Earth
White versus every other color of the rainbow.
We're addicted to easy labels. How vanishingly small that addiction makes us. It is something we do to one another again and again. It is something we do to ourselves, an infinite reduction of all that we are, could be.
We chose to do so, knowingly or not. We diminish ourselves and others again and again when we could be so much more. We chose that smallness of being, of knowing, of life.
And that choice is what I keep stumbling over. That choice not to see more than the most superficial, that choice to not care, that choice to value our comfort more than the lives around us. Are we truly that afraid, that lacking in courage and caring?
I keep hearing my friend's voice asking that question again and again. Why do some White people make the effort to understand the lives of people of color? Why do some White people care enough to listen to voices speaking hard truths, pleading to be heard? Why do some White People "get it" and others do not? I keep searching for an answer, for it is White America's answer to find.
That question and its answer start and end with us. 350 years of slavery, the genocide of Native Americans, the systematized terror of Jim Crow, all the racial injustices continuing today, began with us. They continue because of us.
Our refusal to see, to "get it," will shadow countless lives if we do not find a new place to stand, a new vision, and end the power of racism to define us all.
Years after my friend asked why I had some understanding of what people of color are burdened with, I have a partial answer.
For a variety of reasons, I have always felt on the outside of our dominant culture. Nothing has changed that. The only thing that has changed is my comfort with who and how I am while standing outside that culture.
I don't want to be part of it. I don't want to be part of a society that has transformed greed, selfishness, and cruelty into moral virtues.
I don't want to be rich. I don't want a McMansion or bling. I don't want more "stuff." I don't want to spend a small fortune on beauty products and "fashion." I don't want to be Barbie to someone's Ken. I don't want to be famous. I don't want to be old or young. I don't want to be one thing or another.
I don't want to be merely a color or a gender or a mom or a grand mother, or a writer, or a gardener, or a survivor. I don't want to be part of a racist society. I don't want to be part of a sexist society. I don't want to be part of a society that harms those already suffering, the poor and ill and marginalized.
I don't want to be put in a box with an easy label slapped on it. I just want to be all that I am and can be. Don't we all? How could we not want that for everyone? How could I not want that for my children and grand children? How could I not want that for all of you? How could I not want that for the beautiful human being who is my friend? How could I not want that for those she cares for?
If I "get it," it is because I listen to her. I value her wisdom, her lived experience, all that she is. I "get it," in part, because I listen to those with different realities from my own. I "get it," in part, because like parents of color, I have feared for my child's life. Not because of the color of his skin, but because of forever health issues that could take him from us.
Unlike parents of color, I don't worry about a policeman shooting my son in the back as he's walking home from the store, playing in the park, or as he's on the phone in a store and looking at an air rifle. Unlike parents and grandparents of color, I don't worry about the police shooting my blond haired, blue eyed, grandsons as they're playing.
Unlike the reality parents and grand parents of color inhabit, my child's enemy is not external to him. His enemy is not out there walking around, one in a faceless crowd of millions infected with the pathology of racism.
But in my own way, I at least do have some understanding of a parent's fear for their child. I do have some understanding of a parent's fight for their child against overwhelming odds and what that can feel like.
Though different in cause, that shared fear and grief, that shared love of children, is where understanding and commonality have a place to stand. That shared understanding sears my heart when another mother's child is gunned down. A shared understanding shatters my heart when another Black, Hispanic, or Native American woman is beaten, raped, by a white man. A shared understanding of being harmed and powerless moves me to speak in support of voices struggling to be heard. That shared understanding makes me find the courage to listen, to try to see with new eyes, to stand on new ground. How could I possibly not?
How could any of us not be horrified and determined to find a new way of seeing, a new and better place to stand?
We can always find places where commonality and understanding meet, if we but try. And it is up to White America to find the courage and caring to try.
Racism is White America's problem. It is White America's responsibility to fix. That starts with all of us finding a new place to stand, to see, to listen, to be, together.
The choice to honestly deal with the corrosive effects of our racism is ours to make. It is a choice that will define us for all time to come.
We can choose to continue as we have been. Small and superficial, separate, defined only by a few layers of skin merely meant to keep out the cold and rain. Or we can choose to meet at the root of all that we are meant to be - heart to heart, human to human - and rise above the distortions that have limited us all.
There is no time left. Too many have suffered. Too many have died. Too many are hurting now. Our choices reveal who we are. There is no place left to hide from our responsibility.
Choose.