No biography available yet.
Every white person who shows up and tells the truth — because it's her duty as a member of our human family — is going to have her racism called out. She will have to accept that others will disagree with how she's showing up and that they will have every right to disagree. She will need to learn to withstand people's anger, knowing that much of it is real and true and necessary. She will need to accept that one of the privileges she's letting burn is her emotional comfort. She will need to remind herself that being called a racist is actually not the worst thing. The worst thing is privately hiding her racism to stay safe, liked, and comfortable while others suffer and die. There are worse things than being criticized — like being a coward.
Maybe we can stop trying so hard to understand the gorgeous mystery of sexuality. Instead, we can just listen to ourselves and each other with curiosity and love, and without fear. We can just let people be who they are and we can believe that the freer each person is, the better we all are. Maybe our understanding of sexuality can become as fluid as sexuality itself.
So I will commit to showing up with deep humility and doing the best I can. I will keep getting it wrong, which is the closest I can come to getting it right. When I am corrected, I will stay open and keep learning. Not because I want to be the wokest woke who ever woked. But because people's children are dying of racism, and there is no such thing as other people's children. Hidden racism is destroying and ending lives. It's making police officers kill black men at three times the rate of white men. It's making lawmakers limit funding for clean water and poison children. It's making doctors allow black women to die during or after childbirth at three to four times the rate of white women. It's making school officials suspend and expel black students at three times the rate of white students. It's making judges incarcerate black drug users at nearly six times the rate of white drug users. And — because of my complicity in this system that dehumanizes others — it is dehumanizing me. The fact that the programmed poison of racism was pumped into us may not be our fault, but getting it out is sure as hell our responsibility.
This is what people are like. We are all so fucked up and so magical. Life is so brutal and beautiful. Life is brutiful. For all of us. I remember now. If you want to get jaded and numb, watch the news. If you want to stay human, read letters. When trying to understand humanity, seek out firsthand accounts.