My Facebook feed is full of scared, angry, outraged people expressing themselves in tweets, articles and statuses. A friend of color admonished her white friends and other "allies" who felt guilty and were trying to claim "not all whites." "Do better," she chastised. I remembered what they taught us about humility in Borja.
Peppered among these posts are pictures from a transformational week of "intentional communication across difference." A week where we named and claimed where we are from and who we are, and sat down to plan together. A week saturated with the realization of our common humanity and our hunger for a more peaceful world.
In response to Charlottesville, there are repeated calls that these actions and people be labeled for what they are: terror and terrorists. These labels give a moral and legal judgment about what has happened. As the governor of Virginia said, "There is no place for you here."
I hear echoes of El Salvador. This is the same thing that has been said to youth and gangsters. "We might as well burn down the prisons, with them inside," I've heard people say. "We should just kill them all and be done with it," from others. What do we do with white supremacist terrorists? Prisons are for people who are dangerous to society. Ok, prison. They will likely get out someday, unchanged or more embittered. How many white supremacists (terrorists or not) are there? Will they fit in our prisons? In prison, what is there for them to rehabilitate as individuals? Can we send a whole racist system to prison?
More questions than answers. But I also know that our society is segregated, and whites (especially white males) are those who have the greatest access to people like those that marched in the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville. There are not "many sides" to this. There is one side, and it is not the duty of the other side to put itself further in danger, to exhaust itself further, in the resistance. I know many people of color who are there, marching, explaining, speaking up, every day, and that comes with great psychological and spritual cost. Thank you. I also know many white people who feel guilty, who want to say "not me", who just want to be nice people and be done with it. In a meal with my friend's parents recently in Minnesota, they commented about a recent Black Lives Matters march over Philando Castille's murder, that "there should be another way. I don't understand why they have to shut down the highways. Can't they be more peaceful? Some of those people aren't even from Minnesota!" I said nothing, because with Minnesota whites you are Minnesota nice. I was scared that my response would be insufficient, I was angry that I was silent. But that was my moment, that was the opportunity we have every day in our interactions with each other (between white people).
My job, the organization I work for, exists because we believe in change. We believe in the elasticity of our brains, in personal transformations creating a ripple effect while we work simultaneously to create institutional change in schools and prisons. We believe that the continual falling of a drop of water is stronger than the rock, as Lorena put it so beautifully. We are humans, artists of our lives and collaborators in the society we actively produce every day.
I will close in expressing that I hope my truth today has not contributed to the hurt of anyone else, and if so, if your energy so permits, I will consider your response as a gift as my truth continues to evolve.
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