Forces whose timing and movement we cannot fathom and must act on
Across the globe, a virus we cannot see exerts its gravitational pull towards safety, protection, distancing, isolation. We do not all have the same choice to hunker down.
An equally potent force pulls newly mobilizing white people alongside seasoned activists – to rise and move together with our neighbors – and “strangers” of color.
(I am painfully aware I might well be marching alongside the same black man who I crossed the street to avoid on a city street at night six months ago.)
Often masked, sometimes social distancing, protesters flow like a river down streets emptied of automobile traffic by Covid-19 even before protests began: to grieve, rage, chant, home-school our children in the streets, make vivid the pain and we-are-doneness in a cultural body that perhaps is on its way to becoming one sensing, healing and awakening body after all.
Young people lead once again, as they have on environmental justice. Often black youth in the foreground: kids likely to die of racism before Covid-19 threatened them. White children as young as preschool are getting newly inoculated with a race-appropriate version of “the talk” – a talk that has a moral compass.
We may be in a position to watch these events live-streamed…from within our home offices / home schools / home kitchens
or we may be in a position to march….
or to honk our car horns in support…
or, as my sister living in a high-rise for seniors in Berkeley…to light a candle on her 2nd floor balcony that may not actually be visible to anyone.
What is it that is happening on the sidewalks, in the streets?
Sidewalks and streets that have belonged to white people since the early days in America’s history?
How is it that our grief walks the streets, hundreds, thousands together, when we have not been able to gather to sit with our dying family members, bury our dead, witness wedding vows, eat, study?
How is it that strangers have emerged from siloed neighborhoods, the red-lined and the privileged, to walk together?
If you want to move a river, dig a channel…the river will flow into it.
There is movement, a change in choreography: police and protesters reach out to one another in small moments even as tear gas and rubber bullets fly elsewhere. The channel that protesters, and sometimes police officers, are digging reclaims public spaces.
There are stunning and tantalizing examples of a different kind of listening and bridging that is taking place.
There are messages everywhere: on signs, on fences – most notably on the security fence surrounding the White House.
“We must learn to live together as brothers or we will perish.”
“When do I go from cute to dangerous?”
“Racism makes our patients sick.”
“We all bleed the same color.”
“Racism is the pandemic.”
“Why do you hate me?”
“Am I next?”
“Enough.”
We don’t know if we are in Langston Hughes’ Final Curve, as much as we may long for it
When you turn the corner
And you run into yourself
Then you know that you have turned
All the corners that are left.
We cannot foresee the outcome of this moment of letting go and coming in.
This is a mass of “unorganized” humanity beginning to sense itself – what one theory of change says is the key to transforming consciousness.
In this view we observe, observe, observe. We go to the place of greatest potential to listen with our minds and our hearts wide open.
The place of most potential is our own being - and so we practice
With modest, not grand gestures, we begin to lay a foundation for racial repair and reconciliation.
We recommit to practice, to owning and freeing ourselves from our personal and cultural history.
We wrestle with responsibility, shame, and forgiveness of self and other, one second at a time.
We walk together, dismantle the shared racial structures together.
We make changes of the heart and let them guide changes in the law.
This is how we dig the channel to move the river of racism.
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Banner photo by John Salvino
To explore your own stories about race is hard to do alone. If you are ready to let your mind and heart break open into a larger story, let’s talk about how the practices of Radical Inclusion can support you.
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