In the Middle of a Story of Race

Wow, we are in the middle of a story that we heard a bit about in the last meeting, compelling evidence of where we are, in the middle.  On the one hand, we have some people concerned about their safety, based on the presence of “some other people” who don’t quite look like they belong here.  And we are taught and socialized and live in a world where we equate safety and security (economic and otherwise) with walled communities, and walled borders, and red-lines and police keeping some people out while we are allegedly protected safely within.

We are in the middle of a story of race, and we are afraid of those who are different from us, especially people who are black and brown and often of a different class (poor and working poor) and we are all taught and socialized and live in a world where we don’t even blink, or think twice about how we ended up in the middle of this story, afraid.

If we did, we’d find ourselves grappling with history, the history of our country where we amassed great sums of wealth for those of a certain race through the seizure of over 2 billion acres of land from indigenous people, and through the unpaid labor of Black people through the peculiar institution of chattel slavery – or the enslavement of Black people who were seized, separated from land and family, tortured, raped, and murdered for generations.

And if we looked closely, we’d find this history continues to this day, yes indigenous people are still being exploited and stolen from as their land and water rights continue to be ignored by corporations and government alike.  Blacks continue to be seized and separated and yes tortured as their communities are subjected to the highest rates of policing, surveillance, arrest and incarceration, not because Blacks are more dangerous than whites, but because we allow the root causes of violence, e.g., extreme poverty to fester in Black and Brown communities.  And yes, indigenous and Black and Brown women and LGBTQ folx suffer the highest rates of rape and sexual assault.  And Blacks continue to be the most murdered of our population (over 50% of all murder victims are Black).   And the statistics for other non-whites, and also poor whites, are similarly troubling. 

And if we believe in the safety of red-lines, walls, and borders, we can pretend that all of this trouble is not here, not about us, it is over there, they are the dangerous ones.

Yes, we are in the middle of a story of race and we – who live in this place and who are in this room, right now, play a critical role in the outcome, what will we do?