I posted this picture yesterday.
I’m fairly certain that 100% of the people that looked at it didn’t read the caption. If they did read the caption, they didn’t notice the hashtags. If they did see the picture, read the caption and notice the hashtags, why the hell are they feeling bad for that damn baby bird? Did you miss the point completely? Or are you refusing to see it?
Come on. I’m floored. But, seriously, this is social media at it’s finest. Love hate relationship for sure.
And what floors me even more, is that if they did see the picture, read the caption, notice hashtags, and get the point, there should damn well be more than 20 people liking it. Why are we avoiding the realities in our own white lives? Why?
That post was not a ‘repost’. That was not a screenshot of someone else’s post. That was not ‘cool words on a black background’ that make you think for 30 seconds about something other than your own life. That was a very real life integration of an effort to navigate the understanding of privilege. A caught-you-off-guard-in-the-middle-of-your-day type of experience that basically punches you in the gut and says, ‘pay attention…this is woven into the fabric of your own life, too’.
Too many black 5 year old girls in this country are understanding death standing next to their brother’s casket, their daddy’s casket, their uncle’s casket. They are learning about death from their best friends, their neighbors. It is often part of their daily life. And it’s not death from just dying. It’s death from murder. Death from crime. Death from hate. Death from injustice.
We buried a bird today. Big flippin’ deal. We made a sign for it while simultaneously thinking what fun activiities we were going to do after that. If that doesn’t make you sick to your stomach, I don’t know what does.
And it needs to be that. It needs to be something that stops us cold with a deep realization that we are not ‘outside’ the realm of any of this. I don’t love that. I don’t like it. In fact, it nauseates me to think that my life as a middle class white woman continues to perpetuate ideals that I don’t believe in. I’m dominated by a system, like it or not.
So where is our fight? Where is our power to use what we know and have and believe in? Yesterday, it was there. Over the 12 inch hole of dirt we dropped that bird in. It was in the choice to pause and pay attention. It was the choice to swallow my pride. It was the choice to sit my kid down and tell her that people in this world are suffering unjustly. Little girls just like you are having to bury their family members because we can’t see the value of humanity outside of the color of our skin.
She may have to grow up in a system of white privilege, like it or not. But, she doesn’t have to be ignorant of it. She can understand it exists and know that in learning and educating and paying attention and believing in humanity that she can make a change. That she can be a change. That her life and friendships and choices can exist in a way that push against that system. That make things better for black people, making things better for the world as a whole.