It's been a long, long time since my last post. Life has been happening. Ups and downs and downs and ups. I'm in grad school right now studying for my Masters in Counseling with a concentration in Expressive Arts Therapy. If anyone would've told me a year ago that this is where I would be today? I would've taken their temperature to make sure they weren't having a fever dream.
But here I stand, facing the start of my second year in just a couple months, but it's absolutely bittersweet.
SO MANY reflections, frustrations, outright anger, shock and other thoughts have been flowing through my mind in all of these days and outrageous times we've been living through, but, after watching President Obama's eulogy for Reverend Clementa Pinckney (http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4542228/president-obama-eulogy-clementa-pinckney-funeral-service ) I feel inspired to say something today.
Here we are again.
President Obama called it "Comfortable Silence."
The funerals for the victims begin.
The flowers, teddy bears, cards, candles and loving posters shimmer in the wind.
Here we are again.
And what happens next? When the eulogies and funerals are over and the TV cameras and news vans move on to the next 24 hour news cycles....what happens then?
Talk? Yes.
TALK MORE? YES.
Do talk. And listen. You, me....ALL of us. FIND THE TIME to talk and listen and understand the construct of race. Learn about intergenerational racial trauma and liberation psychology. Challenge racist jokes at work....at school....in the check out line at a store. If you're around kids and teens, get them involved. Keep the conversations going. Talk about hate and bigotry....talk about privilege and delusions of supremacy. Make the connections the real history of this country has with the troubled present we're living in. Keep the conversations, hope and learning going. This doesn't all end with the last funeral and eulogy.
I've been thinking so much lately about when I relocated to Louisiana for a very brief time in the 1990's. I was right outside of New Orleans for a short moment before finding my own apt in NOLA. I'll never forget how BEYOND surreal it was to ride into town from an overpass and see a massive confederate flag draping the huge roof of a business down below. And the shock and dismay when we rode into a neighborhood near my cousin's apt. Every lawn was decorated with confederate flags -- flapping proudly amidst flowers and other lawn decorations as well as suspended from flag poles on their roofs. It was a sea of flags for as far as the eyes could see on the streets of the neighborhood. For the life of me I can't remember now if that was during some sort of "the south should've won" kind of yearly celebration or if it was during the 4th of July holiday time. I can't remember. But I DO remember as we passed one particular home, there was a noose hanging from its porch near their proud confederate flag. A noose. I remember my mouth opened in shock and I caught a glimpse of my reaction in the side mirror outside the car. And the very next thoughts were cloaked in nausea and disbelief:
Where the hell was I?
What the hell year was this?
And how fast can I move to New Orleans???
Something else that has struck me ever since is how many people I've heard over my whole life who've tried to defend the symbolism of that flag do their frenetic best to sidestep all issues about the civil war being connected with supporting slavery and keeping Blacks subjugated, separate and unequal. Never in a million years did I ever expect that there would ever be a serious mounting push from so many against the worship and celebration of that flag as a positive image. Not in my time.
But here we are.
It's unreal.....and it's about damn time.
During Reverend Pinckney's funeral, President Obama used a phrase to describe the gun violence in this country, but I believe it really sums up so much of what we're living through -- the gun violence, the racially-steeped police overreactions and brutalities and all of the injustices and inequities being faced by communities of color and difference:
UNIQUE Mayhem.
And I'm STILL having these flashbacks to the footage of that Texas officer who slammed that young, unarmed, half-naked Black girl in a bikini down to the ground, as if she was poised to do him some grievous bodily harm.
Unique mayhem, indeed.
But here I stand, facing the start of my second year in just a couple months, but it's absolutely bittersweet.
SO MANY reflections, frustrations, outright anger, shock and other thoughts have been flowing through my mind in all of these days and outrageous times we've been living through, but, after watching President Obama's eulogy for Reverend Clementa Pinckney (http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4542228/president-obama-eulogy-clementa-pinckney-funeral-service ) I feel inspired to say something today.
Here we are again.
President Obama called it "Comfortable Silence."
The funerals for the victims begin.
The flowers, teddy bears, cards, candles and loving posters shimmer in the wind.
Here we are again.
And what happens next? When the eulogies and funerals are over and the TV cameras and news vans move on to the next 24 hour news cycles....what happens then?
Talk? Yes.
TALK MORE? YES.
Do talk. And listen. You, me....ALL of us. FIND THE TIME to talk and listen and understand the construct of race. Learn about intergenerational racial trauma and liberation psychology. Challenge racist jokes at work....at school....in the check out line at a store. If you're around kids and teens, get them involved. Keep the conversations going. Talk about hate and bigotry....talk about privilege and delusions of supremacy. Make the connections the real history of this country has with the troubled present we're living in. Keep the conversations, hope and learning going. This doesn't all end with the last funeral and eulogy.
I've been thinking so much lately about when I relocated to Louisiana for a very brief time in the 1990's. I was right outside of New Orleans for a short moment before finding my own apt in NOLA. I'll never forget how BEYOND surreal it was to ride into town from an overpass and see a massive confederate flag draping the huge roof of a business down below. And the shock and dismay when we rode into a neighborhood near my cousin's apt. Every lawn was decorated with confederate flags -- flapping proudly amidst flowers and other lawn decorations as well as suspended from flag poles on their roofs. It was a sea of flags for as far as the eyes could see on the streets of the neighborhood. For the life of me I can't remember now if that was during some sort of "the south should've won" kind of yearly celebration or if it was during the 4th of July holiday time. I can't remember. But I DO remember as we passed one particular home, there was a noose hanging from its porch near their proud confederate flag. A noose. I remember my mouth opened in shock and I caught a glimpse of my reaction in the side mirror outside the car. And the very next thoughts were cloaked in nausea and disbelief:
Where the hell was I?
What the hell year was this?
And how fast can I move to New Orleans???
Something else that has struck me ever since is how many people I've heard over my whole life who've tried to defend the symbolism of that flag do their frenetic best to sidestep all issues about the civil war being connected with supporting slavery and keeping Blacks subjugated, separate and unequal. Never in a million years did I ever expect that there would ever be a serious mounting push from so many against the worship and celebration of that flag as a positive image. Not in my time.
But here we are.
It's unreal.....and it's about damn time.
During Reverend Pinckney's funeral, President Obama used a phrase to describe the gun violence in this country, but I believe it really sums up so much of what we're living through -- the gun violence, the racially-steeped police overreactions and brutalities and all of the injustices and inequities being faced by communities of color and difference:
UNIQUE Mayhem.
And I'm STILL having these flashbacks to the footage of that Texas officer who slammed that young, unarmed, half-naked Black girl in a bikini down to the ground, as if she was poised to do him some grievous bodily harm.
Unique mayhem, indeed.
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