As our country begins to ease restrictions on closures related to the pandemic, the streets are filling with protests against police brutality and the normal state of our union that is white supremacy. The rage is huge and it is justified. There’s a whole segment of our culture who uses the language of freedom to explain why they aren’t wearing masks, why they want the country to reopen so they can get a haircut when they want to–“This is the land of the free.” Unless, of course, you are a black, brown or indigenous person.
We live in a country that was founded upon the ideal of white Christian supremacy. Our feet touch the earth where indigenous people were murdered so that white people could have what they wanted. The blood and the memory is still in the soil. It is in the air we breathe. African people were enslaved to build a “free Republic” for white people. Black and brown people have been murdered and raped for centuries in service of this idea of “freedom.” These stories are in our blood, are in the earth, are in the water we drink. We are all affected by this history, whether we acknowledge it or not. We cannot change this past, but we can change the way we move into the future.
As we consider what it means to “return to normal” after months of physical distancing, it feels imperative that we actually look at what normal is. Do we want a normal that includes the routine killing of innocent people of color every single day in America? Do we want to return to a normal that asks workers to put their lives on the line to earn $10 an hour with no health insurance? Do we want the normal that reminds us that our bodies are only here to make wealthy white people even richer?
During the first wave of this pandemic, black, brown and indigenous communities were hit the hardest with the largest percentage of deaths from Covid-19. This is not an unfortunate accident. This is structural racism working. These communities have fewer resources, work in “essential” jobs making little money, live in food deserts where their bodies have been strained by lack of access to wholesome foods, and hold in their DNA intergenerational trauma that creates health problems over the course of a lifetime.
The normal I want is a world where we care about each other and help each other heal, where we share what we have and understand that we don’t need much to be happy. We need each other–we need strong communities to hold the grief that so many people are holding on their own right now. We all need to do the work–yes, you, white folks–so that we stop perpetuating systems of oppression. We need to learn to really listen. We need to tend to the wounds of the land. We need to tend to each other. I want to live in a world where we don’t have to say the names of people who have been murdered for being black, brown or indigenous. I want to live in a world where everyone feels safe.
We CAN create that world. We start in our own hearts and we move into our families and our communities. We have hard conversations. We look at ourselves really closely and deeply and lovingly. We show the fuck up. We stop using white guilt to avoid responsibility. We share the money and resources we have. We make space for everyone’s voices. We apologize when we make mistakes and we keep showing up. It’s hard, but it’s necessary. If not now, when?