This last week has been horrific, extremely troubling, anxiety-producing and yet could be revolutionary. I actually have some hope that things will change and be different now. I’m looking at the harmony I’m beginning to see in these protests. Police officers are bending on one knee in solidarity with protestors. Protestors are hugging police officers. A protester in San Jose helped to carry a police officer to safety when he went down. The New York Police Chief stood in solidarity with the protestors and told the world this is how it’s done! We’ve never seen that in the past and I see it as a hopeful sign.
“The place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it,” so said James Baldwin a few decades ago. I believe the people in the United States are beginning to make a place for all people and that didn’t exist before. Through this appalling chain of events where People of Color have been killed, we are watching white people for the first time take part with efforts of solidarity and not claiming the space for People of Color, but rather walking beside them as allies. We as white people are not the be all and end all of declaring what is right and we are actually allowing, at least many of us, People of Color to take the lead. This is how it should be to rid ourselves of white supremacy. I was very young during the riots of the late 60’s so I didn’t pay as much attention, but this time it feels different. I sense a feeling in the air of cohesion, a sense of solidarity and not one of ownership by white people. It is time we take a back seat and only offer to help when help is needed. It is time we take a front seat however on changing legislation to increase the level of equity in our institutions and society for People of Color.
It is time.
That’s how we can find harmony, by creating a society intent on equity and equality. We can find harmony in the every day, by our everyday actions, by being conscious of the biases held deep within our psyches and by acting on the new knowledge we have on how our systemic biases and institutions have perpetuated white supremacy all these centuries. We really will gain peace within ourselves when all are equal. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” quoting Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We can never truly live in harmony when there are parts of us in disharmony.
Let us move through this time knowing we are on the right path to harmony. Do not waste this moment, but use it to create that world we want to live in, a harmonious, gentle, peaceful place.
May it be so. Blessed be.
Blessings to you all.