Tea With Me: 4th June, 2020 Thursday
Ok, so I am not just a little personally stressed from all the logistics about selling a home, buying a home sight unseen which needs work 1400 miles away at a time when I will not fly back and forth to organize the stuff that needs to get done while I engage packing manically as a anxiety displacement activity. My buyers still could walk and all this possibility might just go poof next Friday but hey, Husband and I have left just enough unpacked to be comfortable.
This morning as I sipped my tea, I thought to call my internet service provider to cancel service.
Three days ago, I resurfaced from real estate war room immersion to check news about Lung Rabies rates and saw scenes of street violence reminiscent of the 60’s, Rodney King Era, and so much more.
Crowds of angry multicolored Americans flailing their frustration about so much poison they have had to swallow in the last weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, millennia. And there in the place of what should be the human being radiating calming leadership and promise, is an over grown tantrum child man posturing his machistoistic bygone war mongering heroes while his ordered tear gas and rubber bullet shower clears the angry crowd from the path he takes to stand outside a church holding a sacred book he has never believed in.
I was…and its been going on for a week these scenes all across my wounded, hobbled out of work, distanced crazed America. This eruption has forced the silence around the embedded practices to target any human being of non white skin, non Christian, varied sexual orientation, and multi gender identification as less than and therefore disposable.
We have all had enough. The time has come for all of this to change.
I listened to Obama and leaders of My Brother’s Keeper, The Color of Change and Eric Holder and other remarkable humans in his Town Hall broadcast on PBS this morning. So much promise and possibility and energy to implement workable means for change. The dream that Bittany Packnett Cunningham has for communities which are so healthy they will not need law enforcement, struck me as what I, as a child, assumed watching the riots in the 60’s was going to be the inevitable outcome in my adult world.
Fifty years on and we have a President who has no interest in leadership, torn apart as much of what takes care of community in My America as he possibly can either out fo spite or just pain stupidity. My America has seen massive heart rending death, 40 million have lost their jobs in the last three months and he shoots gas and bullets at people screaming for comfort.
So I tape another box. In my home I acquired on the coat tails of the privilege I unwittingly inherited by being born white wasp to a couple who had foundation enough to make me feel always loved, cared for and secure. And allowed me to upload the message from MLK that all people are equal regardless of skin color or sexual whatever.
So as the voice at the end of the several minute hold for spectrum comes on, I feel warranted. before I say anything else, to ask “Are you OK? Is everyone you know and care about safe?”
It is a young African American male voice who is silent for a beat and then says, “Yes, I am and thank you so much for asking.” He then launched into his service script and we wandered through the termination steps and determined I can’t take equipment as my hoped for home in the New Mexican scape doesn’t receive spectrum signal and that he couldn’t terminate this signal this far out so I needed to call back next week. I asked him where he was in the country and he said, “Missouri.” I knew we were at the end of the service part, and I said, “I wish for you and all those you know and care about safety, health and peace.” This time his response was less formulaic. I heard the catch in his throat before he said, “You really have no idea what that means to me. Thank you very much.” He was close to tears and mine were already falling. I said, “Namaste, my friend.” We wished each other a good day and hung up.
I refuse to buy into the current PC concept that just because I am through biological and socioeconomic inheritance an uber privileged white wasp lady makes me inherently racist. Anyone looking at me through that filter is racist. The idea that we all should release color from our assessment of each other is what MLK prayed for us all and what I was weaned on. “I Have A Dream”. If you haven’t done it for a while, or if you have never done it, go find it and reload that agenda. It is the Agenda of The High Road, People.
Yes, I am sure he was African American, my spectrum voice, just as I am sure he knew I was white.
The ideal of colorblindness is the target.
We are not there yet.
The only reason I choose to factor skin color in my interactions with anyone is it is just one of many indicators I might find out more I didn’t know before. I know we have different cultures and just as I find myself open to anyone from anywhere on the globe that hail from different places, I am only seeing skin tone as a way to find out something more about human experience. It is never about judging someone as less than in any fucking way.
Right now, it is imperative that all humans shield each other from whatever might be so ignorant as to be aggressively violent.
Right now, checking in with anyone, to ask if they are ok is important.
There are many things the Lung Rabies Era has taught us. Perhaps the most profound is, “We are all in this together.”
Blessings on us all. Light and Love to All.
Ta.
Tea With Me 