Can I just write this blog without upsetting anyone? Probably not, but I do want to write this so I’ve chosen to put any possible upsetness up on a shelf where I can ignore it for now. Today I’m writing about race. Actually, I’m writing about race and all the other elements that make us different, but race is the most controversial. More than gender or sexual orientation, I believe. I’ve written and ranted about this before, but I need to clarify a huge aspect which brings much anger to some. I’m a black woman. Brown. I’m actually a lot less brown in real life than I am in my mind. I’m always surprised to notice how much lighter I am than the friends I thought were lighter than me. But when I was little… oh wait, I have to explain that I grew up in Groningen in the late '70s/early ‘80s. I was the only black kid in my school. So....... when I was little, in kindergarten to be precise, I didn’t know I was black. I was just a girl, the same as any other girl in class. I didn’t like the horrible, horrible school milk and I loved the fluoride mouthwash. Especially the blue one. I could run even faster than some of the boys and I was one of the few who knew that it was possible to poop and pee at the same time. One day I was home and looked at myself in the mirror and I realized for the first time that no one else had that halo of curly baby hair, proudly (read: stubbornly) crowning their face. I clearly remember this moment, because for the first time I saw my own face as different than all the other faces I saw every day. There was no judgement in that moment, just observation. With this background info out there now, I’ll continue about my actual point. The essence of this blog. And that is, that we should stop making race a difference. Stop making it relevant information, since it’s not. Look at the person, just like I did before I saw my own color, and start emphasizing the aspects that are relevant (like knowing that you can poop and pee at the same time). I want to see headlines like ‘Entrepreneur who overcame much adversity donates basketball court to childhood neighborhood’. Or ‘Astronaut who grew up in welfare receives award for scientific discovery’. Or ‘Young Activist with Dyslexia Writes First Book’. Why would it be relevant that they’re black. What’s significant is that they overcame adversity, that they accomplished something in spite of something. There’s much pain in the race problem. Unthinkable, unspeakable pain. Pain we would not wish upon our worst adversaries. Pain every black person is confronted with every day. Pain non-black people will never understand. Pain non-black people don’t see. Pain that doesn’t even exist in their universe. And it’s not fair. It’s not. It’s not fair that we have to deal with something that is so hard to overcome. Someone should pay for it. No. That’s not how it stops. Pain doesn’t stop by inflicting more pain. Pain stops by healing. By feeling aaaall of the cuts and bruises and wounds and lacerations. Mourn all you need to mourn, where there is space for mourning. Heal where there is space for healing. Agitate where there is space to agitate. And then, live in the energies of fairness and equality you want to see reign in the world. Pain stops by living in the vibes you do want to feel. And this shift is not going to come from the majority. The ones who can't feel it, because it's not their pain. This shift has to come from the ones feeling it. Healing always, always, always happens within. Now, take a moment and feel into the difference (I mean truly feel and not listen to what sounds better, but feeeeel the difference) between ‘successful black entrepreneur’ and ‘successful entrepreneur who overcame adversity’. Which feels more neutral? Most people think that to add the ‘black’ in the first headline brings a sense of pride to being black, but that is not truly the part that makes us proud. It’s the overcoming adversity implied that makes us proud, because they’re a minority and they've overcome more than the average majority entrepreneur. SO CELEBRATE THAT. And allow anyone else to join in the celebration. Why should a purple person not be allowed to feel proud of someone who became successful. Stop making race an aspect to celebrate or despise. It’s neither. If you want equality, stop making ‘black movies’. Stop making ‘black universities’. Stop making ‘black award ceremonies’. INFILTRATE the majority life and demand your own space there, as the worthy human being you are. If you want race to not make a difference, STOP MAKING IT A DIFFERENCE. There’s no point in harping on about equality if you keep glorifying the aspect that is the essence of the inequality. Glorifying it just perpetuates the inequality you don’t want. And what use is it anyway. Is it a special accomplishment to be born black? No. It is as much an accomplishment as being born with 10 fingers. It just happened. And we’re not celebrating everyone with 10 fingers either. Please look at race the same way if you have to decide to mention it or not. So the huge difference, that has hopefully become a bit clearer now, is that I’m not saying there isn’t any pain in being black. Or that the pain we deal with isn’t worthy of attention or healing. What kind of therapist would I be if that were my sentiment. What I am saying is that we, the ones who want equality for ourselves, should stop perpetuating inequality by celebrating our race, because that did not require any accomplishment and should absolutely not make us different in any way, either positively or negatively. Celebrate what the person did first, their accomplishment. Maybe explain why this was such an accomplishment afterwards, but don’t celebrate and perpetuate the apartheid. One love <3
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I don't know what I came here to write about, but it's been a while since the last time and I feel like expressing myself in writing. Not privately, but publicly. Which, every time I feel this urge, is a very strange sensation for me, because I have an innate need to be invisible. To be as anonymous as possible. And at the same time I feel the need to influence the world and leave it a little better than when I came into it. As you can imagine, this is a strange limbo to live in. So I wonder. How did I end up in this limbo in the first place? Is it because we women have been conditioned into being pretty but invisible? Into not rocking the boat? Shying away from the spotlight? I think for a big part we have. We have allowed ourselves to be put in glass boxes where we can be looked at, but not heard. Where we can be pretty without being a personality. All of this is nothing new. We have heard this same song for the last 7 decades, at least. But we're almost in 2018 and the song hasn't changed. The way women react to it hasn't changed much either. We still bitch and moan about not being equal. We still shout from the top of our lungs that we women should unite. And at the same time we keep raising our sons differently than our daughters. At the same time we keep accepting less pay. At the same time we keep gossiping about other women every chance we get. We keep overreacting about awful things women do and underreacting about the same awful things men do. We keep assuming that a surgeon is a man. We keep underestimating a female CEO. We keep calling our female friends 'my bitches'. We keep letting ourselves be interrupted by someone else, but expect a man to keep talking. We keep associating weakness with feminine traits. How are we owning up to the fact that we are to blame for the biggest part of this inequality? Are we even aware of being the biggest party to cultivate this unbalance? No. We are unaware because we are too occupied living out our drama. Singing our song. Which means we must be getting something out of it. There must be a benefit for us hidden in the drama of yelling 'we should be equal to men!'. On some level, we are choosing the false benefits of our drama over authentic equality. It is not easy to admit this about ourselves. We would rather blame someone else for our misery. But if we're truly honest, we know. We KNOW that we are the ones who have been maintaining this misery. I think this is good. This is a first step. A first step to come out of any misery, really. Acknowledge your own contribution to it. And then?
And then we let this awareness sink in and take some time recover from this blow to our persona. And then we go out in the world again. With this huge essential shadow part of ourselves, integrated into our collective psyche. And now we live our daily lives, aware of our shadow. Aware of our actions that foster inequality, helplessness and dependency. And we learn to live unapologetically authentic lives. Grounded in the awareness of our actions. Aware of how we speak, how we dress, how we listen, how we treat others, how we own our weaknesses, how we love, how we respect, how we live. This awareness will make us whole. This awareness will replace the false benefits we have been getting from the drama. Because being whole is being enough. |
Photos used under Creative Commons from julian_fern, Humphrey King