‘2. COLOR
In the animal world, it indicates danger: the most colorful creatures are often the most poisonous.
Color is also a way to attract, and seduce a mate.
In the human world color, triggers many
more complex, and often deadly reactions.’
Judith Ortiz Cofer,
“The Story of My Body.” Minding the Body
An Open Invitation
This is the invitation: to update your capacity to hold the necessary shifts in the world, bringing yourself into this evolving reality. This is an invitation for your participation. You are needed.
Equanimity requires the majority of people, from diverse backgrounds, to usher in change. Justice, its very flesh and bone, needs healing.
There’s been a breach in our humanity. The breach is continuous, violent and specific. The bleed is rattling the cage of race, racism and rage. The confines of denial, and being denied have become places of suffocation. We have stayed here long enough. We are battle fatigued, and need to break free.
Perceived Reality
All ethnic identities are living evolving systems. Since race matters, it’s demanding a more conscious revolutionary engagement. Who are we becoming?
James Baldwin said, “It’s up to you. As long as you think you’re white, there is no hope for you. As long as you think you’re white, I’m going to be forced to think I’m black.”
Making assumptions of race and color is limiting. In fact, it’s dangerous. When being ‘an other’ is to be eliminated. Systemic power structures, built in every aspect of life, fuel the elimination, and execution of the vulnerable. What would you call that? Racism is not about race. It’s about power. Racism is lack of consciousness, curiosity, and empathy. It’s about fear. Fighting these strong currents of racism is being thrown into the rapids, then being torn asunder by crocodiles below.
There is a vulnerability in being a person of color. A voiceless-ness has pervaded, like a cloak of invisibility. It creates blindness for the one who cloaks the vulnerable: “I cannot, and will not see you.” And, the blindness is extended to the one who is cloaked: “I cannot see.”
We are all susceptible to limited points of view when it comes to the most vulnerable, the most oppressed, the most invisible. This is when our sensitivity, and action are most needed.
Here are Some Reminders
We are the solutions to what is going on in the world. Facing the Monsters of Fear, we see past our own lens of fear. What is reflected is the true depth of a person’s humanity, and we can be seen more clearly. We have the opportunity to see one another more brilliantly.
- What is one step can I take now?
- Am I aware of my biases, by-passing and denial?
- How can my privilege serve?
- How can my anger transform?
- How do I have difficult conversations?
- How can I be more inclusive?
- How do I practice self-care if I’m overwhelmed?
Anointing the traumatic wounds of racism is also a turning away from, in order to tune into yourself. Healing is a personal process of conscious conversation, and engagement in a world of color, in its full spectrum and complexity. Take what you learn, know it into action, and transform. You have more influence than you realize. These immediate responses are the sacred offerings to soften the jagged edges of being in the world, and living with compassion.