I will never understand racism. While I certainly don't want to pontificate about matters of social justice and talk outside of my wheelhouse, I simply can not fathom the hatred anyone could harbor for a total stranger simply by the color of their skin. I also can't wrap my head around how people maneuver themselves into positions that quite frankly we're indoctrinated to believe are positions that are meant to keep us safe, civilized, and adhering to a code that promotes moral integrity and altruism. And they abuse it, or manipulate those they are meant to serve. Yet, we see it all the time.
Politicians voting on behalf of corrupt personal or party interests rather than the best interest of their communities or humans. Teachers who abuse their roles as scholars to exploit and harm vulnerable students, and law enforcement officials who exude a brutish bravado to indoctrinate fear in the very people they are allegedly protecting. Since I was a small child, one of the most demoralizing things I ever experienced in my life was realizing that the people I was raised to revere and trust could potentially be one of your most callous antagonists. I don't know what it is like to walk down the street and fear for my life because the color of my skin, that is called privilege and it is something that I am just realizing in my thirties. It came up a lot during the manifestation of this pandemic. While fear and confusion were understandably palpable and reasonable things to feel, I started to watch as the indignation about the state of our world was slowly turning into an issue of raise or divisive party politics. Individuals walking into grocery stores donning a KKK hood, or a face mask that read "Thanks derogatory racial C-word" all the while our president was calling it the "China Virus" rather...the "CHHYYY-NUHHHHH" virus. As a white man, my immediate thought seeing this stuff was..."great, now people are going to look at me and associate me or my family with that glorified bully with militant followers and a destructive penchant for being a shameless bigot. Then another fear was brought to my attention, one of my oldest and dearest friends had confided in me that she was starting to become paranoid about leaving her house with her son because of the color of her skin. While COVID-19 rattled her (understandable), she was more discouraged and frightened to be a Korean-American woman living in an age where people were beginning to show their true colors regarding race and diversity. That's when I had to take a look in the mirror and realize that I was privileged. I never made the correlation between my skin color and that word because I always believed that to be privileged meant to be affluent, socially insulated due to pedigree, or simply living in a plane of existence that destitute people could never imagine even if their broke asses lived to be 100. No. Privilege is being a white kid in the 90s and if you had an Asian and African friend, they never got to be the Green or Red Ranger, they were always assigned the Yellow or Black ranger because well, they fit into that role. As arbitrary as the comparison sounds, its the idea that a person's entire life is boxed up by their race. Frankly, I just don't feel comfortable trying to promote a book, a poem, or even blog if I don't acknowledge that we need to do better. We need to work harder, and we simply can't ignore the problems because they haven't hit close to him for us. That's how we got into this mess in the first place. I try my hardest to be an inclusive writer, and to make sure I am casting the widest net and make sure that people feel that the story, the narrative, or the poem can resonate with them. At the end of the day I know my place in the hierarchy, I'm a guy who simply loves to put pen to paper or sit with a word document and write down aspects of life that inspire, horrify, or anger me and while there is no color to those words, I certainly hope that nothing I write feels that I am leaving anyone out be it by gender, race, culture, or personal merit. Case and point? I have literally watched people weaponize religion my whole life. I have so many experiences to pull from, but today I saw this on a man's car and thought....Oh man, son of a gun you are speaking my language. It restored my faith after I came across an article where an older Christian woman admitted that Trump was hurting the wrong people (meaning her) I'm sorry, but when should an elected official be hurting anyone? I am sure I lost all of you by now, or you're cursing me out, cancelling me (well, that's easy I'm a nobody) but honest to god. We need to do better as humans. This shit has got to stop. I don't want to get so deep into it that I can't fucking find the shore again. ghostcitypress.com/poetry-may-2020/2020/5/30/eddie-brophy Ghost City Press published their May 2020 issue and it is chock full of brilliance and creativity. While I should promote my own work, I also think you should check out every contributor. It really is a melting pot of amazing minds and creativity. I hope creativity, love, pride, family, tolerance, inclusion, and strength defines 2020...otherwise, what in the hell are we living for?
Rest In Power: George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor. WE WILL NOT LET THIS STAND.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
September 2021
Categories |