I feel awkward talking about current events under general circumstances. To say the least, during the current moment. To say the least, to a wide audience.
As a white woman who benefits from my race, class, and other mechanisms of white supremacy and privilege, there are so many ways I need to be better. Among them: being more deliberate about whose work I share, support, and put dollars toward. Whose ideas I present as “food for thought.” How I support my BIPOC colleagues and friends.
There’s no shortage of information out there right now. You have startlingly easy access to it. The Right Now is at a perpetual inflection point, laying bare the staggering and necessary amount of work to do, by white people like me. And of course, that work isn’t just virtue-signaling on Instagram or me taking a week to reflect in this blog/newsletter.
The work is ongoing and lord willing, it’s more foundational than performative: thinking critically, listening actively. Confronting the awkwardness, the tension, and the straight-up overwhelm. Interrogating discomfort at every turn. It’s shitty work. I have to do it. We all have to do it.
I support the protests, and I support an end to police brutality. For me, this feels like a good time to stop, listen, and read.
THINK DEEPLY, LIVE HONORABLY AND ENGAGE THE INTELLECTUAL AND SOCIAL CHALLENGES OF OUR TIMES
Ideal Bookshelf: a great collection of anti-racism books to buy and NOT off Amazon.
It’s time to shop with your values.
“We can bemoan the violence that has attended some of these protests, but we must also recognize that to have to live in a world, in a society, in which you feel that your very life is constantly under threat because of the color of your skin is also a form of violence.
It is a daily, ambient, gnawing violence. It is the kind that makes a grown man’s shoulder draw up and his jaws clench whenever officers approach, even when there has been no offense or infraction.”
From 2018: a century of American protest
According to a new Pew report, nearly two-thirds of black adults say they've been in situations where people acted as if they were suspicious of them because of their race or ethnicity, while only a quarter of white adults say that's happened to them.
More ways to help, including links to bailout funds across the country.
Support the National Police Accountability Project. This group, a project of the National Lawyers Guild, helps people find legal counsel.