I’m not sure what I want to express at the start of this new solar rotation. I certainly didn’t expect to celebrate my 51st birthday under quarantine and curfew, with protests in the streets and a lazy, cowardly dullard in the White House prattling on about sending American troops against the people he swore to protect three-and-a-half years ago.
But life comes at you fast.
And we aren’t in the clear yet. Shelter-in-place orders across the country, along with post-traumatic stress stemming from the violence during these riots, will likely result in a massive mental health crisis for which the nation is unprepared.
2020 has laid bare the rot at the foundation of our society: massive wealth inequality; the limitations of a privatized healthcare system; systemic, institutionalized racism; police departments across the country brutalizing people of color with impunity and little accountability; and a performative show of leadership from a president* who still commands strong support from 40 percent of the country despite presiding over the largest number of job losses since the Great Depression, a middling (at best) response to a global pandemic, the worst riots in at least a generation, and being impeached.
I’ve been thinking a lot about allyship this year. I’ve not always been a good one, or even one. In my life I’ve been racist, sexist, misogynistic, ableist, ageist, classist, prejudiced of other religions and xenophobic.
But if you get popped in the mouth enough times for using a racial epithet against someone, you can do one of two things. You either gravitate toward like-minded people who confirm your biases. Or you stop the bleeding, question why people keep popping you in the mouth for “speaking your mind” and work on changing that.
Conservatism or progress.
One choice is easy. Conservatism, to me, means that things are fine as they are and there is no need to adapt to the changing times. It’s about protecting your gains — regardless of how they were acquired — and not acknowledging that you might have had advantages to get to where you are.
Progressivism, on the other hand, requires showing up and doing the work. And the work is never-ending. The people taking to the streets to protests police brutality the past two weeks are doing the work. The people who are donating to bail funds across the country, and recording the scores of incidents of police attacking protesters and reporters are doing the work.
Conservatives love to tell everyone to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, while never stopping to ask some people why they are walking around barefoot.
To paraphrase Roxane Gay, being a good ally requires us to take on then problems borne of oppression as our own, without remove or distance — even if we cannot fully understand what it’s like to be oppressed.
It’s saying “I’m here for you” and not asking, “What can I do to help?”
It’s taking the privilege of your station and sharing it with those who lack it.
Racism, sexism and other biases are learned behaviors. That means they can be unlearned. That requires pushing ourselves out of our comfort zones, listening and acting. You don’t have to try and be perfect out of the gate. But you do have to try.
And I am here for you.
