This Is My Soapbox and I Am Going To Stand On It.

I had a terrible day yesterday.  I took issue with an online post and the day ended with me having been called a racist against white people three times, simply because I pointed out that if the post someone shared assumes a group referred to as 'just Americans' to quote the post, are white, that is fundamental a problem.

I am a white almost senior woman.  I know the lady who shared that post, and I know she is not overtly racist, but more unthinking as so many of us are.  And that is a problem.

I know these last few weeks have been challenging.  Very few people could watch the video of Mr. Floyd dying and not know that this is fundamentally wrong.  In all the discussions and reading I have done since then, I came to understand just how much learning I need to do.  Perhaps I was wrong to try to point out what I felt was wrong with that post, but at the same time, I know that saying nothing would have been just as wrong.  By the end of the day, I kind of felt that if people wanted to call me a racist because I took issue with that post, that I waas willing to live with it.

It angered me, I admit that.  It angered me but I couldn't put together better words. 

I felt much better when I found better words.

.  

This is from writer/poet Scott Woods and is a quote from a blog post in 2014.  That post comes from this post on a controversy about an artist's event and this one.  It's a great blog, with much to say and even more to think about and to learn from.  

In everything that went on yesterday, everything I was trying to say, any conversation that we white, past middle aged women were having, has to start from a way different place and that place is, at minimum, that we all have to see and acknowldge what racism actually is.

This was after being blocked on social media a couple weeks ago, by someone I grew up with, for saying that a meme about a cancelled prom and a protest over a murder were two very very different things.  Young people are going to be just fine, having a fancy dress party at a later time in their lives over other successes they have.  Nothing will ever make it fine again for George Floyd and if I had to choose which one to protest about in a time of health quarantine, I am going to protest about the second and I am still going to call the first fluff.  I would have when we were young.  I still will now.  

The problem is that I thought you were someone different.  My bad.  I should not have assumed and in a way I regret wasting time admiring you so much back then.

It has been a rough couple weeks personally, but I am learning a lot about my past and a lot about why I never felt like I fit.  Still admiring you back then is part of what made me who I am.  Funny that it takes till this age to understand it all though.

Anyway, this white, past middle aged woman is going to take some time to learn how to keep the boat of her life scooped out so I don't drown, so I can help teach my grandchildren not to drown.  She is going to knit while doing it and I can say that because this is after all a knitting sort of blog, and she is going to live her ordinary life too, but she...me...I am going to keep my ears and eyes and heart open to learning.

What I can't believe, what I  am so unutterably sad and dissappointed about, is how alone this learning is.

Picking up my soapbox...walking away.