what is a year?
is it simply our marker of another orbit of our sun counted in rotations on our own axis?
is it the recognition that i’m now coming up on a daughter’s second birthday in a pandemic, turning 10 while living in some form of solitude?
is it a new year filled with terrible anniversaries at the loss of Black lives at the hands of a police force that by its very design is meant to be a coercive force for whiteness?
is it a renewed targeting of Americans of Asian decent because small minded hate-filled white folks need that to rationalize their support of a conman?
is it another year of inaction on our part for our Native American / First Nation communities as we sit by and only picture them as relics of the past we were spoon-fed from racist depictions in black and white and various iterations of color?
it is all of these things, and perhaps none of them. our minds are prediction machines, constantly guessing what is next, and we’re coming out of four years of unpredictability that have still not calmed.
we’re still waiting, because we still have the enemy of human ugliness in the form of systemic racism and now it wields a new hidden weapon of a virus that our marginalized communities are exposed to disproportionately due to their “essential” status — providing service for those who demand it; those who take off their masks to make irrational demands in the face of workers; those who think their freedom does not end at your nose.
whiteness is now even more weaponized. white privilege on full display if you would simply take a moment to open your eyes.
it keeps us distracted. the complete caucasity of those who fear no longer being able to stand on the shoulders of others to keep their place in a fabricated social order. this order was built to distract them from the fact that they are also have-nots by making them believe they are separate and superior to the other have-nots while the wealthy dine on the bodies and souls of those who have sacrificed their lives to an disingenuous promise of inclusion and making it.
and here we are. nearly 400 years after the creation of whiteness. wealth inequality abounds, environmental racism and exploitation in abundance, and these hate filled fools are still fighting a war for those who would never share a table with them.
so perhaps a year doesn’t mean much. but i believe the ugliness of whiteness has been so very on display this last year that perhaps we are pulling more former “moderates” into the fight to lift the blindfolds from our eyes and move forward as a body of humanity. maybe i have to believe that to keep fighting, but i’m going to keep fighting.
