Walking the halls of my graduate school
We are studying oppression, racism and privilege. It is sobering. I am also saddened by how oppressed groups are currently being treated in America. I wrote the following post to my teacher. We have to respond to what we are learning and how it applies to us.
I have enjoyed the readings
and the discussions in class about oppression, racism and privilege. I especially liked a student's comment about
the black man’s experience of looking down at his newborn and knowing for the
first time he was being looked at without being seen as a black man, just a
man. So much of how we see the world is
socially constructed. Being a sociology
major, over forty years ago, helps me look through different, but still yet
incomplete, lenses ever since. One of my favorite readings was about the
woman who was Latina, but didn’t have the same experience of other Latinas
because she was white. How can
we improve upon the accepted solution, as seen by most, written by Peggy
McIntosh that our work simply consists of interventions that “will allow ‘them’
to be more like ‘us’?” I don’t know
what the “silver bullet” is, but my faith tells me that if I am humble, God
will help me know what my part is, what I can do to help. The answer, however, is not to behave
oppressively toward the privileged, but we must fight oppression. The “What’s in it for Us” article reminds me
of a poem I wrote entitled “What’s in it for me?”, decades ago. The last stanzas are as follows:
What’s in it for me,
what’s in it for me”?
Love, joy and peace
through giving and growing
and enduring it well;
Through patience and
faith in His presence
we’ll dwell.
Why can’t they see, surely,
they must,
that they have been
given a high sacred trust
to tend this earth,
to care, to grow,
to realize they’ll
reap just as they sow.
One day we’ll hear
them weep, wail and cry:
“That’s what was in
it for me, O Lord, O Lord,
“Why couldn’t I see!
“Why didn’t you tell
me?
“Why didn’t you scold?”
“I did, I did! But your hearts were so cold!
Your eyes were open
but you just wouldn’t see
that what you have
done unto others,’
Ye have done unto Me.
I think that Melba
Pattillo Beals’ book, “Warriors Don’t Cry”, should be required reading. I have never read anything that better helped me
understand what blacks in America have gone through, and yet go through, than this book. Additionally, I have never read anything that
so perfectly demonstrates how to fight oppression. It was
a combination of assertiveness, determination and dignity, made possible as
they relied upon a higher power for their marching orders. Vicki Robinson
That was my post. Sidenote: I had addressed my desire to clean up language in our classroom, a few weeks prior. Definitely not a popular move on my part. But the teacher responded by asking the class to refrain from using a particular word, you know the one that is still considered to be the most vulgar in the English language, but is increasingly becoming the universal modifier for every emotion ranging from joy and wonder to disdain and disgust.
But far worse than language is the belief that some people are unworthy of regard. It produces behavior unbecoming of a Saint.
