This Week's Opening Thought: July 1, 2024
This week's opening thought: I call people in and out as needed. And I get called in and out, too. I'm not immune to being called in or out. I welcome it. I'm fallible, and sometimes, I need to get checked. I believe that part of being a decent person (not a "good" person, mind you, but a decent person. That "good person" schtick is christian values-driven patriarchal white supremacist nonsense in western culture) is being able to be called to task for your actions or behaviors and to learn from your missteps. I'll only kick it with those willing to call me in or out when I mess up and do harm. But real talk?
Some of you hold yourself to a different or non-existent standard of accountability and self-accountability, and it shows.
I have had to block a lot of folx lately—like, A LOT. And I'm usually not sad about that. Block and delete exist for a reason. But it's been a little bittersweet lately—I'd argue even a little sad. Why?
I've had to block a lot of people of color and intersectional folx lately.
I'm not naive. I know how patriarchal heteronormative white supremacist ideology works. I understand how self-loathing generated by centuries of generational trauma manifests. But it never feels OK to have to check melanated folx and intersectional folx who are so deeply entrenched in patriarchal white supremacist ideology that they are inherently tools of their oppressors.
I feel for them. I can't imagine what unresolved and unearthed traumas sit in their brains and bodies to engage in oppression willingly. To be willingly oppressive, to have hateful views in a world that has been conditioned to hate you for just existing, has to be quite the internal struggle. I can call them in. I can educate. I can empathize. I can also hope they find healing and wish them peace and mindfulness. But they can go find that peace and mindfulness somewhere way over there, away from me and mine, because it's no one's job to coddle someone and give them countless opportunities to do you, and other people harm when they refuse to unpack their sh--. People often show you who they are, and you have to eventually take in the messages you're receiving or become an accessory to their oppressive views and trauma.
You can't teach anyone who doesn't want to learn or believes they know everything or "enough," identities or ethnocultural heritage connections be damned.
Block 'em, delete 'em, and ask someone to burn some sage for their soul while they stand downwind so the smoke can hit their asses far away from your vicinity.
That's as close as you can get to saving someone's soul.
