On May 27th, protests began in Minneapolis, Minnesota as a result of the murder of George Floyd by then-officer Derek Chauvin.
As of today, June 9th, protests continue throughout the country and around the world. While George Floyd’s murder may have been the flashpoint, it is NOT the single, solitary cause. Black Lives in our country have been treated as less worthy for over 400 years – sometimes more overtly and sometimes more covertly, and always sytemically.
As a country, and as an entire planet, we have a LOT of work to do. While all people of color experience some discrimination and systemic discrimination, that experienced by black people is more extreme, terrible, and accepted.
This is not a secret and it’s not the first time I’ve talked about this here at CrowSong Lodge. But now there’s a momentum in society and we NEED to maintain it. Even though social media is calming down, protests are still continuing and people and organizations need our support – attention, time, and money – and we need to stretch ourselves to learn more. As other folks have said, it’s not enough to be non-racist (if any of us in the west could really be wholly non-racist in this society), we must be ANTI-racist.
Sarah Sophie Flicker and Alyssa Klein compiled a great reference and put it up on Google Docs for the world to share. You can find it here. I’ll be digging through this document myself, too.
Here’s an article over on Medium by Corinne Schutack called “75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice” to get started on the work now.
Thank you to Brittany Packnett Cunningham for the resources!
For those of you thinking, “I don’t see color” – if you don’t see color, you aren’t acknowledging that other people DO and that the people around you are having different experiences in life because of the color they are, and that’s willful ignorance. Be aware and work to make the world better.
Other people have smarter, more educated, more insightful things to say than I do and they’re in those resources that other people so kindly provided. Click the links and do the homework (I’m doing it, too!), and if you ever need an ear to listen or bounce things off of, reach out to me – we all have to work together.
