The Virus.

For you this is ‘Diversity Training’

For me this is just art

You have to look and try to find black and brown bodies to make sure the voices on your panel are fully inclusive and you have to do that both because it makes it more interesting to have new voices and because you HAVE to – 

You HAVE to because it will be bad optics if you don’t –

You HAVE to because it’s really the only way forward –

You HAVE to because you are being faced with the realization that you believe that society is fractured that there are two worlds we are living in and – you’ve been ignoring ‘them’

I grew up wanting to dance for Alvin Ailey before I knew the stories, before I understood the differences before I understood my childhood dream to dance “Cry” would never come true 

because I was white.

I grew up with a Father so tormented by the history of the holocaust he screamed and wagged fingers at the television as we watched every drama and documentary about the Jewish people ever made

I grew up with the holocaust side by side on my television with Roots – things we need to know about our past so we don’t ever do them again

I didn’t know there was a difference until I was seven years old and my best friend was black and my Mother asked me who else I would want to be if I could be anyone else but myself and I said her – I said she was the most beautiful person I knew – I thought she was soooo beautiful, and my Father quickly said, “Don’t ever say that – never say you would want to be her – you have no idea what those people go through.”

I still did not know. I still do not know.

I only know the churning pain in my gut at everything that is a dismissal everything that reeks of superiority and inferiority that the pain of the universal cry for permission for approval to be seen to be heard to be integrated – to have one’s perspective and insight to be integrated into the fullness of the experience of life to be able to live in a way that feels like your voice matters that the work you do matters that your opinions or thoughts or expressions are important enough to be supported that you are worthy of dedicating your life and your time to the expression of your gifts not in institutional slavery sucking every precious moment of your time and your life force into some meaningless task of untangling something someone else is determined remain tangled.

THIS I know.

So you can bark that I / we are not doing enough or not doing it right or that I /we don’t really know enough – you can judge every which way – it will be nothing new or different to what I / we have felt and done and experienced my /our entire life from when I / we came into this world… seven soft years give or take and then death and pain and then anger and then rape and then paralysis. What more can you do? What punishment more do “I” need to endure at your hands at his hands at her hands… at my own? how much more is enough?  When will “I” be perfect enough to not deserve it?  

When? 

And these thoughts echo through me and my sisters and brothers and through time they echo through my ancestors whispers and your ancestors stories and through the Earth and how many years til the echos will change? Are they changing? When we finally see that this torment is not about our worth, but thousands of years of domination of bodies and land – when will we recognize the sickness for what it is?  The virus.

*****

Author’s Note: This post is stream of consciousness. This post is within the context of examining “Wetiko” – the native name given to our white bodied people’s or ‘western’ sickness of cannibalizing everything and everyone. This post is from the context of examining the Doctrine of Discovery and The Witches Hammer. This post is part of examining the symptoms and pathologies of our Wetiko.