Finding New Songs.....
A month ago I wrote about singing God’s song in a strange land. We lamented loss...how could we sing.
Almost a month later, the land isn’t so strange. We’re more used to how it rises and flows from hills to valleys, optimism to depression...we are learning to navigate and maintain some equilibrium. Trips to the store become ‘outings’, to be done only when seriously necessary; in an effort to ensure no one gets infected by us and we don’t pick up something, we mask and glove. Gardening is at an all time high, as the weather improves. We can get outside the house and some of the pressure is lifted.
For those of us who are lucky and privileged, that is. Life is a little restricted....but not enough to cause an issue.
And then there’s the ignorant white privilege which thinks freedom means it has the right to put others at risk. And force its own way.
Then we start to look at the not so,privileged. It’s not new. It’s been around since the Civil War. For awhile, with the abolition of slavery and later the Civil Rights movement, we whites took some pride....too much....in the supposed eradication of inequalities and integration. What we missed was that our privilege continued without restraint. For people of colour, the restrictions of rights and the racism appeared to go ‘underground’. Except they didn’t really. All it has taken has been a vicious, ignorant, racist bully in the White House, surrounded by vicious and ignorant quislings, to bring that racism back out of the closet and bring out the white sense of privilege that they can do whatever they like....and that black and brown are not truly citizens. Nor truly people. And when the true disparity and the true ugliness rears its head again, we lament ‘This isn’t the America I know’, or ‘this isn’t the Canada I know’. Well, no, it isn’t because we’ve lived it in privilege. But it IS what is real.
As I watch the video of George Floyd struggling to breathe, and pleading for release, and I watch police committing murder and condoning the actions...the moment freezes. This moment captures everything that is wrong with North American society......white still believes it has the inherent right to suppress. Colonialisation lives on. Nothing at all has changed. Nothing.
So here we are, in a different part of this strange land....we have power to stand up and speak, power to push back against the viciousness, the bullying, the racism. Power to make lasting change.
The question is, will we?
Almost a month later, the land isn’t so strange. We’re more used to how it rises and flows from hills to valleys, optimism to depression...we are learning to navigate and maintain some equilibrium. Trips to the store become ‘outings’, to be done only when seriously necessary; in an effort to ensure no one gets infected by us and we don’t pick up something, we mask and glove. Gardening is at an all time high, as the weather improves. We can get outside the house and some of the pressure is lifted.
For those of us who are lucky and privileged, that is. Life is a little restricted....but not enough to cause an issue.
And then there’s the ignorant white privilege which thinks freedom means it has the right to put others at risk. And force its own way.
Then we start to look at the not so,privileged. It’s not new. It’s been around since the Civil War. For awhile, with the abolition of slavery and later the Civil Rights movement, we whites took some pride....too much....in the supposed eradication of inequalities and integration. What we missed was that our privilege continued without restraint. For people of colour, the restrictions of rights and the racism appeared to go ‘underground’. Except they didn’t really. All it has taken has been a vicious, ignorant, racist bully in the White House, surrounded by vicious and ignorant quislings, to bring that racism back out of the closet and bring out the white sense of privilege that they can do whatever they like....and that black and brown are not truly citizens. Nor truly people. And when the true disparity and the true ugliness rears its head again, we lament ‘This isn’t the America I know’, or ‘this isn’t the Canada I know’. Well, no, it isn’t because we’ve lived it in privilege. But it IS what is real.
As I watch the video of George Floyd struggling to breathe, and pleading for release, and I watch police committing murder and condoning the actions...the moment freezes. This moment captures everything that is wrong with North American society......white still believes it has the inherent right to suppress. Colonialisation lives on. Nothing at all has changed. Nothing.
So here we are, in a different part of this strange land....we have power to stand up and speak, power to push back against the viciousness, the bullying, the racism. Power to make lasting change.
The question is, will we?
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