What you, Indi, call dualism, was once known as black and white thinking. As children we were steered away from that kind of thinking for a reason. As my mother, the analogy queen, liked to say, black and white thinking is like living in a pitch-dark cave or staring at the sun. Be careful she warned; black and white thinking nurtures black and white emotions, black and white understandings, and black and white beliefs. One is so cold it turns you to ice, the other is so hot it burns you to a crisp. Both hurt so bad, you stop feeling, thinking, knowing and believing anything at all. You might as well be a rock.
Sometimes, people give me the impression they are just that – rocks – unfeeling, unthinking, unknowing and unbelieving rocks. Nothing and no one touch them.
For me, The Walking Dead series captured the reality of American life today. The story of a handful of survivors struggling for life and trapped on a continent filled with the walking dead stuck. I cannot shake it.
That said, a most surprising thing is happening. Calling white people white people is getting beneath white people’s skin – and penetrating minds. The words “white-privilege” are activating long dead emotions. Covid is challenging them to die or re-join the living.
Like bears after the long deep freeze of winter hibernation, white people are waking up angry, dazed and hungry. It’s been so long since they felt anything, I suspect it hurts. While they slept, the world kept turning without them and they wake strangers in a strange land. We want our country back they cry, make America Great Again, they scream and shout.
Fuck no, you lazy creeps, while you were sleeping and living off your fat, we were building a new America. America belongs to us.
My children say I am getting older, slowing down, my leaving America might be best. But they are staying. They are fighting. They will not surrender. Mama, this is what you taught us and this is what we’re doing. I listen and think, oh shit, I brought this on myself. Why, why, why did I drag my children into this? I could have left them freedom. Instead, I chained them to a fight for freedom. WTF was wrong with me? Oh, how I lament my choices. One child is in Kentucky, Brianna Taylor is the center of her life. Another is on the front lines, fighting for farmworker rights. My God, what have I done?
