this is america

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

–Langston Hughes, “Let America be American Again”

Like most citizens in the United States, I have been consuming the news and media that has surrounded the events that have happened over the past week. I have watched people on my newsfeed make post after post, comment after comment. I have seen my family members go at each other for not doing enough.

I have so many thoughts and opinions about this topic, but I had to chip away at what I was watching everyone else post because my opinions and my voice tend to agree and mirror other people’s feelings. Part of it is because I can see others’ points of view but also another smart part is that I want to be agreeable with everyone.  So, in times of crisis or events such as this, I usually observe from the sidelines.

But, then I thought about my black students and my students of color, past, and present. I think about the conversations that I had with them about racism. The racism that they experience, witnessed or had to read about. And, I was stopped and thought, “Why me?” As a white woman, I never understood why my black students felt comfortable talking about these topics with me. I had never experienced anything close to racism. I acknowledged that my life was not harder because of my skin color. And, I didn’t understand why my kids wanted to talk to me about this. And, the answer for them was simple when I asked them, “It’s because you listen to us, Ma’am.” I listened, I felt with them, I got angry with them, I empowered them.

I am just irritated with all that’s going around, and that their needs to be two distinct sides to this issue–ironically it isn’t all black and white. When someone says, “Black Lives Matter” it does not mean, “White Lives Don’t Matter” or “Blue Lives Don’t Matter” or “All Other Lives Don’t Matter.” I heard this really great analogy: If I was a lifeguard at a pool. Then my responsibility would be to all of those lives. To watch them, protect them. And, then save them when one of them is drowning. But, I am not going to save your life if you aren’t drowning.

The problem in this country is systemic. Yes, not all cops are bad. A majority of the cops are good people and go into this line of business because they want to help people. The problem is the foundation that the justice system is based on; something that has been ignored time and again in order to keep a group of people in their “place.” When I did my Master’s thesis, I spent a lot of time looking up racism and disenfranchisement.

I know that in the United States, people like the counteract with that our country is where “all men are created equal.” Yeah, well, when the Declaration of Independence was written, the only men that were free were white men. Native Americans were labeled “savages” long before the document was written, the Mexican population would have their land taken from them years after that, and African Americans were considered property.

Then you would hear that African Americans should stop bring up slavery. Yeah, well, they wouldn’t have to keep talking about it if the United States government just didn’t put in one form of slavery after another. After slavery, it was tenant farming and Jim Crow. After Jim Crow, there was a glimmer of hope with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but the Ku Klux Klan was still strong. And, just because the Jim Crow Laws ended does not mean that businesses, schools, and the like practiced integration. Then, you had the War on Drugs–which was Nixon’s PC way of waging war on black communities. The strengthening of the School to Prison Pipeline (thanks, Clinton). And, now, we have a glaring problem in the justice system.

My mother said to me the other day that if Martin Luther King, Jr. had lived, we wouldn’t have any of those problems. I tentatively agree with her because it’s hard to say what the chain events would occur. But, then I go back to her point–had he had lived. His cause was the reason why he didn’t. MLK was succeeding and making change. That scared people. Now, the Black Lives Matter Movement scares people.

Any type of change or uncomfortable conversation scares people because we are forced to questions the system of beliefs and laws that we were comfortable with following. This is not about bad cops, good cops, rioters, or looters. It’s about standing up for systematic change in this country.

Images: https://unsplash.com/@mcoswalt & https://unsplash.com/@maxwbender

 

 

little girl, i say to you arise!

When I was little, I was what you would call…dramatic. Probably putting it lightly. It was a very weird combination of things. On my end, I very much remember my younger self as creative, imaginative, but also withdrawn when I was with kids my own age. I always wanted to just sit a read a book (when I learned how to read) or do something like that than actually play.

Now, I was surrounded by a lot of kids growing up–cousins, neighbors, etc. It was a lot of personalities in small space. Now, when I was around adults, I was much more attention seeking. I wanted to be seen by the adults, I wanted recognition. Not because I needed the attention, really, most likely because I felt like an outsider around kids my own age.

In my heart of hearts, I was absolutely content reading, listening to music, or literally just sitting and thinking. But, growing up with a lot of kids your own age, this was not something that you did. This was one of the reasons that I was so content on going to my grandparents’ house. When I was 10, they were already in their 70s. I didn’t have any cousins that came around on my cousins side, so it was me and my brother. I was able to read, watch TV, play on the computer, and just be able to create things.

For some reason, society–at least when I was young–thought that this made disassosciative kids. Kids that didn’t have social skills, could not cooperate with others and became these selfish beings that would not thrive in society.  So, as I got older I kind of forced myself out of my self-isolation. But, because I was forcing myself to be something that was not me, it ended up hurting me.

Grade school and high school I stayed mostly in my bubble. I played sports, because I loved them. I did well in school, because I liked learning and reading. Friendships were probably normal for a pre-teen girl. Filled with drama, tears, and hurt. It was something that I thought was going to define me for a long time, but as I got older what happened got very small for me, but the habits that grew out of that stayed.

Recently, within the year, I found out that I am an empath. I forget the “Ah-Ha” moment that I had, but I must have read a blurb on Pinterest about Highly-Sensitive People and was like, “Oh…” So, I read articles, more blurbs, and I said something to my mom. I described to her what an empath was and almost immediately she said, “Oh, absolutely.” Anytime there is a new self-discovery like that it’s weird. because I had this new information that seems exciting, but then when I read more about what it was it felt daunting.

There is a clear difference between having empathy and being an empath. When you empathize with someone, you know what is feels like for the person to walk through something. You understand their pain, and help them work through that. An empath literally feels that pain with the person. You physically take on the energy of the other person–or mirroring. This is one of those things that I have been doing my entire life.

One of the habits that I formed with my friends growing up was this constant need to make sure that other people were happy. This manifested itself in sacrificing parts of myself because other people might not have liked them. So, I people pleased, I apologized, I sacrificed; even when I did nothing wrong. Why? Because people were upset around me, and I was afraid they would walk away. So, I grew to be afraid of rejection. Afraid of failure. I made sure things were done the right way (my mother would argue this never happens at home, which she is probably right–mostly because she is never going to reject me or cast me aside) the first time. I wanted to leave no room for questions or problems.

So, now I was constantly doing a balancing act–but I was doing a half ass job at it. I got into this martyr mentality that basically kicked my own ass. While I was balancing, I wanted someone to realize that I was doing SUCH. A. GOOD. JOB. at doing all the things. Because 1. it took away from how fragile I was. 2. Made me look good. But, no one realized. And, I sunk. And hard.

For years, I carried around this martyrdom. I wanted people to see how much I was giving up at the time or what I was doing. I wanted to be seen, just like when I was little. Not because I needed the praise, but because I needed help from myself.

If you listen to empaths, a lot of them talk about struggling with addiction. I would never classify myself as a addict in the classic sense; I smoked for 10 years. That was very much an escape for me–I was able to suspend time and reality for those short minutes and just kind of step outside my world. I has a spending problem for much of my life, because I wanted things to replace the hurt that I felt. Alcohol is not has much of a problem as it was in the past.

When you are in your late teens and early 20s, you drink because you can. It is a form of socialization. It’s normalized. It’s supposed to be fun. And, it was all those things. And, it stayed those things as I got job, after job, until I was working three of them. And, I drank to cope with the stress. I drank to cope with the hurt. And, then I drank to deal with people, I drank to be social, to be something that I was not. I needed something to deal with all the feelings I had, but I did not know what to do. I wanted to feel numb most of the time. But, it was never a lasting effect.

Oddly my father’s death was what pulled me out of my funk. I realized that I needed to pull myself out, I had to stop walking around wanting people to see me and start just asking for help. Asking for help came in the form of speaking my needs. Telling my friends and family what I needed from them for support, to be able to look at my reflection and not wanting to cry. So, I tapped into my power.

I starting doing the work. Self-examining, crying, dealing, writing, and learning to feel my feelings and grow from that. My sensitivity is my power, my feelings are my power, my caring spirit is my power, my faith is my power. All of these things that I thought were bad or needed to be changed are what make me wonderful. And, right now, it’s messy. It’s hurt. It’s pain (physically and emotionally). But, I have been thinking back constantly to my favorite Gospel passage from Mark:

38They came to the house of the synagogue official; and He saw a commotion, and people loudly weeping and wailing. 39And entering in, He said to them, “Why make a commotion and weep? The child has not died, but is asleep.” 40They began laughing at Him. But putting them all out, He took along the child’s father and mother and His own companions, and entered the room where the child was. 41Taking the child by the hand, He said to her, “Talitha kum!” (which translated means, “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”). — Mark 5: 38-41

It has always stuck with my that Jesus said, ” The child has not died, but is asleep.” All of those times, I thought that I have nothing left to give. Where I thought, what does it matter anymore? I was not dead. I was just asleep. And, again, I rise.