Racism & Privilege and the "Drive By" Racist Meangirl

In crafting the intersectional feminist anthology that I'm working on, my writing partners & I are committed to finding writers from communities not always well represented in indie publishing, or anthologies, or just about any literary scene. So we wrote a call for submissions that stated exactly what we were hoping for, being specific about welcoming womanist and racially intersectional feminism in addition to GLBT and disabled stories.

A lot has happened during the process, including getting somewhere near 500+ submissions from all over the world. The anthology we're putting out (anthologies, actually, since we committed to doing two after I saw how many we had gotten) is amazing. Potentially award winning. And I say that not as a result of my writing but as a result of the response we got.

But what also happened was that yesterday, a now former Facebook friend decided to attack me. It was kind of out of the blue, and surprised me because said former friend would likely, if you asked her, consider herself pretty progressive. Certainly not a racist.

But she said my acknowledgement of my own personal privilege (because of which I can afford to front the money on an indie publishing venture and pay the writers with actual cash, not "exposure," which we all know is BS) was me being desperate to "hang out at the rap kids table." That I was trying too hard. That if I wanted to really help "them" I should donate money or something (to a nebulous "them" and not the people I actually do help in several ways every single day.)

I won't write a long bit about how I grew up really underprivileged, how I score every time on that "how privileged are you" quiz that goes around in a range you wouldn't believe. With a single mom, a deadbeat dad, and times being homeless, I get to check a lot of boxes. But I've grown up, and through my husband & my business ventures, done pretty well. And so I've reached a place where I can, as Kevin Spacey said, send the elevator back down.

I also spent more than 10 years studying women's & minority literature and social culture in college, received a PhD and read countless hours of theory on race and privilege in our society. Including the Marxism from which my former friend was throwing darts at me. In that study, I hoped to teach at a college level and help expose students to amazing literature and history that they might not have heard. I am not teaching at college, but I'm still trying to use those studies, and that's where all of my experience, training, and love of writers like Zora Neale Hurston and Ralph Ellison have sent me.

The racism implicit in the former friend's assumption that people of color equate to "kids at the rap table" and that I was trying to fit in with my coolness by talking about things better left to them... it just blew me away. It is not just people of color who should be addressing the race problems in this country. We ALL need to be talking about it. All the time. Because people are dying on the street and in jail cells. Indigenous women are disappearing at an alarming rate and people don't talk about it. Trans women and men are murdered and there has been a defense used of "I was worried because they were trans" that has been considered a fair defense!

It's not just the communities who are being oppressed who should do this work. And to imply that I am just trying to be cooler by doing so, or that I'm somehow desperate for attention.... I've thought about it all day and night, how to respond to that. I want people to know this: it's not okay to write a check to some "them" organization and get your feel goods because you're doing some kind of "social justice" by sending an occasional tax deduction towards charity. Stop turning it into an us and "Them." Because when YOU, yes you, nameless former friend, do that, you're continuing the hatred and vile rhetoric that let people like some of our current presidential candidates thrive.

So yes. I will continue the work I'm doing. It's not just being aware of a somewhat troubling trend on Facebook to only show me white "suggested friends" and all that the realization implies about how algorithms are set up for how we are "similar." Social networking might not be changing the world (although I would argue with that, a lot, but just not here). But doing things like sponsoring a charity that is out to end Violence Against Women world wide? And PAYING writers for their work? Writers who don't have a ton of venues already directed at them? All of that is social justice.

And I would rather sit at that table than with the Mean Girls every. single. day. 

Reincarnation & Alternate Universes: A Theory

These are the very words she uses to describe her life...

She said a good day
Ain't got no rain
She said a bad day's when I lie in bed
And think of things that might have been...
"Slip Sliding Away" Paul Simon, 1975

Sometimes, you'll hear a song or see a face that reminds you of another life you might have lived. If you had taken that one path differently, that life lies shimmering just beyond your reach.

This isn't melancholy or regret, just thoughts about alternate timelines. 

Each step we take causes a quantum state of "might have been" to slide right past us. We hardly notice them, these alternate lives. This is actual scientific theory, but you know, I think it's also the root of a lot of world religious beliefs.  Not only are we reincarnated in many lives but we're living many lives right this second. And a new one this next second.

That smiling beauty at the bookstore, looking at you with longing in their eyes? A different word, another path, and you would be with them, instead of who you are now. Would it have been better? Worse? Somewhere, some WHEN, it is. Somewhere, you took that step and you live an alternate life. 

Isn't that interesting? The thought that there are multiple copies of you out there? Some of them aren't that different. They chose to eat scrambled eggs this morning instead of corn cereal. Big deal. Some of them live in entirely different cities, have entirely different careers. That fleeting thought of change you had once? Some other you took it. They went skydiving, they joined the Peace Corps, they got married young, they pursued their PhD, they are a waitress in a dive bar and they go to the beach during the day, sun-kissed and smelling like coconut sunscreen.

Honestly, this life I have right now I'm 99.9% happy with. There are choices I could have made that would have been a little different, a little better. There are some that could have been a lot worse. I would have liked to finish a few things a bit faster. It would have been (would still be) nice for my career path to have gone a bit differently. More winter beach time would be, would have been, amazing. I would not have dated that one guy. You know the one-- the one that rubbed all the innocence off, that broke pieces of your heart into tiny bits. You put them back together, but never quite the same.

But sometimes I catch a sliding door, a crack in the timeline, and I see a vision of the me I would be, could be, if that other step had been taken. This one I'm on now is amazing, and it's entirely possible that other one would have been sadder, lonelier. But it's still over there, hovering out of my consciousness.

Other lives. Live all of them to your fullest. Every single one.

*********

Ah! somehow life is bigger after all

Than any painted angel, could we see.

Oscar Wilde, Humanitad

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Facing Change. Transforming Fear.

53558045: Fear Concept Letterpress Theme

by 4@enterlinedesign

Yesterday, my daughter & I talked about change. She has moved into a new type of schooling this year, and her dad is retiring from his 20+ year position. All of this means we are facing huge changes in the next year. Everything my 10 year old kiddos has ever known is about to be different. 

For her dad and I, this has been a blip. We have missed our family and dear friends in San Antonio, but that city has always been HOME. It's been a sweet dive into cool green water on the hottest day in the year every time we come home. It's been lying on cool, white sheets to take that needed rest after a long day, not missing out on any tasks because there's nothing you needed to do otherwise. Comfort, and rest. 

We've been even looking at buying a house in the same basic neighborhood where we lived when the twins were born. We will slide back into the routine of visiting with friends, going to hear the same acoustic musicians on the weekend, heading to the zoo or the Japanese Tea Gardens (my favorite) when we need a little Civic Appreciation time. All the things we do when we come home, we can do every weekend. 

I've missed the flavor of San Antonio-- the way people standing in a line to grab groceries feel like friends on the same path as you. Yeah, maybe if you pushed it they'd give you a funny look but there is a congeniality that I don't find the same in other places. Don't get me wrong-- almost anywhere you go in the South has a generally friendly vibe but San Antonio is the friendliest, kindest, most gentle big City I've ever seen. 

But all of this is still Change to my kiddos. They will leave behind friends (if you can leave behind anyone in this day of Skype and IM). They'll have to shop in different places, and the allure of "weekend vacation" hot spots like the Riverwalk and the Tower will fall into the common, everyday sights. Change is scary. 

Even for the grown ups-- thinking about a new routine, new things and people to learn-- can feel pretty scary. Lying awake and contemplating all the potential new faces to meet in the next year or so, the adventure of packing up our things and driving that long day back to home... it can feel a little scary. But FEAR is a four letter word. We will face that feeling and then come back to another four letter word: LOVE. 

And let me tell you MY secret: I can't wait.