This spring I’m reading Alice Walker’s Living by the Word slowly, mindfully, as part of my “Contemplative Writing” course. I appreciate this book of essays for many reasons, including its title, which makes an argument that we live by the words we put into the world. As a writer committed to everyday living for justice, I am taken with this idea of “living by the word.” I am taken, too, with Walker’s reflections on her many relations, including with her father and ... Read more ...
antiracism
5 TED Talks for Developing Emotional Literacies for Racial Justice
Today marks the final day of the 40-day practice I’ve been leading for a local, predominantly-white church on developing emotional literacies. We’ve been focused on building and strengthening emotional awarenesses, knowledges, intelligences, and response-abilities for racial justice. As part of this practice, I’ve been sharing resources, including TED talks that provide language for understanding emotional literacies. In this post, I share five of these talks that are ... Read more ...
What Is Justice?
What does it mean to strive for justice in everyday life? This question is front and center for me most days, but especially now, as I'm teaching two undergraduate courses focused on justice and as I’m offering a 40-day practice for a local church on “Building Resilience for Racial Justice.” These teaching spaces—the university and the church—are predominantly white and marked by whiteness that obscures understandings of race, racism, white supremacy, and systemic ... Read more ...
Do Vegans Kill Spiders? Recognizing Fears and Others’ Right to Exist
During the holidays, I visited family in Tennessee and Florida, where we encountered multiple spiders. They were doing what spiders do in houses: walking along baseboards, in and out of shadows, with seemingly little or no interest in human co-habitants. From growing up in the Tennessee mountains, I’m familiar with spiders. I’ve studied which spiders’ venom is likely to impact humans. I’ve encountered black widows, watched for brown recluses, and investigated spider ... Read more ...
Reading Martin Luther King, Jr. as a White Woman in the Work for Racial Justice
Each year, celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) Day in the United States brings new opportunities for mis-appropriating, mis-remembering, and mythologizing Dr. King’s legacy and the broader Civil Rights Movement. White people get the history wrong in many ways. Each year, celebrating MLK Day also brings new opportunities for re-reading Dr. King’s words and re-seeing the work that he—and so many people working for racial justice—have envisioned. MLK offers visions ... Read more ...
Vegan for Environmental Justice
This week I’m caught up in strong emotions and difficulty finding words as I watch the precarity, migrations, and destruction associated with climate change. The world is literally on fire and under water, and yet there is still widespread denial of global warming: https://youtu.be/jQeaBDrMyBo Or, as some might say, the world is trying to kill us: This current environmental destruction is not only extreme, but it’s also extremely inequitable. The people who least can ... Read more ...
What I’ve Learned in the Week Since Charlottesville: Five Lessons for White Folks Who Care about Racism and Racial Justice
This week has been INTENSE. As a writer, educator, and person committed to racial justice and the work of healing internalized white supremacy, I’ve been following and affected by the dysfunction, injury, and trauma on display. I’ve been confronting my own shadow, while watching collective shadows in the United States come into light. And these shadows ask us to reckon with legacies of colonialism and slavery, institutionalized racism, and deep dehumanization. These ... Read more ...
For White Friends Using Social Media and Not Responding to Charlottesville
This post is for white friends who’ve remained silent or continued social media posts as though there’s not a national crisis. Certainly, white supremacy is systemic and personal, historical and contemporary, everyday and ongoing. Yet, this weekend it’s especially visible and sanctioned, immediately resulting in intimidation, terrorism, injury, and death. The events in Charlottesville have wide-reaching impact, and to deny (or fail to engage/recognize) the significance ... Read more ...
Trusting the Alarm Behind Supposedly “Alarmist Rhetoric”
There are numerous alarms about how far off the tracks we’ve gotten as a people. While many people are facing insurmountable odds, injury, and even death, many are also desensitized to violence and going about business as usual. Against a background of ever-increasing injustice, I’m still hearing people caution against “alarmist rhetoric,” and I’m wondering: If we’re not alarmed now, then when? I don’t believe the alarm is coming at the wrong time, with the wrong ... Read more ...
Reframing “Independence Day” as a Day for Truth-Telling and Committing to Justice
I really struggle with July 4th. It’s a holiday that presumes to celebrate “freedom,” but freedom for whom? By what means? Under what circumstances? It’s a holiday that celebrates myths like meritocracy and “the American Dream,” while keeping hidden systemic racism and other ongoing oppression. It’s a holiday that normalizes narratives and displays of patriotism, which underlie white nationalism and the logics of “we” versus “them.” The “we” must be “better than” or “the ... Read more ...
