Some years ago I began recording everyday microaggressions toward learning to recognize racism, which is so often coded and which whiteness has taught me not to see. This recording project aimed at building a repository of common microaggressions to teach with and practice interventions using Augusto Boal’s theatre of the oppressed. The project emerged from conversations with colleagues of color, who shared how often white colleagues failed to believe their experiences. ... Read more ...
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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 ...
Me Too: Standing Against Sexual Violence
I didn’t learn to drive in drivers ed. In fact, I never drove the car that whole semester because the teacher was a creep. When girls would drive, he’d start off complimenting perfume or jewelry or clothing. Then he’d lean into the driver to observe them better (the perfume or jewelry or clothing). From there, he’d put his hand on the girl’s leg, sometimes leaving it there and sometimes moving it higher along the thigh. All of this with two additional students in the ... Read more ...
Reclaiming Childhood Power with Coloring Books
There’s a story that I’ve told for years, a story that represents my early disappointment and dislike of school. In kindergarten, I was assigned to color a bird brown, but I thought brown was too typical. I’d been reading Zoo Books and learning about parakeets, toucans, and other birds at home. I knew birds could be practically any color or any combination of colors. I decided, therefore, to use my creativity, knowledge, and the tools (crayons) available to me to ... 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 ...
Swinging from Sweet to Sour
A roller coaster of emotions. This isn’t a new experience for me, but one that’s becoming an every-day, every-week norm. I swing from moments of real hope and sweetness to moments of real hate and sourness. This roller coaster can motivate resistance, and it can send me back into the cave to confront both personal and collective shadows. Here’s what these swings look like. In the past few days, I’ve witnessed the acquittal of the Minnesota officer who killed Philando ... Read more ...
Why I’m Vegan: Ecofeminism
I’ve been holding myself up, preventing myself from writing about why I’m vegan and how central food is to my understanding of justice. I’ve been holding myself up because this writing feels especially important, like it needs to be good, and, therefore, is triggering my need to counter perfectionism. I’ve also been holding myself up because it’s so damn hard to write about being vegan without re-inscribing notions of whiteness and privilege. Especially from my ... Read more ...
Today Resistance Looks Like …
How do we work to align feelings, thoughts, and actions (heart, head, hands) with the world we’d like to see? How do we go about our everyday lives for the “ought to be,” for justice? I’m thankful for Jardana Peacock (of the Liberatory Leadership Project) for modeling a contemplative writing practice that I’ve been using to think through these questions. At the end of each day, I’ve been filling in the answer to her prompt: “Today resistance looks like …” I ... Read more ...
