I’m in a band with two sexes, 4 races and a whole lot of different worldviews. I think a lot of people think about race either as a distant headline, or as an oppressive guilt, but not many are constantly confronted with how it effects their relationships every day. With seeing how Rowan thinks about cops and how Sharif thinks about being a cop. With how Heather feels about being hit on at gigs as a woman and how I feel about not getting hit on as a guy. We don’t have those conversations every day, but when I’m paying attention to my friends, and myself, I hear the nuances and echoes in every story we tell.
It’s a shame more people don’t have this type of chosen family – because I think societal integration is the cure – perhaps the ONLY cure – for a vast array of our species’ ills. We’re so tribal, and so very incapable of empathizing with anyone or anything not immediately in front of us… that until we evolve past “out of sight, out of mind” the only way to mind the world is to keep more of it in sight.
In any case, my Life is hard. Your Life is hard. Everyone’s Life is hard. No-one responds well to the concept that something’s been handed to them because every one of us sees Life through our own lens. As an old white guy, I think I’m pretty good at acknowledging, accepting, and rationalizing my own privilege, but there’s a REASON why there’s a whole religion based on the concept of someone martyring themselves for the sake of others…. It’s an outlier. People get out of the way for others in the moment, they’ll hold the door, but they get exasperated when they hold it for to long. Whether or not someone’s always been at the front of the line, or in the middle, asking them to go to the back or simply step back a couple of paces again and again for those they don’t know is rarely a winning proposition.
It’s just not how we’re wired.
Personally, I’m selfish and arrogant. Whether that’s because I’m a white male who’s gone through his Life used to being listened to, or because I’m first born and my mother has always Loved me, or because I have just enough talent and intelligence that people have usually found it worth their while to pay attention to me… there’s no real way to untangle that in either a subjective or objective way – and I’m big on not bothering to waste headspace on the ineffable.
Let it be effed.
And so, I’m not a particularly good shepherd of people, I barely set a good enough example to lead with it and it’s a constant struggle. I honestly am filled with a good amount of hatred.
But I also hate unfairness. I hate injustice. I hate seeing people not get their turn. I don’t have a lot of power in the world – I barely have a stage – but what I DO have I try to share.
This picture is the kind of “leadership” that people should expect out of a retiring patriarchal white culture. I didn’t leave the stage. I actively stepped back on it. Expect leaders to amplify you, give you your space, and occasionally get down on their knees and help out if they need to.
You can’t expect anyone to just vacate a space for you. But if your president, pastor, parent or boss isn’t willing to prostrate themselves before you, at least for a little while, to help you out… that’s the real difference between someone in a position of power and an oppressor. The former is NOT inherently evil and not inherently abusive.
Sigh.
Pay it forward till your arms get tired.
*Sometimes I like to pretend my Dad can still read the Journal and gripe about its grammar. Though I grew up quite comfortable with using “they” and “them” as a singular form when gender was not specified, he would correct me – long before it became a common usage to apply to individuals where gender was defined as non-binary (rather than the “it” of a non-gendered entity). SO Dad, Gabrielle identifies as “non-binary” and asks for “they and them pronouns”. Don’t be angsty about it. It’s no skin off our teeth no matter how it grates on your ears – Love you!