Ignorance for Tomorrow

by Mona Shaw

They don't know anything.

A few years ago I was sitting in a room of recent college graduates. I asked them what they thought about a column I'd given them. None of them had read it.

When I asked for why, a young man said smugly, "I don't read anything longer than 200 words."

"Seriously," I asked, truly boggled.

"If you can't say it in 200 words, you have nothing to say," he said.

The rest in the room agreed with him.

A young woman added, "Maybe other people our age do, but college kids don't read things that are long. You didn't go to college, did you?"

She was serious. It wasn't just that I wondered how they'd earned their degrees, it was their pride in this position that floored me.

There weren't particularly patient at needing to teach their wisdom regarding effective communication to this old woman. How could I not know this?

They'd never read "The Color Purple," and didn't know who Alice Walker was. One thought she may have seen the movie.

"Wasn't Oprah in that?"

They'd never read anything by W.E.B du Bois, or Frederick Douglass or Tillie Oleson or Angela Davis, when she was still radical.

They were proud to know a few quotes of Martin Luther King, Jr., (and they knew who that was), but none had read any of his brilliant essays in their entirety, not even "Letter from a Birmingham Jail."

Of course, none of them had read Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451." The point of the novel was lost on them anyway.

When I repeated Bradbury's famous quote, "You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them," they shrugged.

They'd all come from uncommonly privileged lives, families where they received new cars when they graduated. They were all white.

Those who put their time, their souls, their blood into writing about the panorama and diaspora of human suffering offered nothing they needed to learn.

They weren't curious about them either. They resented the notion they should be.

"I don't expect them to be curious about me." one said.

Even if they wanted to be activists, give them a few sexy sound bites, a few Cliff notes, and they were good to go.

They don't know anything, not even academically, let alone experientially.

We're in trouble, folks.

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Liberal Manifest Destiny

An open letter to Gita Larson and other progressive liberals

by Mona Shaw

I write this on the chance that some of you care.  While I’m using Gita’s recent aggression as an example.  I witness similar assaults every hour of every day.

Gita, when you evicted Sharon Smith from your home, you committed an act of violence.

I know I don’t know you, so there is no need for you to tell me that, but I know you will anyway.  I do know you are a white woman, and a Quaker.

There is nothing you can tell me, however, that will mitigate the violence of your act.

Especially violent was your decision to effect that eviction by moving her few possessions from where she was residing into a storage locker, changing the locks, and notifying her of her homelessness with a text message. You did all of this while she was at work. Imagine the trauma, of trying to do your job while learning you no longer had a place to live.

The only benefit of the doubt I can muster for you is that the damage done and the cruelty of the method you chose is beyond your experience and ability to grasp such trauma.  If it’s not, your action is worse.

Every target of oppression struggles with PTSD. It’s part of our dance.

A blow like this, at first, shocks our entire system into an emotional shutdown, as if someone belted an enormous, discordant gong as hard they could.  The vibration lasts for days, if not weeks.  We dare not feel until it does. We must force ourselves to function within that tremor if we are to survive.  We must endure again the agony this triggers of previous abuse, which plays like a Power point presentation in our souls.

We must function and plan despite it. Gaslighting comes with the territory. If we’re lucky we’ll weep, if we’re luckier we’ll sob.  Tears can heal and reset our souls.  But we’ll fight weeping just the same until the crisis is past, until we can breathe, because we fear we might not stop crying; and we want to survive.

We will suffer unspeakable suffering that will become part of our patina for the rest of our lives.  Until the next time, and we know there will be a next time.

I am a white woman and a grandmother. Sharon is a Black, Native American grandmother.  I understand you're a grandmother too.  I think of Sharon's 20-year-old grandson in this.  How must he feel that this has befallen his grandmother?  Mine would be deeply hurt.  Yours likely does not face that risk.

I am not qualified to speak of the racist impact of your act, except to know the racism—the nadir of American evil--is inescapable.  I have, however, lived most of my life in poverty, so I am infinitely qualified to speak of the class aggression in this.  The class abuse I have witnessed and experienced has cost me everything I owned and nearly my life on more than one occasion.  It has taken the lives of many I have loved.  I know when it’s present, and I know how it works.

So, I know the harm is about to get worse.  As the privileged do, you will haul out standard and garish canards, affected rationalizations to avoid introspection. You may even see a therapist or ask clergy to help you work through any sense of guilt.  Clearly, rationalizing had already begun days earlier with help from likeminded friends.  You planned this deliberate act for some time.

While this is a not an exhaustive list, I am intimately familiar with them all.

“Perhaps, I could have handled this differently but….”

“I did all I could do.”

“I have to take care of myself right now.”

“I’m doing the best I can.”

“I can’t be all things to all people.”

“I have a right to govern my own space.”

“I’ve done a lot for these people.”

“I could have done much worse.”

I have come to wonder if liberal theology believes that absolution comes from proving others have committed worse sins than they.

The damage will be punctuated by blaming the her for your actions.

“I can’t deal with her while she’s angry.”

“She has a victim mentality.”

“This isn’t really about what I did.  It’s about her pathology.”

“She could have avoided this by dealing with it earlier, differently, better. etc.”

“She doesn’t know how to make herself happy, so she strikes out at anyone.”

“She needs to learn you can get more flies with honey.”

You will ultimately deliver the affluent coup de gras.

“I don’t have to do this.”

“Let’s face it.  She’s not a good poster child for the cause.”

“She is not one of us.”

“I could have done nothing to help.”

“If they don’t stop being so critical, they’ll lose our support altogether.”

These set us up for the most damaging part of all.  To some degree, we will believe you.  We will blame ourselves too.  We will feel like a failure to the point of feeling worthless.  We will think this might not be happening if we were smarter, had better timing, had done things differently, looked different, had a better demeanor, etc.

To paraphrase Dr. King, “It’s not the attacks of our enemies that hurt the most.  It’s the actions or non-actions of our friends.”  Sometimes, it’s your best friends, people you’d previously trusted with your life.

We will consider giving up, quitting activist work, crawling into an anonymous hole and never coming out.  Sometimes, when it’s particularly dark, we’ll consider quitting life. 

Pulling yourself through that contracting, throbbing knothole is the hardest think a justice truth-teller ever must do.  And you do most of the pulling alone.  Your trust in others is destroyed for the time.  You gasp and wriggle and reintroduce yourself to your own heart.  If you’re lucky, and not everyone is this lucky, you eventually collapse, exhausted, outside that knothole.  You rest, for however long you need and when you can.  You stand again.

The pain you inflict has a long reach. When you attack someone's credibility, it not only hurts that person, it threatens that person's ability to help others.

Some will say you don’t deserve this letter.  You and your pals will regurgitate Manifest Destiny again, and again.  And, again. 

Too often liberals expect our deference and servility.  We know you clutch to your class position like rare pearls. You are so terrified of losing that.  So, you must remain convinced our hope is derived from your largesse, largesse which you are free to extend or withhold on a whim.  You like us in our place, and you’re quick to put us back there if we stray.

And, just to survive, we often play along.  We comfort you when you’re offended by a hint of truth.  We applaud when you win a human rights awards for your low-risk, peer-approved support.

We smile approvingly when you raise your hand at diversity forums to show all you’ve learned in all those sensitivity trainings. You are “culturally competent.”  We let it go when you interrupt us because you believe you can tell our story better than we can.

We know we are your project.  We are your self-aggrandizement--your way to prove you are a good person.  When we fail to do that, our value evaporates, and you’re done with us.

You objectify us.  You don’t believe we’re human, at least not as human as you.  We’re not as bright; we’re not as clean, we’re not as savvy, or as knowledgeable about how the “real” world works. We’re not as shrewd; we’re loud; we’re crude and crass; we dress “inappropriately”; we’re messy, and we certainly lack the white, professional-class social graces you revere.

Liberals often throw us under the bus when we present a risk to their comfort or social lives. You are fine with leaving us alone on that limb.  You rationalize that too.

“There is more than one side to this story.”

“I have a mortgage to pay.”

“I have other people I need to think about.”

“I have to work with that man, woman, group, etc.”

“I have to protect my resume, career, etc.”

“I have to take care of myself right now.”

“I need to get away from this controversy and give myself some space and peace."

You don’t really see our bodies outside the hospitals and in the street, and you vote for those you know will kill us, because, they’re not killing you.

You threw out a Black, Native American grandmother as if she were an irksome inconvenience, like weeds in your yard.  You placed a blanket of racism on all of this, a blanket that those of your class and race has historically infected with some variety of small pox or another social infection you’ve never known.

In the end, you provided a service.  We need to learn we can’t count on you.  We must do this for ourselves.  We will plow through even you, if we must, to realize justice and liberty.

I’m not at all concerned that I will turn off allies with this.  In more ways than not, it may be better for us if you go.  As Lila Watson says, if you’re oppression isn’t bound up with ours, you can’t help us anyway. 

If your oppression is bound with ours, if you are one us, I can’t drive you away. You do have to do this.  Justice has never been won by those who must be sweet-talked into it.  It’s won by those who can’t be talked out of it.

I am simply asking you to think with a little introspection.