So here we are, already in June, with each month either accelerated beyond comprehension or dragging along. I can’t decide which one May was. Fast, maybe?
At any rate, it is increasingly harder to post links that aren’t a rallying cry for a full-bore revolution. Should I post links that continue to illuminate, or should I trust that the three people who regularly read this blog already know and endeavor to provide some sort of psychic relief?
It seems irresponsible to just post about food, but my god. It is unrelenting out there in the interwebs and on the social media. Several times in the past couple weeks my face has gone tingly and my arms have been numb. This is my nervous system reacting to what I am not able to process. I don’t know how much I can legitimately read to pass on.
So we’ll start here: by taking one small action. If you are unsure of where to start in the fight for justice and equality for black folks, do one small thing. I, personally, started with educating myself. I read White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo and Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon To White America by Michael Eric Dyson (no more Amazon links on this blog; please go support your local bookseller), then KWeeks and I had many conversations about what we learned. Tears We Cannot Stop offers actual suggestions of things to do to make a difference as a white person, and I started to put those into action in my own life. The steps might be small, but they are in the right direction.
And for just a wee bit of entertainment to elaborate on another complicated issue that seems irrevocably tangled with everything else, here is Candy Shop – an animated short that interchangeably swaps almost 3,000 prescription drugs and syringes for similarly-shaped candies, all laid down on top of a groovy percussion track.
Finally, I offer a conversation with Ibram X. Kendi, author of the now-impossible to find book How To Be An Anti-racist. This conversation happened back in June 2019 and offers some insight into what (white) people can do to be more than just “not racist.”