It feels like the world has exploded this week, doesn’t it? I watch and read and listen, my eyes filled with tears, my stomach clenched in disbelief and fear at so much injustice, anger, and hatred. Folks have been sitting on a powder keg all year - the pandemic, the job losses, the quarantine - and it has erupted. It is at times like this that my small attempts to say something meaningful seem useless at best and narcissistic at worst.
But what good does it do to let these emotions eat me up inside until I become another embittered, angry person? So many days I feel like I’m already there. Last night my stomach churned, my vision blurred. I spent some time lying on the cold tile of the bathroom floor, literally physically sick with all of it.
Because this is not just MY world. This is my son’s world. My grandson’s world. It’s the world of all the young people I’ve watched grow up in the schools where I’ve worked, and it’s the world of their children. My heart hurts and fears for them at the same time it soars with pride as I see them rise up and take on the mantle of hope and change.
My daughter in law said she was talking with my eight-year-old grandson about racism and the riots. Connor’s response was, “Didn’t Martin Luther King Jr. take care of all that?”
Oh, if only it were that simple.
One man can certainly make a huge difference - for good or for evil. But a systemic racist society like America cannot be “taken care of” in one generation, not even with one great leader. The Civil War certainly didn’t “take care of it” in the 19th century. The Civil Rights Movement didn’t '‘take care of it” in the 20th century. Now here we are in the 21st century, faced with the urgent need to “take care of it” again.
I wish I could believe this is the last time we’ll fight this battle, but I know that isn’t so. We have been on this journey since America began, but we’re nowhere near finished. To quote the American poet Robert Frost, “we have miles to go before we sleep.” Although we may not be able to finish the trip, we can at least make more strides.
What will help us move things farther down the road to the ideals America was founded upon? How can we get one step closer to “liberty and justice for all?”
Perhaps the widespread access to news - as hard as it can be to watch - will motivate more of us to become aware.. Perhaps people will begin to hunger for intelligent leadership that demonstrates compassion and understanding and that will work for justice. Perhaps more of us - and I include myself in that group - will educate ourselves and learn to live an antiracist life.
So again, I ask myself, what good is it for me to scribble words on a page? What good can I do for a humanity that is suffocating with injustice and hatred, a humanity yearning to breathe free? Whenever I ask myself that question, I come back to the words of a song I love from the musical, Ragtime.
We all have our story to tell, and it just might make a difference to someone, somewhere.
“Go out and tell your story, let it echo far and wide. Make them hear you. Make them hear you. Your sword could be a sermon, or the power of the pen. Teach every child to raise his voice, and then my brothers, then, will justice be demanded by ten million righteous men. Make them hear you. Make them hear you.”