The Black "We" and the White "I"

[calimary]

21. Well, the only point I was trying to make, in how-ever clumsy a fashion, was that

one of the main elements of the BLM protest at Netroots, and it was mostly women who were protesting, was specifically because so many symptoms of racism in this country seem to be glossed over by the politicians who either are quick to blurt - "ALL lives matter." Well, DUH! But not ALL lives are afflicted by an epidemic of police brutality, even murderous barbarism, toward individuals in the community, the way too many Black Lives are. Whites, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans - don't go through this like Blacks do. And mothers of other colors don't cry like Black mothers do. I'm a mom, this has all touched me really profoundly. That photo is just one of MANY photos that make me cry. I believe one of the women in the photograph, the one comforting the weeping woman in the foreground, is Sandra Bland's sister.

For me, that's how I can come the closest, as a white woman, to understanding at least that aspect of the BlackLivesMatter movement. It's a stumbling attempt to empathize as much as I can while not walking in the same skin. It's the closest I get to being able to "grok" the pain and frustration and agony behind the BlackLivesMatter movement.

From Wikipedia -
Grok /ˈɡrɒk/ is a word coined by Robert A. Heinlein for his 1961 science-fiction novel, Stranger in a Strange Land, where it is defined as follows:
Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because of our Earthling assumptions) as color means to a blind man. To grok something is to understand it so intimately that it's almost as though you ate it.

And shit - I know I'm not telling any of who's left of DU's Black community anything they don't already too-painfully know. All I'm doing is trying to find a way to say I think perhaps I understand, even if only in a small way.



And, um, I'm sorry about the size of the photo. Didn't mean to be overbearing with it. I don't know how to make it smaller - kind of a technical idiot here.