Trading morsels of comfort for other folks’ lives.

Already, through shared articles, I see folks taking wee sighs of relief. I see people saying, “OK, maybe it’s not as bad as we think.” YES IT IS. Nothing has changed. Nothing! 

Come on, my fellow white citizens – Don’t let yourself be lulled into ease, into “oh, hey, I can live with that.” Don’t slip back into your comfortable white supremacist thinking. Sure, it’s what you know – and it’s just as wrong today as it was yesterday. Don’t lose yourself in it again.

The articles being shared talk about the President-elect’s campaign promises that won’t come to pass – he won’t overturn the ACA, he can’t really build a wall, etc. What were you thinking? That he could build that wall? Do you know the size of the border?  Do you know what’s at stake for those in power if it happened? The ACA, have you forgotten that Congresspeople only care about being re-elected and most citizens are for the ACA? They may want changes to the ACA, but they don’t want it repealed into the ether. How long have you been watching Washington?

Broken promises aren’t new. Why are you relieved that campaign promises can’t be kept? Did you really believe all the things said to get your vote were doable? If so, you need to do a Google search on the history of winners’ promises coming to fruition by their own hand.

It wasn’t the promises that got people to vote, it was the mindset that posited those things, the psyche that knew one could say any outrageous thing, any promise could be made, and if those promises said underneath that they’d uphold the old order, the status quo, people would gobble that up and vote.

Now is not the time to be relieved some campaign promises can’t be kept – this is not news. This is one more tool to invite complacency, to let you know your life (your cis, het, white, able-bodied life) can stay mostly as is, while everyone else (again, again) has boots on their throats.

Dear Gods, don’t be complacent. White supremacy is still here. It never left – not during the last 8 years, not during the last hundreds or years. Don’t allow your edge to be smoothed away by articles that want you to go back to being silent, ineffective, and a cog in the system. 

Please, please – stop reading and sharing those articles. Don’t let relief overtake your new vigor to fight the system. Stoke that flame of resistance! It is tiny, extinguishable by a thimbleful of water -do not allow it! Stoke those flames of change!

It is the time to RISE, not sit. To keep our eyes open, to shout until we can no more, to stand with the disenfranchised and the marginalized. It is time to put our mouths, money, and bodies between the way it has always been and the world we want it to be! RESIST!

 
(originally published here)