5/27/2021
My dear Friend & POTUS, JRB,
Do you think the world has changed? It’s always hard to tell. We get hints of it from time to time. Things like the disappearance of snails from my garden & last year’s lousy tomato harvest may be signs of climate change, but they may be signs of something else. What does it even mean for the world to change?
We each live in our own worlds, & we know that they change. Someone we love has a baby. Someone we know dies. We move to a new home. We get hurt. We heal. You’ve had more than your share of ups & downs, so you know how dynamic a person’s life can be, but that’s different than a fundamental shift in how everyone lives.
I ask about the world changing, because I wonder if George Floyd’s death signifies the racial reckoning that we need. Simon Balto, writing in yesterday’s G, quotes James Baldwin, “they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it… it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.” So, my friends, students & sister who insist that they mean no harm, that they aren’t racist, that they don’t see color, still don’t get it. The legislative efforts of various states to ban critical race theory demonstrate the desire of many to ignore the past.
My hope is that individual change can lead to collective change. If I can educate a few people & help them see how “hate-fueled (and greed-fueled) violent logics and machineries of chattel slavery and settler colonialism” have grown into the systemic racism that continues to plague us, then maybe the world can change.
This power of education is the reason that 90% of the children in Myanmar are not signed up to start school on June 1. They refuse to participate in “military slave education.” I hope the Generals will find a graceful way out of the mess they have gotten themselves into. Perhaps you can help them to do so.
BYBS,
