5/18/2022
My Friend & POTUS, JRB,
I hope that folks in Buffalo found some consolation in yesterday’s visit. It’s important that you showed up to express our collective outrage & grief. In essence, to show, “we feel you.”
I adopted the phrase “I feel you,” since hearing about Black youth using a similar expression, “you feel me,” when talking about their adverse experiences in the foster & justice systems. One of our doctoral students, now Dr. Ononuju, wrote a brilliant essay employing linguistic analysis to unpack the testimonial of a young man who frequently said “you feel me?” to confirm he was being understood.
We have so much work to do to make people feel understood! It’s hard to know where to start. You captured this yesterday in your remarks about the “hate that, through the media and politics, the internet, has radicalized angry, alienated and lost individuals into falsely believing that they will be replaced” followed by the observation that, “hate and fear are being given too much oxygen by those who pretend to love America, but who don’t understand America.”
In the face of the violence in the world, I feel called to renew my faith & rather than perseverate on my deep regret about the incident in Buffalo, I will focus on the present & what I can do today to connect with others to amplify love. These connections will bring us all to a better place.
Thanks for connecting with the people of Buffalo yesterday & with PM Mitsotakis on Monday. Please do your best to connect with the people of Burma & all of the other places in the world where oppression & violence have taken hold.
Love > Hate
BYBS,
RCA
PS – Today’s KCS front page features a story about 8 refugees living in KC. One is a Burmese single mom. All are independent, strong folk making their way. I hope stories such as these help Americans see that they are NOT being “replaced” by brainwashed foreigners ,as Tucker Carlson likes to claim, rather, we are all enriched when we open our doors & hearts.
