thoughts
I really want to be involved, and informed, and help to make change through government and social services. But then I just get so depressed and discouraged with it all, sometimes I think we are better off building a nice house out in the middle of nowhere and preparing for the end times.
I've been thinking a lot lately about oppression, and justice, and how difficult it is to get someone to "see" injustices going on every day, all over the place. And maybe this is a "duh" statement, but it has to all start with humility and the realization that your version of reality is not the end-all, be-all version. Basically that you are not always right. What I see and hear over and over again is people trying to control, disregard, or modify other people's experiences based on the reality that they're comfortable with. Say, a person of color is relating a story about how someone was acting racists towards them. You have someone else jumping in saying "oh, I'm sure it wasn't like that, I'm sure the person didn't mean it in that way, you're overreacting, you're reading into things" etc. etc. While they think they may be helping or mediating the situation, in reality they are using privilege to impose their own views of what happened and what reality is, without even being present. Basically, they are saying, "I know better than you, and even though I was not in this situation and my life experiences are totally different from yours, I am going to tell you what actually happened." And it seems like a small, obvious step, but I think really, truly accepting the fact that your experiences and your opinions are not Truth with a capital "T" is the first step to empathy and understanding and awareness. If you listened to someone's troubles, experiences, and stories and instead of immediately trying to disprove them or make them mesh with your version of things, you stopped and thought "this person is telling me something that might be true, and is most certainly true based on their first-hand experiences and perceptions" then we'd all be a lot better off.
This is just a random thought that has been bouncing through my head the past few days. I'm not sure how to ever get someone to that point unless they want to be. But I think it is a good thing to be aware of - that way, when it happens, you can call someone on it. It's confrontational, but not entirely rude, to say something along the lines of "you are trying to dictate and control the story based on your own ideas, when I was the one who was really there experiencing it" and have a conversation from there.
what do you think?
I've been thinking a lot lately about oppression, and justice, and how difficult it is to get someone to "see" injustices going on every day, all over the place. And maybe this is a "duh" statement, but it has to all start with humility and the realization that your version of reality is not the end-all, be-all version. Basically that you are not always right. What I see and hear over and over again is people trying to control, disregard, or modify other people's experiences based on the reality that they're comfortable with. Say, a person of color is relating a story about how someone was acting racists towards them. You have someone else jumping in saying "oh, I'm sure it wasn't like that, I'm sure the person didn't mean it in that way, you're overreacting, you're reading into things" etc. etc. While they think they may be helping or mediating the situation, in reality they are using privilege to impose their own views of what happened and what reality is, without even being present. Basically, they are saying, "I know better than you, and even though I was not in this situation and my life experiences are totally different from yours, I am going to tell you what actually happened." And it seems like a small, obvious step, but I think really, truly accepting the fact that your experiences and your opinions are not Truth with a capital "T" is the first step to empathy and understanding and awareness. If you listened to someone's troubles, experiences, and stories and instead of immediately trying to disprove them or make them mesh with your version of things, you stopped and thought "this person is telling me something that might be true, and is most certainly true based on their first-hand experiences and perceptions" then we'd all be a lot better off.
This is just a random thought that has been bouncing through my head the past few days. I'm not sure how to ever get someone to that point unless they want to be. But I think it is a good thing to be aware of - that way, when it happens, you can call someone on it. It's confrontational, but not entirely rude, to say something along the lines of "you are trying to dictate and control the story based on your own ideas, when I was the one who was really there experiencing it" and have a conversation from there.
what do you think?