There are many things I could have done to honor MLK Jr. today. I thought of attending church, as he was, first and foremost, a man of God; I also considered going to the DuSable Museum with the foster families and checking out what Afrocentric and Civil Righteous things they were doing today. In the end, I did none of these things. 1) I wore a fancy outfit. 2) I started some racial shit at work.
I got up on a soapbox and gave my little speech about Chicago and the great opportunity we, as social workers in this segregated city, have to address racism and ourselves and our professional and personal development. I have brought this up at three meetings in the last two weeks and was rewarded by being grudgingly invited to join the Diversity Panel. And you know that when a panel gets to meeting, things are gonna change!
Nothing will change. What I have done is burned my social capital, which is what I do. I'm all fun and reserved for the first couple of months, then bam--it turns out that I am a pain in the ass, that I say things that aren't funny at all, that are actually sort of earnest and grating. This will be my institutional legacy, as the honorable Dr. Brian Ragsdale says. They will remember that thick and sassy white lady who was always trying to talk about racism, and they will say "What happened to that thick and sassy lady?" and the answer will be "She married a Yezidi shepherd and went to live in the mountains of Armenia."
I was also looking for my favorite MLK Jr. quote in my journals, and fell into a journal hole. I stopped at journal #2--there is only so much about myself I can learn in a day. I did note that many of the things I had planned to do, had drawn and cooked up or planned to read, I did actually accomplish, although up to 10 years later. As Sister Mary Carol said: "Patience is a virtue, possess it if you can, found seldom in a women, and never in a man." Despite the restrictive gendering of human attributes, that rhyme has stuck with me. This is not the case with birthdays or multiplication tables, or the beautiful quote Martin Luther King Jr. said about justice working towards the ends of love.
In the absence of wisdom or insight, or inspirational words from a gifted holy man, I pledge to try not to be such a jackass all the time.
I got up on a soapbox and gave my little speech about Chicago and the great opportunity we, as social workers in this segregated city, have to address racism and ourselves and our professional and personal development. I have brought this up at three meetings in the last two weeks and was rewarded by being grudgingly invited to join the Diversity Panel. And you know that when a panel gets to meeting, things are gonna change!
Nothing will change. What I have done is burned my social capital, which is what I do. I'm all fun and reserved for the first couple of months, then bam--it turns out that I am a pain in the ass, that I say things that aren't funny at all, that are actually sort of earnest and grating. This will be my institutional legacy, as the honorable Dr. Brian Ragsdale says. They will remember that thick and sassy white lady who was always trying to talk about racism, and they will say "What happened to that thick and sassy lady?" and the answer will be "She married a Yezidi shepherd and went to live in the mountains of Armenia."
I was also looking for my favorite MLK Jr. quote in my journals, and fell into a journal hole. I stopped at journal #2--there is only so much about myself I can learn in a day. I did note that many of the things I had planned to do, had drawn and cooked up or planned to read, I did actually accomplish, although up to 10 years later. As Sister Mary Carol said: "Patience is a virtue, possess it if you can, found seldom in a women, and never in a man." Despite the restrictive gendering of human attributes, that rhyme has stuck with me. This is not the case with birthdays or multiplication tables, or the beautiful quote Martin Luther King Jr. said about justice working towards the ends of love.
In the absence of wisdom or insight, or inspirational words from a gifted holy man, I pledge to try not to be such a jackass all the time.
posted by St. Renegade at 10:57 PM
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