awakening

As we sit, as we stand, as we learn, as we fight, as we resist, we are making more than history. We are making a loving world right now, by asserting our place and space in the world.

My time at Columbia has radicalized me but I've always been radical.  By birth I am radical, like others for sure, but I want to take a minute to speak from a mixed minority biracial person-- not the half-white perspective that is so often centered. Think about this for a second: four hundred years ago, a person of my background could have never been born. The types of humans that came together to create me were on islands (Jamaica and Japan), separated by oceans and continents, half the circumference of the earth. They only came together in this world because of colonization and imperialism and slavery. This has revealed two things to me. 1) I see how much monoracial people take for granted when it comes to existence. 2) I see how fragile my life is compared to their own.

Being on the outskirts of society, checking yes on nearly every box that asks for your "different" social identities-- race, gender, disability, class, sexuality-- I know that my difference is also perceived as negative. Not by all, but by many. It weights on me as it does so many others. Understanding one's perceived inherent inferiority destroys self-esteem, adds stress, and makes it harder to succeed and become superior. Belief in yourself is power and that was taken from Black people, Indigenous people, women (just to name a few groups)... that assault and theft is intergenerational trauma. That is the legacy of white supremacy, slavery, colonization, genocide, the legacy that lives within and outside of us today. The theft of our power. It lives in buildings, in centuries old institutions, through epigenetics, in the food we eat... Once aware, it becomes natural to question everything that exists. It's an awakening of consciousness, perhaps the true Enlightenment. It's a return to center, to humanity, to an orbit around love that calls us.

Reconciling this kind of change, returning to our orbit-- how are we supposed to do that? The first answer that comes to my mind is surrender. The surrender of white supremacy to the true nature of the world would be a huge step towards where humanity should be. It would require surrender on so many... all levels: spiritual, logical, rational, philosophical... is it possible to surrender economically? Socially? Culturally? Scientifically? Is it possible to even convince a white supremacist, an elitist, a Western scholar, a giver of unnecessary violence, to stop using their weapons? I haven't quite figured out yet how to use love to really transform the world. But I know it can.