As I’ve been watching people flood out into the streets--masks on, murals up, knees down--I’ve been trying to wrap my head around how this moment even happened. Why are white people waking up now? One answer, of course, is Darnella Frazier. Huh? Yes, her name isn’t likely etched into your gray matter as it should be, but now is the time. She is the 17-year-old Black girl who filmed George Floyd’s murder. She’s a national hero.
Thank you for yet another brilliant and heartfelt commentary. I’m in total agreement with what you wrote. And—as usual—your writing added important nuance to my understanding. All I'd add is a hunch I have about the impact of the pandemic on white consciousness.
The pandemic not only gave us time to reflect on and absorb what’s going on in the world around us. It also brought us face-to-face with our own mortality—with the fear of death—in a way white Americans rarely are, except when we're diagnosed with a fatal disease or someone close to us dies.
I think our intensified minute-by-minute fear of death by suffocation via COVID 19—our own or those dear to us—made us much more vulnerable to watching and feeling the horrific sight of a man dying as he tried to stay alive for almost 9 minutes, while a police officer who was sworn to “serve and protect” choked the life out of him by kneeling on his neck.
One more thing: #45 is a man who has no respect for anything except power and money. Indeed, he has no respect for death itself, so profound is his disconnection from his own deeply-buried humanity.
Consciously or unconsciously, we who are white have not only been looking full-face at our own mortality during the pandemic. We’ve also been looking again at the face of a president whose response to the pandemic revealed, for the umpteenth time, that he has no respect for death, or for the dying, or for those who risk their lives to serve the dying.
No matter how angry we were at #45’s inhumanity before and during the early stages of the pandemic, since we saw George Lloyd die, we’ve been screaming in public protest as if the face in that famous Edvard Munch painting were ours.
Just one more thought to add to your powerful analysis of what has brought so many white folks to the place where we should have been all along.
I love love love this!! You are such a conduit of light in the dark for me. Thank you, Courtney. Thanks for always showing up and staying with the life you have. You are a gem.🙏🏻
This is beautifully conceived, and thank you. I've been thinking too about how there are so many layered gates to grief in all of this, for selves and others, and how opening to grief itself is a gateway to then moving forward differently. It is so often skipped, leaving further consequences.
Dearest Courtney,
Thank you for yet another brilliant and heartfelt commentary. I’m in total agreement with what you wrote. And—as usual—your writing added important nuance to my understanding. All I'd add is a hunch I have about the impact of the pandemic on white consciousness.
The pandemic not only gave us time to reflect on and absorb what’s going on in the world around us. It also brought us face-to-face with our own mortality—with the fear of death—in a way white Americans rarely are, except when we're diagnosed with a fatal disease or someone close to us dies.
I think our intensified minute-by-minute fear of death by suffocation via COVID 19—our own or those dear to us—made us much more vulnerable to watching and feeling the horrific sight of a man dying as he tried to stay alive for almost 9 minutes, while a police officer who was sworn to “serve and protect” choked the life out of him by kneeling on his neck.
One more thing: #45 is a man who has no respect for anything except power and money. Indeed, he has no respect for death itself, so profound is his disconnection from his own deeply-buried humanity.
Consciously or unconsciously, we who are white have not only been looking full-face at our own mortality during the pandemic. We’ve also been looking again at the face of a president whose response to the pandemic revealed, for the umpteenth time, that he has no respect for death, or for the dying, or for those who risk their lives to serve the dying.
No matter how angry we were at #45’s inhumanity before and during the early stages of the pandemic, since we saw George Lloyd die, we’ve been screaming in public protest as if the face in that famous Edvard Munch painting were ours.
Just one more thought to add to your powerful analysis of what has brought so many white folks to the place where we should have been all along.
Lots of love and gratitude,
Parker
The Death of George Floyd and Breonna is not a wake-up call! The same alarm has been ringing since 1619, America just keep hitting the snooze button!
I love love love this!! You are such a conduit of light in the dark for me. Thank you, Courtney. Thanks for always showing up and staying with the life you have. You are a gem.🙏🏻
Sending this far and wide...AGAIN!! thank you Courtney
This is beautifully conceived, and thank you. I've been thinking too about how there are so many layered gates to grief in all of this, for selves and others, and how opening to grief itself is a gateway to then moving forward differently. It is so often skipped, leaving further consequences.
Thanks again for your thoughtful insights.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you, again and again.
Best explanation I've seen for the mass awakening from white supremacy induced comas.
Well said. Hundreds of years of abuse and to some degree it's just entering our peripheral vision.
Love this and you