Reflection #3
Better times could come tomorrow, if we hope enough. If we strive enough. If we do something enough.
Does closing myself off from the world become more than an emotional or psychosomatic survival technique and morph into a physical one?
As I sit in my ability to see my privilege surround my daily moments, I know it stems from socioeconomic structures I still can't fully see. Yes, I have worked hard. But so have others who aren't here.
So, why aren't they here?
That's a question we don't ask enough. Or maybe we already know the answers and don't want to acknowledge them. Because our "normal" would be no more and we could no longer see a world created on a foundation of lies and half-truths.
Masks. We're supposed to wear the physical ones now. The ones you can touch and see.
But the ones that people with privilege like myself don't see until it's pointed out is that wearing the physical ones, even to save lives, can put some of us without privilege in danger of being harmed or worse, killed.
As the majority of those in my mostly white, middle-class, suburban neighborhood continue to not wear the physical ones out of defiance, ignorance, or the masks we can't see, those without privilege who wear them are being escorted out of stores, looked at even more suspiciously, and targeted out of fear. Those without privilege aren't choosing to not wear masks because of blindness or out of the inflated sense of security privilege affords, but because they see and experience a different set of rules.
If we're going to learn, if we're going to build a new "normal" that works for everyone, we need to ask the questions and we need to look at the answers without masks.
No, not the physical ones. The ones we can't see until we realize too late that privilege won't protect us from our interconnectedness.
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