On empathy.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.

-Atticus Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird 

Harper Lee died last week. I was trying to think of what my next post would be, and when she came to mind, I thought, "Well, you can't write about her just because she died." And then I was reminded of this quote, and I thought I'd write a post about racism, because who better to school you on racism than a white girl who was raised in a middle class family?

Bear with me here.

The thing about empathy is that it requires you to see a whole world outside of yourself. It requires you to examine the "why" behind things. It almost demands that you leave some things unanswered, because there are some things you will just never understand, and you have to trust that one person's experience is just different than yours. Once you're able to do this, injustice and unfairness become so much clearer.

We're fed a version of history in US schools that isn't entirely true. Here is the truth: this country was built on a notion that white men are the best people. That is just a fact. Racism is in our foundation. A lot of people have fought against that, and we have come a long way, but the idea lingers and the smell of it is hard to eradicate. White privilege (and really, white MALE privilege) is real and pervasive. Some people think white privilege is the idea that life is easy for all white people, and all white people are privileged in the sense that they all have a ton of money and yachts and belong to country clubs. White privilege is something that is hard to understand for many white people because they've never lived without it, so they can't see it.

The Atticus quote made me immediately think of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Which also made me think of people posting on social media using the hashtags #AllLivesMatter and #PoliceLivesMatter, as if all of these things are mutually exclusive. They aren't. What bugs me about this is a lot of these people are people I know and love, and I know they just are not seeing the whole picture, and I don't know how to show them that without coming off as judgmental or preachy. And they rarely asking my opinion. 

I was in Ohio when the news came that there would be no charges filed in Michael Brown's death. One of my cousins, who I assume is pretty conservative, asked me what I thought about it. I was in reality furious and dismayed. But I wanted him to understand how I was thinking about it, as opposed to how I was FEELING about it, because I felt like he'd be able to relate to that better. So I said something like, "I do think charges should've been filed, but the more important thing is that whether or not the cops did anything wrong, the fact that the black community FEELS the way it feels is a real issue, and the fact that some cops treat minorities the way they do is something that needs to be addressed. I don't know how that gets fixed. But I feel bad that in America, where we are all supposed to be equal, there is a whole community that feels less-than, and they are not making it up." And he looked like he hadn't thought of it that way before. I don't know if I changed his mind about anything in that minute, but I know I made him think of it in a way he hadn't before, and that to me is a win.

Empathy is way better than anger when it comes to changing minds. I mean, I could even go into how you have to be empathetic toward terrorists before you can defeat them, but I'm not going to do that in this moment. I just wish everyone would ask why, and I wish everyone would be open to hearing the answers.

Beyonce & social change

I have to do it. I have to write about Beyonce.

I majored in theatre* in college because I thought I wanted to be an actor. I soon realized I wasn't good at acting, but I stayed in theatre because... well, because it was what I had started in, and what the hell else was I going to do? But definitely the second biggest reason I wanted to graduate with my bachelor's in theatre was because of the idea of "theatre as social change," a concept my small-minded self didn't think of until my History of Theatre class. As soon as my professor started talking about it, something clicked, and a huge "why" in my life was answered.

What a better thing to do with your art than to try to change the world? And that can be through something blatantly political, or through something more subtle, like introducing the concept of drag queens to a possibly tentative audience. We tell our stories so that we can feel understood, so that other people can relate to us, and so that we can, in a sense, weave our being into the fabric of humanity. We're saying, Hey look, we're here too, and here's what we're about, and I'm sure if you look hard enough, you can relate to something here, because we're actually not that different from you.

And sometimes, we tell our stories because we are pissed off. Who else but Beyonce could turn the Super Bowl into an advertisement not only for Beyonce, but for a brand new song/video, a new world tour, the Black Lives Matter movement, the atrocity that is the Flint, Michigan water crisis, and the desperate need to address systemic racism in America? Say what you will about her artistry - she is a force, and she is using that force for a purpose.

She woke up like this.

And guess who is angry? The "not-racist"s of the world. The folks who scream "all lives matter." The clueless ones. The ones who don't feel this anger, who don't feel this injustice, so they can't relate. (If you still think Black Lives Matter means your life doesn't matter, or police lives don't matter, or black lives matter MORE than any of these, you are so far off base, you're not even in the game anymore. But let me know if you'd like to play, and I'm happy to have a conversation about it with you.)

There were a million articles today about Beyonce's Super Bowl performance and how politically charged it was. It fills me with despair that so many people are so angry about it. Why do you think black people feel so disenfranchised? They're trying to tell us what they are feeling, and we're annoyed and angry and want them to just shut up. We're making it about us, the white folk, and how it makes us uncomfortable, and how we feel like we're being blamed. Guess what? It's not about us. Maybe this isn't my fight because of the color of my skin, but I stand on the side of human beings knowing they matter, knowing they are important, knowing they are equal. 

Now, excuse me while I whip about my AmEx to hopefully score pre-sale tickets to the Formation World Tour. Bow down, bitches. 

*I go back and forth with my preference on how to spell this word. Today is an "re" day.