White Women: 2022 is our year to step up. Please join me!
What to do to stop the division and to re-energize the UNITED States of America? This is a question with which I have been struggling for months. I don’t need convincing that the USA was built on the backs of enslaved, exploited and oppressed people so the wealthy few could retain power and sustain their wealth. It’s not lost on me that in our country’s origin, those few were colonizing men (aka those who check “white” in the social construct of race). I also am aware that I too would be identified by others as “racially white”.
These facts are troubling to me because I do not associate or align with white; nor do I respect, much less admire, the “accomplishments” of those associated with the white race that achieved said status at the expense of our continent’s natural resources along with the dehumanization of any who “look different” . In fact, I’m ashamed of many of the behaviors of our founding fathers and the women who aligned therewith for their own advancement. Much the same way I used to shudder when I admitted my German ancestry. I was ashamed to be ancestrally related to any people who could be as obsessed with power over others and resultantly cruel as those who invaded to colonize the US and those who attempted to eradicate the Jewish population. I have come to accept that the actions of my ancestors (whether or not I can trace DNA to those whose behaviors I detest and reject), are not my responsibility and are not somehow a part of me. Nonetheless, in my country of citizenship, apparent physical ancestry has never stood in my way for education, housing, employment, and many other opportunities. Accordingly, I do feel a responsibility to DO something to redress the harm and eliminate the inequities that are enmeshed in our existing social systems and capital institutions. To DO nothing will ensure that these systems and institutions continue to govern and define our country, and that will prevent America from ever becoming the nation of equity for all that it has a potential to be.
Two podcasts I recently heard seem to have at least an entry to answers to my opening question. First, https://simonsinek.com/discover/episode-45-resolving-conflict-with-william-ury/ provides support for women uniting across all geologic, political, religious, and other separations. We are women! We are more powerful than can be comfortably acknowledged by many cultures, and we can overcome that. We need to harness the power of that reality to help our planet. And let’s not ignore the language accepted by many societies: MOTHER Nature.
Second, https://www.sceneonradio.org/episode-45-transformation-seeing-white-part-14/ gives us some actionable activity. Yes, we women need to join forces. If we do, we can and will influence governing policy and capitalist systems. In fact, by joining together as women - those who bear and nurse infants, are companions (on more than one level) to many, more often than not, care for the home, the children, the elderly; and accept the “burden” of knowing and expressing human feeling, along with so many more elements of life. We can, and should, change the world.
Mother Nature and Father Time support this transformational motivation for living. They also condemn any other motivation, but are willing to let it “play out”. Consider the history of planet Earth over the last hundred million years. BTW it is scientifically believed that homo sapiens have been on this Earth approximately 200,000 years. This is .2% or 0.002 of the 100 million years referenced. Furthermore, the Earth itself is thought to be approximately 4.5 billion, yes B billion years old.
To my sisters of color, thank you more than the language I control can express for all the efforts you have continued for centuries. It is not “your responsibility” to correct the errors of action or educate errors of ignorance the colonizers and other ancestral oppressors in America set in motion and perpetuate. You have done so much already and I know you will never quit. I welcome your partnership and I declare now it’s time for we “white” women to take the lead and shoulder the majority of the responsibility for changing the systems and institutions that support power over versus power with and to “the people”. ALL the people. Regardless of gender identity, sexual orientation, skin color, religious belief, cultural and ethnic background, and every other grouping of human the American public identifies. “We the people” is to be interpreted as ALL PEOPLE, full stop.
To my brothers of all colors, I am not excluding you or all the contributions your gender has made. Our human culture seems to be compelled to condition your gender to embrace violence and domination in the face of fear, uncertainty or scarcity. I don’t believe it is embedded in human nature to commit genocide and other atrocities against our species and other beings of nature, but somehow we have developed the ability to “teach” and “reward” this behavior, especially to our male members. That must be stopped, and I think those who have the most innate ability to do so are we daughters, sisters, and mothers. Now it is time for women to step in front and exercise our undeniable influence. Thank you to all men who support us.
Women, I am seeking sisterhood. Can we please join in transformation of actions here in the United States of America? If not here, in this experimental country, then where? (I want to move there.)
