They don’t appear to understand that . . . / If only they would make an effort
Someone I respect gave something up, something meaningful that mattered to them, did so quietly.
Someone I have no public opinions about gave something up, loudly, in a way that signalled they will be just fine, would have been fine, regardless.
There is sacrifice, and there is mere inconvenience.
I was an undergraduate at a school that featured both a Socialist Worker Student Society and a Finance Society, their barkers at orientation dressed entirely differently and equally expensively, their accents identically posh.
The distinct memory of sitting in lecture about the laws of war taught by the lawyer who’d written the memo the UK used to argue for the legality of using force against Iraq. Outside, the in the streets of central London, thousands of people chanted Not in my name. Inside, I scribbled down the argument of the man whose name was all over it, knowing this would be on the exam, not knowing if it would be a test of our ability to argue for or against.
On another campus, in another place, many years later, asking a well-meaning (of course, always) person who was encouraging others to show up at airports on behalf of immigrants’ rights whether she knew that non-citizens arrested at a protest risked deportation. She did not know, had heretofore had no reason to know, that being a consequence from which she was entirely shielded by her birthright citizenship going back to the Mayflower.
The same action tends to have entirely different consequences depending on the starting precariousness of the people involved.
We forget this, or we very deliberately remember this, and then Black women die.
Attribution:
They don’t appear to understand that . . . If only they would make an effort to . . . But we know how difficult it is for them to . . . Many of them remain unaware of . . . Some who should know better simply refuse to . . . Of course, their perspective has been limited by . . . On the other hand, they obviously feel entitled to . . .
from Elliptical by Harryette Mullen