You do own to hear me faintly /
Less a realization, and more a remembrance: I am rarely angrier than when someone is wasting my time.
It is possible to feel like entire industries are wasting your time. Entire institutions. Entire classes of people.
We’ve already told you why you’re failing to diversify your teams. We’ve already told you why misinformation and disinformation and violent propaganda have taken such entrenched hold on platforms. We’ve already told you why people who benefit from status quo norms and practices decline to consider extending that grace to others. We’ve already told you that people will keep dying and that you will keep believing that those people must have done something, anything to deserve it. We’ve already told you that no one is coming to save us.
(No one is coming to save you, either.)
I find myself wondering what to do, in the face of the wildfires and the hatred and the deaths and the steady, steady diminution of whose lives matter. I am trying to stand for something. To take responsibility. To show up. To make eye contact. To give money to the people who have been comforting the afflicted, rebuilding the broken infrastructure, advocating for the vulnerable.
Can we do this without attaching conditions? Can we do this without expecting displays of gratitude? Can you pause to reflect before you ask for a refund because the Black-owned bookstore that you’d never thought to buy before from told you all the books about racism were on backorder and by the way USPS shipping is additionally delayed.
Can we give space? Space to let people live? Empathy does not need to require explanation. Belief does not have to be a function of credentials. Compassion does not need to assume perfect victims.
Give people their time back. I’m reclaiming mine.
Attribution:
You declare you see me dimly
through a glass which will not shine,
though I stand before you boldly,
trim in rank and making time.
You do own to hear me faintly
as a whisper out of range,
while my drums beat out the message
and the rhythms never change.
Equality, and I will be free.
Equality, and I will be free.— from Equality by Maya Angelou