"[White] supremacy is our ongoing pandemic. It partners with every other sickness to tear us from life, or from lives worth living."
– adrienne maree brown
Sometimes in all the rhetoric and social media bullying and political righteousness and psychological aggression and intellectual pandering and shaming and canceling and echo chambering and unwillingness to listen and inability to compromise we lose sight of the truly negative consequences White supremacy has on humanity.
In our push to be right or to align with this theory or oppose that one or support this cause or trash that one we fail to recognize that real live human beings are bandied about as if they were collateral damage.
We must build into our commitment, our intentionality, our drive, our purpose a clear focus on recognizing and uplifting the humanity of the people who are treated as less than fully human.
White supremacy is indeed an ongoing pandemic. A pandemic that we can see and hear and feel all around us if we are willing to see it and hear it and feel it.
But unlike the Covid pandemic, there is no mask we can wear to protect us from White supremacy's tentacle-like reach. No shot we can inject into our arms that can stop the spread of the disease.
Fighting the White supremacy pandemic is a different battle. One that requires all of us.