Swirling in Whiteness

The more I look around, the more I find. My eyes are wide open and I am still on the hunt. I wish I had more time to dedicate to this learning right now, but I'm still finishing my masters work. This summer I will be able to dig in and really get to work.  I found an amazing podcast called The 1619 Project . Nikole Hannah-Jones is a New York Times writer who founded the project. The stories in the podcast bring up a lot of different topics that demonstrate how everything we know today has links to slavery. This is why we can't just move past what happened. It's still happening! Music, mortgages, business loans, health insurance. This is just the beginning. There is mention in the podcast about a book that is coming that will dive even deeper. It's heavy, but necessary for people like me to understand. Systemic racism runs deep in so many institutions, and we are never going to get past it unless we can bring it to the surface and call it out.  I'll be watching for t...

I have not abandoned my search for knowledge regarding racism and calling it out wherever it exists. I've had to take a break from it this fall while I was doing my job as a teacher. It takes so much energy to teach and doing it virtually during a pandemic makes it even harder. I think many people from all walks of life are finding the same thing about their lives. Things are just harder. People's hearts are broken in all sorts of different ways and we have to be there to support each other, to be gentle with each other.  I just finished reading The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. In a nutshell, it gives the story one might hear if they asked the question: What would happen in the lives of two light-skinned Black women (twins) who could pass for Caucasian went their separate ways in early adulthood? One lived as a Black woman and the other lived as a white woman. One had a daughter with a Black man and one had a daughter with a white man. Many examples of racism appear through...