Simona Halep won Wimbledon this year.
Serena Williams will forever be my champion.
The day I stop fighting for equality and for people that look like you and me will be the day I am in my grave.
– Serena Williams
Long will she reign.
Tag Archives: equality
Forever champion
Filed under Current Events, tennis
17 March – each year, every year
I speak for no others,
only for myself.
For me, this day has
nothing to do with
green beer or
green rivers or
green clothing,
this day has nothing to do with
pinching me or kissing me;
my bad jokes aside,
this day has nothing to do even with Jameson.
Today is a day
to remember oppression
to honor resistance
to recognize that, despite the efforts of
systems of race and racialization
to separate us,
struggles for dignity and justice,
freedom and equality,
human rights and humanity
are inseparably linked:
none of us are free until all of us are free.
for that reason, in that spirit, and in my own fashion,
I mark this day, and each 17th of March.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day.
Fitzgerald, from County Cork, on my mother’s side.
See you along the Trail!
Filed under Antiracism, Current Events, Human Rights, Ireland
No turning back
A friend’s post on Facebook today reminds me of the power of racism and of my need to respond.
Describing an experience from earlier today, my friend writes:
A bunch of people in a car just tried to run me off the road while calling me racial slurs and pulling their eyelids at me.
Horrifying. Horrible. Scary. Despicable. Stupidity. All the words shared by my friend’s friends apply.
Other words do as well.
Bigotry. Racism. A call to action.
In particular, people, such as me, who are part of the dominant culture, need to act:
- To speak when bigotry and hatred rear their heads.
- To challenge stereotypes in print, on video and wherever they appear.
- To confront our friends, our families, ourselves when we use or accept stereotypes.
- To learn the histories and current realities of our brothers and sisters. To learn how those histories shape current realities of our brothers and sisters. And how they shape the current reality of the dominant culture.
- To take the responsibility to name racism for what it is.
- To study systems of privilege to understand how they work and how they benefit us and how they can be resisted and dismantled and remade.
- To consider where we live, where we go to school, how we use our money, who are the professionals who provide services to us, who owns the businesses we support.
- To remain open to new understandings, new commitments, new challenges, new responsibilities.
- To recognize that the commitment to seek racial justice lasts a lifetime.
That’s a partial list. Put together quickly. At a moment when my heart aches for a friend. I will revisit it. Amend it. Add to it.
The journey goes on. The struggle continues. There is no turning back.
See you along the Trail.
Filed under Antiracism, Current Events, Friends
