The Pink Wound of a New Mourning
draw back one by one
the bandages of dark
I open my eyes
still
I am living
at the center
of a wound still fresh.
-- Octavio Paz, Dawn
I have written before that’s there’s a potential upside to the current class war aka “The Economic Crisis.” Namely, what people of color have experienced for centuries as a group many whites now are experiencing as solitary and alienated individuals. Chris Rock’s observation that a white person would never trade skins with a black person has some merit, and truth be told, various groups of white Americans might feel as sense of belonging, that the system looks out for them. However, today more than ever, individually they suffer the stings of corporate indifference almost like anyone else.
At a group level, a white man might identify with a white, male, Christian president, for example (though that’s not true today). But how much does that identification mean when on the unemployment line or when a HMO refuses to allow possible life-saving technology?
Every American is a unit of labor. This labor is owned by corporations. Each individual may dispose his or her labor as he or she wishes, but ultimately the employer owes the laborer nothing. In a very real way, this fact can potentially unite the historical experience of people of color and the new day dawning on the rest of our nation.
It can, but we are pitted against one another. Even poor or oppressed whites can look further down and find (false) refuge in the knowledge that the faces at the bottom of the well are often black and brown.
I am attempting to understand, by looking at inequality, the unique challenges that we all face in
Some of us are looking at social change in fear. We view the reality of a black president as a threat somehow. Some of us see a Latina Supreme Court justice and fear that our freedoms will be taken away. We see that our religious beliefs will not be enforced on others and we seethe with self-righteous indignation and hatred. It’s an irrational fear with far-reaching and potentially catastrophic consequences. It even compels some of us to kill and maim.
Today, I am not looking to advance a particular dogma or socio-political agenda. I am not looking to socialist, Marxist, or capitalistic experiments as an answer to our social and economic problems. Rather, I want to look directly into the maws of capitalism to see if there’s a way to survive the onslaught.
I stand at the intersection of knowledge and action. Rebellion is the primary movement of knowledge. Violence and oppression rob us of the ability to understand. Without understanding, there can be no growth, no evolution, no recognition of Truth, and no tomorrow -- only an endless reverberation of gray todays.
If we refuse to look at and understand the restraints placed on all of us by history, economics, self-image, the media, politics, and the misuse of technology, we will never be free. The alternative to knowledge and action is ignorance and enslavement. The shackles I speak of threaten to enslave everyone in
When the logical consequence of a popular and mass ideology is murder, perpetual war, environmental rape, and oppression, we are mired in a crisis that may compel us to become the first species to make ourselves extinct. Alternatively, we also stand at the precipice of what can be one of the greatest evolutionary leaps in our shared history. At every stage of growth, there is both the potential for destruction and the potential for transformative collective change. We all play a part in that choice...
Love,
Eddie
I usually blog here
