Dear Claire,
Forgive my late response to your email. Like you, I’ve been feeling so overwhelmed by current events that some silence and a proper distance from the world was in order. And with that as my meager apology, I want to send you this belated thanks for your stirring words and my best wishes from Ktown on this holiday.
The raw emotions you describe—the outrage shared with protesters on the one hand, and the COVID-induced foreboding on the other—are, of course, completely understandable. Anyone with your questions, pigmented with concern, of “what a collectively imagined future might look like” in the months and years ahead, is likely undergoing a similar experience. If the pandemic has made anything exasperatingly clear, it is that like the protests themselves- BLM, BIPOC, LGBTQ- the burden of the work, the immeasurable sacrifices, the cost of life and limb, is again being carried by the most victimized and courageous in our society. But the alarming pace of the current crises (and the wish by those it most annoys to have it over with just as quickly, as though it was one of many nightly conjugal duties) has exposed a stark contrast between those who will grudgingly accept “the new normal” (which is to say not much different from the normal of BEFORE) and those who seek a sustainable non-violent "revolution". We can only hope that there will be enough ground covered so that real positive change is both inevitable and permanent. My only fear is that the AFTER so many of us long for will arrive too soon or too late to have any lasting impact. And yet, like you, I am hopeful that "the tides are changing and people are waking up." Here's to hoping the ninja will arrive just in the nick of time.
Your inquiry into whether any one of us, as individuals, can truly contribute to a shapeless and constantly shifting movement is something I think about all the time. The tension between all the constituent interests, the constant push-and-pull of disparate parts, feels a bit like an unpredictable but well-executed concerto. With some trust in the overall goodness of people gathered in groups, even without the aid of a conductor, I believe we can drive the whole orchestra toward something greater than the sum of our individual parts. Perhaps this is simply wishful thinking. Or naive romance. Personally, I have taken to a two-pronged approach in my daily life: to do my small part “on the ground” by allying myself with the few in my circle who have most to lose (and therefore, the most to gain) in the fight, whilst committing to the necessary inner work that will make my personal alignment to any social change meaningful. A rigorous daily routine of reading, writing, meditating and running has also been helpful. Now, more than ever, I need to balance action with mindfulness; anger with empathy; justice with self-care.
Your reflections as a white woman in a country built on a scaffolding of institutional racism and inequality has forced me today to interrogate my own complicity. And you are right to wonder, as I do now, whether this self-interrogation actually works since it’s nearly impossible to gauge whether we are changing while still “within a privileged standpoint.” Like a man who refers to himself as a “feminist”, in the end it's not up to him to make the final judgement.
As an Asian man, slotted into the “model minority” drive from the moment I arrived in this country as a child, I see how my increasing participation in the status quo has buoyed so much collective suffering. I have knowingly benefited by walking along a path in my latest Adidas that other BIPOC have, for generations before me, paved in their bare feet. Over the years, from the safety of the sidewalk, I assumed the nearly-invisible role of bystander to the street fight between whites and their mismatched BIPOC opponents. And on this night, with fireworks going off outside my window and over Christie Pits, it’s less my mindless apathy and more my lack of courage that stirs shame in me. Until recently, Canada Day was always a day I celebrated unwittingly and without any moral reckoning.
There is the one Canada Day I will never forget. I was fifteen and my friend Mario asked me to join him to watch fireworks at Canada’s Wonderland with his “Indian girlfriend” and her cousin. His girlfriend, whom he’d met at a public swimming pool only a few days before, was visiting from Thunder Bay. At that age, the only language Mario and I were versed in was the language of stereotypes, of manufacturing Otherness. So, Alexis was “exotic-looking”; she didn’t drink beer (presumably like we, and her own people, did); she was lighter-skinned and smarter than other Indians, possibly even some white people.
It was a day I recall as hot and still as today. Alexis and her cousin, Samantha (who never spoke much the whole day), were clad in bikinis beneath sheer dresses. Indeed, Alexis was lighter than her cousin, but she was also much smarter than Mario and I combined, multiplied by ten. At Wonderland, every lamp post was draped with a maple leaf flag. Over pizza slices, Alexis schooled us on the meaning of Canada Day, referring to it derisively as Colonial Day. With a historian’s encyclopedic knowledge and an activist’s sense of righteousness, she explained the role of both the French and English in the decimation of her people.(As Mario was Italian and I was Korean, we were pleased as pie not to be implicated in such wholesale atrocity and pretended to take it all in seriously while gawking at her bronzed body.) On that day, filled with every imaginable diversionary spectacle, I heard the terms “residential schools”, “the Sixties Scoop”, and “cultural genocide” for the very first time. Every time I hear them now, I can't help but conjure up Alexis' voice, those flinty eyes.
After the fireworks, we returned to Toronto on a bus in silence. I parted ways with the three of them at Yorkdale Mall. I wanted to say something to Alexis beyond "thanks, had a cool time." I wanted to tell her I could listen to her talk forever; tell her I will do something about it; tell her I would follow her all the way to Thunder Bay, wherever that was. The next time I saw him, I asked Mario if anything ever happened between him and Alexis. “Nah, she wasn’t worth it,” he’d said, “doesn’t want to give, just likes to talk”. I wished in that moment that I was Mario. I would have treated her differently. I would not have disappointed her. I would have redeemed myself.
But I never saw her again.
* * *
Claire, there have been many times like these, steeped in anxiety and confusion, so I take some solace in knowing this is not an isolated time, that we have been here before. But it saddens me that history often shows symptoms of dementia, forgetting where it put its keys, what day it is, what the name of its child is. And it is because this is so that little more than clichés will do to carry us lurching into the next similar time. But they are clichés nonetheless that occasionally, if sifted and clarified enough, might someday bear a truth worthy of the struggle it was borne out of. So, with the deepest kind of faith, we are being asked to imagine a world where everyone is allowed equal pursuit of meaning and happiness, with equal justice for all. We are being asked to contribute to its inevitability, its necessity. And although today is not that day when the horse is likely to drink, you and I are being asked to do our share by pulling the horse to water. I wonder now, in our mutual exhaustion, if you and I will ever find the strength. I wonder how others find it. But I take comfort from emails like yours, coming from someone like you, because I know this is at least possible: that if in a fleeting moment I can't locate it somewhere in myself, there is strength to be found in the likes of you.
In any case, for now, take good care of yourself, Claire, and write soon!
Yours,
Karaoke Cowboy
July 1, 2020
