Color, Racism and The Thingness That We Seek

It's been one year now?

A lot has happened. And I now write because I think I understand why people write. Or actually, why I am writing now. Sure, I write to remember, to revisit, to keep moments and feelings. But now, this moment, today I write to embrace these thoughts. These conversations-- these moments that I spend with my friends that make me reflect and understand life. I need this now. I am understanding who I am and it is in part through these moments, these thought-processes that I unravel.

Dan:

There is no objective good and bad. I am aware of this, I have been for some time now. Hap--> means of chance, of luck. So this means that Hap-py, Hap-pens. You aren't entitled to it, there's no reason that you should only strive for it. Contentment. maybe that's what I should strive for. Not some overwhelming feeling of joy or happiness, but rather some form of balance and peace with what I am. Just a point where being is enough. How very Buddhism. How very Dan. :) Beautiful, really.

Color. What is this country and "color". I don't get it. It's foolish and childish to me. How am I of color. To my understanding, white is not "of color", but when I ask people what the color of my skin is, 98% of the time I'll get "white" and the other 2% I'll receive a diplomatically correct "fair". I've been informed that I'm "white passing" which means I get spoken to and about, as if I were native to the United States. However, when it comes out that I am -in fact- Colombian, all of a sudden I get more privilege (because of my assumed lack of it) to speak my mind and act without the same constraints or expectations as I had when I was "American". This is because unbeknownst to me, my "color" is Latina. I use quotes because I'd never spoken about race and ethnicity as they are regarded here. White and Black, as I was raised to use them, do not mean "white" and "black". Forgive me, but I was not raised with the idea that color is a euphemism for race or ethnicity. Colors are spoken about in terms of hues and saturation. Nowhere on the rainbow do I see history or heritage. Black does not mean lesser, it does not mean incapable, it does not mean victim. Equally, White does not mean privilege, it does not mean ignorance, it is not a synonym of oppression. So White and Black have been stripped of their colorness. "Black" and "white" aren't blanco y negro, because they can't be... they aren't actual colors...Not in the way I understand them to be in the U.S.

I'm not saying that racism is a thing to be ignored, because it is a reality that needs to be addressed. In my opinion through my humble experience of my country, our resilience doesn't stem from a racially oppressed people. It comes from social disparity and civil war. Our Interior Conflict comes from our actual interior conflict, our violence, our war.

I genuinely don't know where I'm going with this but I think that creating these labels and distinctions is counter productive to the racism problem. Of course ... all of this with a grain of salt. I'm no one to say what should be done or not done. But I can have an opinion, have the right to change it and grow with new information. But for the time being, I think that these labels of colors will only feed racism. It'll draw more and more distinctions and lines between people. I am not only a woman of color but I am a "privileged-1 international-2 woman-3 of color-4 from a third world country-5" 

What is starting to happen will happen at a lager scale. These labels: privilege, color, white, black, oppression, shouldn't be ignored if they are a key part of what you consider makes you, but we are human. We know that no one is one dimensional, and adding all of these labels won't create this romantic notion that we seem to hold of a wholesome complex individual, but rather we're creating a fragmented pieced together identity.

These are my thoughts now. Today. May 7th 2014. I reserve the right to change my mind and to grow. To understand and see the world with new eyes. To stand by my word as long as I believe in what I say and to re-evaluate my assumptions and conclusions over time.

Jerry: 

"Meaning" Meaning. Reference. Things. I'm gonna call it a thing. You know, that thing, the one we're all looking for?

I've recently stumbled upon a cathartic truth: we (the royal we) pursue what makes us feel that is the most _______. The quality of this ______ word is this thing that I'm talking about. Now this has been said before, that we as humans do what we do because we're out to find meaning in life. So I think that the baker, the dancer, the philosopher, the magician, the rocket scientist and the finance manager, even if not through their work, seek to share what they think this thing is with the world.

Comical, quaint, and beautiful. If you're from jupiter and you look over onto earth, you'd see all these humans scurrying around in pursuit of these things; And the ones who think they have it or know how to get it, try to share it with others and try to get them on board because they have FOUND THE ONE TRUE WAY, THE WAY TO THE THING. You see how that could be funny? Comical?

Regardless, despite this comical way of seeing it, it's beautiful. At the risk of sounding overly optimistic about human nature, it is beautiful that we are striving to share this meaning. Of course it's naive to think that we have THE ONE TRUE WAY, and to attempt to share that. But the synchronicity of humanity all striving to attain or achieve this thing. That's beautiful.