I come from a long line of worriers. My mom feared when she would leave my sister and I alone at home as kids, even for just 20 minutes while she ran an errand, that there would be an earthquake. Her mom got anxious when my mom would play in the garden because of the possibility of poisonous snakes. I don’t have kids yet, so my worries are on the world. Politically, our country is a corrupt mess – although when hasn’t it been? It’s been on my mind as of late, how detached one becomes from looking at how to fix because it seems so deeply permanently broken. I think about when something breaks, and there’s no fixing it, then there’s only room for something new. What would new look like for our government? Could new be coming in our next election? The economical privilege of education is something I have also been thinking about, especially being lucky enough to be a student at CalArts. This is an expensive school. It costs a lot to be here, whether that’s directly from money or time and stress to pay of loans or apply for scholarships. Is this is what it “takes” to be here, I question the economic demographic of a singular student body and what that does to a mindset of a community. With the tuition raise, this is highly topical. I also tend to stress on the role that comedy has in all this. I myself am a comedian/clown/improviser and I love to make people laugh. But I question how effective that is in the larger picture of making change. Could I do more? Is this the best role I can play?
On another note, I found the White Privilege article an extremely relevant read this week. I identified with the writer, probably mostly because I too am a white woman, but I felt she was smart about drawing me in at the top talking about male privilege. It’s something we all see and experience everyday but something that particularly frustrates me when there is a lack of awareness with it. I like that frustrating being directly compared with unawareness surrounding white privilege. The lists of daily effects white privilege provides was incredibly enlightening because it helped me look at how much I take for granted, mostly surrounding daily assumptions of me based on my skin color. Making a written list and publishing it AND calling out the very privilege of it being published I found to be a tangible thing that was effective. At the end, she asked the questions, what will we do with such knowledge? I find my self asking that constantly and not knowing an answer. There is a very passive act of privilege as in most of the time we will just allow it. How do we not be passive? How do we get active while remaining respectful and attributive to those voices that are still underrepresented? Is using the voice of privilege further perpetuation oppression? I wish there was as much time spent on investigation active questions as there was calling herself out.
Comments
Post a Comment