When The Personal is Not Political

Where do we go from here? From this repeat betrayal by millions of (mostly) white Americans. It is a betrayal, though it's not a betrayal against me, to whom they have never demonstrated loyalty. It's a betrayal of their own humanity, a betrayal of imagination to think of the world only as scarcity and full of disposable other people, to think that since we all die anyway, death and suffering is the price others should pay for their stock portfolios, tax breaks, good schools and monotone communities.

The political becomes abstract when the personal is atrophied. When your personal connections are merely a conduit for your vanity. When harms to your ego (being called out for racism or misogyny or bigotry or small-mindedness) are worse than the actual harms (being terrorized by state power, violence, being held back from your positive potential by structural barriers) experienced by the real people you know. Bigoted rhetoric can be thought of as innocuous only when your position protects you from the bone-deep vitriol of arbitrary hate. When your privilege and perspective are the invisible standard, only then can the taking away of autonomy and rights be viewed as irrelevant to your life.  The political is only abstract when you can wield your callousness like a shield.

I dislike the admonitions and prescriptions to reach out and repair this divide. They're mostly written by white people who don't want us to give up on them and their cohort and who seem to have a salacious interest in seeing other people do their work. I know who loves me, and I know that love alone neither transforms nor reforms. I don't rely on love as form of acceptance. We can never know what's it's like to live another person's life, but I think it's unnecessary to expend all our energy handwringing inside the chasms between us. The dignity and significance of our lives is not dependent on who is with us. I don't have faith in humanity, but I have faith in myself, a human person mothering other human people to be better people, a human person keeping record. Where do I go from here? Everywhere I am valued. What do I do with the racists and misogynists in my life? Give them no foothold. What should I do with myself? Make new worlds. Invite everyone in.