5 yrs ago! Young, carefree, and not socially distant. 2015. When Kayne was ok and our prez's greatest crime was being an undercover Kenyan Muslim in the imagination of white ppl with too much time on their hands. Remember theatre, graduation ceremonies, and putting your arms around someone? 5 yrs...I was writing A LOT of articles for New Republic and Talking Points Memo about Ferguson, Black Respectability Politics, police brutality in NYC. I interviewed Robin DiAngelo over the phone when she dropped knowledge with a new term 'white fragility.' I ran to my editors with a feeling that her phrase was foreshadowing something awful. Remember the hate emails I received for writing articles and doing podcasts about BLM...and also remember the LOVE and support I got from so many others that outweighed the negative. Remember when I tried to blow the whistle on a sexual predator in the arts by reporting them to multiple unions and I was told to shut up...#metoo hadn't arrived yet. We were young and carefree and I was being annoying. And so...I dropped it. And articles about BLM fell out of fashion the following election year, and Hillary was going to win anyway...and no, she doesn't need your help phone banking or canvassing. She's got it in the bag thanks to very wise, old white people. No worries Obama nation...we are reaching out to 'working class America' and so I just shrugged my shoulders. Good luck with that Hillary, and John Kerry, and Al Gore, and every single Dem presidential candidate not named Obama in the last 30 yrs...good luck with ignoring POC to reach out to the mythical gray unicorn.
I look at this photo like it's both a postcard from better times...and a warning. Don't slip, don't be gaslighted into silence, enjoy simple freedoms like gathering together...b/c that can be taken away too. And anything is possible because it's graduation day...all the time. And this is an election year in the middle of an unprecedented pandemic exacerbated by scammers, evangelicals, and incompetents gathered under the GOP tent of white fragility.
100,000 dead Americans by Sunday. White Fragility is lethal. But it's graduation day...somewhere in America. And that means there's hope.
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