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Are you mentally land-locked or island nation?

Growing up in an island nation, you hear the rhetoric.

Island nations benefit from being able to control their borders more easily.
No warring neighbours. No being hemmed in by another country. No case of anyone being too close.

By nature of it being the opposite, land-locked therefore means, loose borders, neighbours far too close and being enclosed.

Well that’s at least what some want you to think.

Personally I think that’s bollocks, bull and a crock of shit.
(Does that cover enough cultural expressions of “I don’t agree”?)

It comes from an insular standpoint that says more about your internal mindset than anything else.

“Islands are metaphors of the heart, no matter what poet says otherwise.”

― Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry

Islands are also separate from, on their own and unconnected.

I’m not saying that island nations encompass this in any way other than their physicality.
In people however, the metaphor is twofold.

1: It represents the ‘look after me, stuff you’ attitude which is devasting for those who are considered ‘other’.
AND
2: You’re protecting yourself emotionally.

I think that both decisions are made from a position of fear.

The first threatens what is known and familiar, the second, threatens to hurt our heart.

It’s scary, so we barricade rather than face ourselves – or we project onto others and blame someone else for what’s going on inside us.

This is why island nation mentality is so dangerous.

Ostracizing the ‘Other’

When we are confronted by difference and by people we don’t understand, it’s easy to attribute blame anywhere else but ourselves.
It’s their fault.

In reality, they probably haven’t done anything.
For whatever reason, just their mere existence has triggered you. And it’s triggered you, because you can’t wrap it up neatly in your mind with your known and familar experiences.

Humans like to be able to understand. It helps us to assess threat and to feel safe and comfortable in our environment. When we don’t understand something and can’t compartmentalise it, it becomes threatening.

Simply put. We don’t know where we stand and that makes us feel vulnerable.

None of us like to feel vulnerable so we shift to the other person. They’re to blame.

The homeless person makes us feel uncomfortable because we don’t know how to behave around them.

We avert our eyes from the beggar, because we don’t want to feel guilty by not giving them money.

We smile slightly patronisingly at the child with cerebral palsy and their parent. If we were comfortable we’d ignore them like any other passer-by.

We avoid the hearing impaired staff member because we might get awkward and embarrassed in trying to communicate with them.

Does any of this feel familiar?
Good.

It’s awkward isn’t it?
It’s awkward because I see you. I see me too.

You see, the only thing this thought process and behaviour does is isolate people.

Otherness isolates

It creates division, prejudice and suffering.

We are all someone else’s ‘OTHER’

It’s all about us, NOT the other person.

But it’s the other that suffers.

I’ve spoken to homeless people who say that all they want is to have a normal human conversation. A human conversation. That’s not a lot to ask is it?

But it’s also everything.

So let’s put us aside.

In opening ourselves we not only bring people in from the margins, but we also remove our own fears and discomforts. Everyone become known.

Do it enough times and it becomes your normal.

and best of all….?

It becomes their normal too.

Cath x

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To Speak Up or Not – can you live with yourself?

I wish I’d said something.

These were the words of a friend of mine when she witnessed someone being discriminated against.

A comforting friend might say, Ah well, next time you can…

I suspect that we honestly believe that we would say speak up next time, but when the moment comes, we are presented with a choice.

And the choice not to is easier.

I won’t today because I’m tired and just want to get home

I won’t today because the bloke that said the comment looks like he could crush me through a meat grinder.

I won’t today because I’ve just ducked into this shop for one thing. I’ve got to get back to work.

I won’t today because, well…. do I care enough?

I won’t today because I’m here for work and don’t want to make a scene.

These thoughts are common and normal. I know they are because I’ve thought them.

It’s hard to speak up.
But I always regret it when I don’t.

When I worked in Sydney I had to visit a maximum security prison to relocate a family of birds that had nested in the exercise yard of the prisoners who were severely mentally impaired. To this day I regret not saying anything about the prison officer whose language belittled and made fun of the prisoners.

Did I think, she knows her job and I know nothing about how hard this must be, so I won’t say anything?
Yes, I did.

BUT,

I also chose to ignore the uncomfortable body language and facial expressions of her colleague whose behaviour was completely the opposite – positive and open hearted.

Personal or External?

When it’s personal, it seems easier to speak up. When a colleague started talking about ‘drowning gingers at birth’ I had something to say. When I hear homophobic stuff I speak up. When I receive anti-Australian sentiments I will voice an opinion. I can do this without thinking because they all affront me personally.

I feel justified.
It throws that energy back at them so I don’t take it on board.

So why is it harder to do for others?

Because we have a choice.
We can choose to ignore.

Subtle versus Smack-in-your-face!

The recent Black Lives Matter campaign has highlighted how so much of racism is subtle.

As Patrick George says, “White people in England can be a bit smarter, they know exactly what they can’t say to be obviously racist, but they’ll do it more subtly. They’ll come for you in other ways.”

Evidently, this is also why large proportions of White people don’t think there’s a problem, because they don’t see it personally. As Patrick George explains, those who discriminate know they have to be careful about how they do it.

But what about when it is not so subtle? Does that still happen?

Can you remember the last time you witnessed racism openly and boldly?

I can. Several times, unfortunately.

It shocked me.
It shocked me because it showed that the racist felt safe to be racist.

They felt that they had support from the White people nearby.

No, this gentleman is next” said dad as he pointed to the Aboriginal man next to him.

Only then, did the White staff member choose to serve the Aboriginal man who’d been standing there waiting for several minutes – passed over every time a White person had walked up and ordered.

Again…. an Aboriginal man asked us for a lift in our car, but unfortunately 300kms in the opposite direction to our route. We found another family nearby to give him the lift. They were more than happy to until they saw he was Aboriginal. In front of him they screwed up their face, said No and shook their heads.

It’s abhorrent when you witness it.

It’s abhorrent when you realise that people have to change their behaviour to stay safe.

On remote Australian roads, everyone waves at oncoming traffic. It’s gives a sense of ‘we’re all out here together’.

Over many years I’ve noticed that Aboriginal people hold back until you wave first. Then with beaming smiles you get a friendly wave.

A few weeks ago I read about a couple in the USA; he’s Black, she’s White. When they go running, she always runs behind him, so it never looks like he’s chasing her.

Pardon me, but FUCK! How is that okay?

I know it’s easy to say there’s a lot to learn and there’s no easy fix. That’s true. And I also know that Australia, the USA, Africa…. they’re all different. The discriminations have cultural contexts and histories that give each country its own complexities.

But, we do have a lot to learn and by understanding cultures and people different from ourselves better, we can understand the impact of oppression and discrimination and how to change it.  

For example, do you know that in many Australian Aboriginal languages, there is no word for ‘thank you’ or ‘please’? The value of sharing and caring is such an important part of Aboriginal culture, its value is inherent. There’s no need for such words (from Clothing the Gap – an Aboriginal owned and led social enterprise)

In Resmaa Manakem’s book, My Grandmother’s Hands, he talks about the impact of genetic trauma and how bio chemical stress hormones influence what is passed down through generations. These traumas are living within Australia’s indigenous people. Equally, the traumas of slavery (which happened in Australia too) are in the bodies of People of Colour in the USA, the UK and other parts of the world.

Imagine the impact of colonisation on ‘sharing and caring’ people by ‘conquer and take’ people.

The damage starts instantly.
It’s now very old. These are old deep wounds.

We cannot ignore this when considering whether we choose to speak up today or tomorrow or we are regretting yesterday’s lack.

Let’s work to change the record
Let’s work to create new experiences that positively influence genetic trauma
Let’s be part of healing
Let’s make sure that subsequent generations are not dealing with this shit in 50 or 100 years.

You with me?

Cath

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Claiming Your Margins

“I’m not a White woman. I’m a faded Black person”

– Jane Elliott

Sit with that.

Take a little longer.

“I’m not a White woman. I’m a faded Black person.
My people moved far away from the Equator, and that’s the only reason my skin is lighter. That’s all any White person is.”

Jane Elliott, is an anti-racism activist who says some powerful things. She’s right of course.

“We are one race”. As I say that I can feel my gut fighting ‘we are one race’. I want to interject and say we’re all different, that culture creatives diversity and there’s different languages and, there’s …. and there’s….and there’s…..

But she’s right again.

Underneath the thin little layers of pigment, we are all the same – muscle, fat, bone, organs etc.
Yes, I’m human, but again I want to say I’m different because of x,y and z.

So why is that? I’m asking myself this question too.
Why do I feel the need so strongly to assert my difference?

It all relates to how I am identified – not how I self-identify, but how others identify me.

Have you noticed that being Black is so important to Black people? Or being gay is so important to gay people or being Jewish is so important to Jewish people?

It’s not because they are proud.

It’s because they’ve fought.

They’ve fought to be who they are and there’s no way in hell, that is going to be taken from them.

And they are proud.
They’re proud because they’ve survived.

I believe that middle-aged white people, i.e. the Privileged, can struggle to define themselves.

Years ago, I was sitting in my car by a waterhole in far north Queensland, Australia. An Aboriginal man drove up with a car load of Japanese businessmen. He walked up to waterhole and spoke loudly in Language, before coming up to my window to explain that he’d just introduced himself to the Spirits and thanked them for allowing us all to be there.

“Where youse from?” he asked and just as I was politely answering that I was from Sydney, he butted in. “Oh that’s right, youse don’t know where you’re from”.

I was slightly affronted; I knew where I was from!

But I’d missed the point.
As a White woman I didn’t have Dreaming and beyond a handful of generations I don’t know where I came from. As an Aboriginal man, he has a lineage to that continent that goes back 60,000 years.

Privilege doesn’t question

With Privilege comes a lack of questioning because of a lack of threat and therefore, a lack of needing to define yourself, because you, are the accepted ‘norm’.

Someone once asked me to describe myself in 6 words. I surprised myself by saying without hesitation, ‘red-headed Australian lesbian’, before I had to think a little harder about the remaining three descriptors.

The red-headed Australian lesbian 🙂

In hindsight, red-headed, Australian, lesbian are the three things for which I’ve been discriminated. At various points in my life, I’ve been made to feel that they are problematic and they have attracted verbal abuse.

So now, without thinking, I claim them.

I claim them because they’ve been used against me.

I claim them because I’ve fought for them.

And I claim them because I’ve had to.

They are not simple descriptors. They have power. Without the discrimination, these identifiers would not have the same level of importance.

And the wonderful irony, is that the people who discriminate actually create completely the opposite effect they are after.

They abuse and mock to belittle and to make themselves feel bigger. But all they do is make us rise stronger.

The VERY thing that they see as our weakness, is what makes us the strongest.

And a recommendation before I go…..

Don’t ever piss off a drag queen. You’ll live to regret it.