It was nice talking to Cale last night on the phone, and then to Anna Kate the morning before, and then to Ashley a few nights before...etc, etc. Catching up with far-away friends has really done wonders for my spirit.
My spirit, by the way, has been all over the place, especially after celebrating MLK yesterday. We went to a Peace March (really more of a 5 minute stroll) that was followed by a rally.
The impact and power of congregation stunned me. Usually I try to avoid congregation, unless food and/or liquid spirits are involved (and these things don't always fulfill their appealing promise). There was stepping and singing and praising. And as I was thinking of the Civil Rights Movement and the timeline of it all (wasn't it 1865 that African Americans obtained the right to vote) and how it wasn't that long ago, and how there are still huge remnants and leftovers of prejudice and discrimination. The disguise of it all. To what degree am I being racist, or age-ist, or sexist? What prejudices have I inherited? What prejudices have I dispelled like an empty rumor?
The difficulty of naming things--it can be both necessary and unnecessary. To name or not to name.
There's still just so much marginalization and injustice. So many people getting ignored. People with mental illness weigh especially heavily on my mind lately, as I see a struggle amongst these people as they strive to rid people at large of taboos and stereotypes against them with little success and little representation and little help from the government.
When I was in Arkansas over Thanksgiving I saw this one episode of Dr. Phil (stay with me here) that was trying to dispel the rumor of mental illness by interviewing a woman with Schizophrenia, but the show kept marketing her as a "schizophrenic," which ironically reduces her to her mental illness, instead of showing the whole complexity of her person and humanity that the show was supposed to be showing.
Language alone is so powerful and dynamic--limiting and freeing. I hope people don't take Dr. Phil too literally, as he's just perpetuating what I believe to be a misunderstanding in this case; although I see that he was trying to put a face to society's fear in order to dispel it. I do recommend facing our fears (so to speak), but do it in real life, not via talk shows.
The complexity of things is just really as energizing as it is paralyzing; I just don't feel like I'm doing much of anything besides being at a stand still, which is no good.
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4 comments:
2 things:
1 (regarding today's post): amen, sista. it drives me nuts that even my classmates (despite the repititous requests of our instructors to do otherwise) continue to say things like "i work with the persistantly mentally ill"; what a horrible name for an indivdual living with persistant mental illness. as if the illness isn't bad enough...
2 (concerning your comment): oh, come on. i say, the more photos of my friends (doing totally ordinary and unscandalous things) around in the world, the better. and you're welcome for the plug.
I just wanted to say that I'm excited you have a new blog and I hope you keep it up.
Also, it was in 1865 that AAs got the right to vote (I assumed by '65 that you meant 1965). However, they were oftentimes still excluded from the voting process through a variety of illegal and frequently violent methods, particularly in the South.
glad to know you still exist, caleb, and glad to know you're still up on your history facts. how are you doing otherwise?
and i edited the date, so i don't appear stupid. whether i really am or not about these things i'll leave to the readers. you assumed i was. perhaps correctly. hehe.
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