Everyday Things

Okay.

I’ve been going back and forth about what to write on this blog, like do I want to write something about Charlottesville, about the threat of nuclear war, about asylum seekers in detention centres, about this plebiscite for marriage equality, do I not want to write about these things, should I even write about these things or should I shut up and not presume to have anything new or interesting to say because others have voices that need to be heard more and because really, we don’t need any more White People Having New Feelings About Things, and ultimately I think yes, I should shut up and not presume to have anything new or interesting to say about these things - except to say two things:

One - and this does need to be said because staying silent and "not taking sides" is taking a side, although I hope you know me well enough to know which side I am on - but I’ll say it again for the record:
I am against white supremacy.
I am against nuclear war.
We need to bring asylum seekers out of offshore detention and into Australia and begin to do the work of admitting our mistakes, asking for forgiveness, and making repairs.
The marriage equality plebiscite is dumb and offensive, but kudos to the government for motivating so many people to update their electoral details, this will come in handy when we vote them out. Democracy!

Two - if you’re a grad student and you’re taking stock of how much work you’ve done in the last few days/weeks/months and you’re feeling kinda shitty about that, remember that trying to understand and respond to the world is also a kind of work, so don’t beat yourself up about it, you’re being an adult with normal emotional responses to awful situations and that takes effort too.

So those are the things I wanted to say, and here are some things I’ve been reading and pondering specifically in relation to white supremacy which may or may not be helpful to you. Ironically and unfortunately they are mostly from white writers, because those are the people I still tend to read the most, but I want to correct this.

What to do about Charlottesville
Here is a list of organisations in Charlottesville that you can donate to if you’ve got a spare couple of bucks. You can’t change people’s actions but sometimes you can meddle with the consequences of their actions, and it’s vaguely comforting to think that one of the consequences of white supremacy is more financial support for organisations that white supremacists hate.

White People: 0-60 for Charlottesville
This is about white people having new feelings about things that POC have been having feelings about for a long time, and what white people can do about those feelings.

Brene Brown did a facebook live video last night about Charlottesville from her perspective as a researcher on shame and fear, and she has a lot of interesting things to say about pain, owning our history, and the difference between shaming people and holding them to accountability. (For example, is it okay to find and publish the names of white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville, even if they lose their friends and families and jobs? Yes. That's accountability.)

IndigenousX
We don’t get to shake our heads at the US and say "we're not like that" or "that'll never happen to us". Australia has its own white colonial past and present that we need to reckon with, which includes giving more space to the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. IndigenousX is a really cool organisation that amplifies those voices.

Rave Sashayed is one of my favourite writers and she very frequently has something useful to say about Feeling Things, I found this post particularly helpful:

" [...] a really good thing and a thing i highly recommend in times of crisis is to get off the internet for a while. your brain thinks that only YOUR PERSONAL rapt, terrified attention will solve the problems that beset us as a world and a country, but god bless it, it is wrong […] i don’t know what it’s like where you are, but it’s beautiful outside in DC today. go breathe in that good air, if you can. get strength from that good sunlight. think of yourself like a tree. make your roots strong."

***

It’s weird when you drag your personal, rapt, terrified attention away from the news and people are doing other, everyday things - shopping for groceries, tweeting about their research, hanging out with their pets, getting married; so I’m going to try and get back into writing about the regular, everyday things that makes up being a linguistics grad student. This is the stuff of our lives, too, and I guess this is what we’re fighting for, to be able to live them as we see fit.