Healing Trauma: Perspectives And Attitudes, 50

Trauma paralyzes people. Individual or collective, you become stuck in your pain, stranded in your suffering. It becomes the gift that goes on giving and you are caught in that loop that plays over and over and over again. It influences. colours, taints, and contaminates the way you think, perceive, talk, interact, relate to strangers, friends, colleagues, neighbours, authority figures. Anyone or anything that triggers the memory of trauma becomes suspect and you end up isolating or lashing out or both. If anyone has any doubts, by the way, that I am aware and empathic about the pain and trauma of African people, let me tell you a thing or two. This just in: There has just been a racist package sent to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, his fiancée. It is dumbfounding that people are still engaging in this stupid hate, but they are. It turns out that Meghan and people in her family and circles are routinely pilloried and bullied by racist taunts in the right wing media and all because her mother is black and she is marrying into the British royal family. I am always shocked and hugely saddened about these things, but what amazes me is that I am still surprised when they happen. I always want to believe that we are better than that. It seems that there will always be those wastes of DNA on this earth, many of them white, who do not want the rest of us to move forward on race and integration and human rights. And if there is any question about why many African people remain so angry, hostile and bitter, well, here it is. It's because of all the white idiots who simply cannot shut up and leave them, or the rest of us, alone, so that we can go on living our lives and doing the best we can on this sorry earth that we all share in common. I may never have had the opportunity to cash in on White Privilege, and I still have questions about the term and the way it is used and bandied about, but at least I have rarely had to endure the kind of racist bullying and hate that many others have to endure (and yes, I have been subjected to racist treatment, rarely, but I do know what it feels like. But all the time? My god, no wonder people are so angry!) Now, I really don't give a damn either about the Royals, nor about Hollywood, but even I find appealing the idea of a woman of colour entering the House of Windsor and adding a little African buzz to the royal genepool. This has been a long time coming. And, royals and Hollywood stars, or whatever, Harry and Meghan, like Will and Kate, seem like authentically nice people. I've always had trouble understanding this fuss about race. Perhaps it just isn't part of my nature, but to me people are people are people. Even when it is difficult not to judge a whole category of humans based on the bad behaviour of some of their worst representatives, one has only to remind oneself that there are a few bad people everywhere, but also everywhere there are many more good people. And maybe, despite my unpleasant interactions with some very angry persons of colour, I have usually been fortunate in the people and friends I have made throughout my life. When I was a child, I was best friends for six years or longer with a Japanese Canadian boy who lived up the road. From when I was fourteen, and exploring life more independently, I began to meet and befriend both people of African and Aboriginal heritage. Outside of the obvious physical differences, I really couldn't see anything different between us, and have never been able to fathom the kind of hateful fuss that some individuals and hate groups make about race. No one is inferior, and we are all part of the same bloodline. Why can't more people just accept this, celebrate it and move on? We have a lot of work ahead of us if we really want to see more real justice and peace in the world. As well as racism and this recent monster of populism baring its fangs in many countries, including the USA. I still believe that the global economic restructuring that we are seeing everywhere is actually supplanting what they are calling White Privilege, and that increasingly, despite the screaming hate-mongers on the right, and the justifiably angry people of colour who have had to endure their incessant bullying, the real equalizer, or should I say, disequalizer, is going to have less to do with skin-colour and more to do with bank accounts and investment portfolios. The so-called One Percent is already colour-blind, and eventually so will it be with the even more egregious .01 percent, and before you know it, poverty will become the new racism, and the poor will become the new niggers. It is already happening. Here in Canada, as elsewhere. I just hope that we can be all colour-blind enough to be able to work, organize and resist together, because we are going to be fighting for our own lives, our collective humanity in all its rich and multi-coloured beauty and diversity, and for the survival of our planet.