What Do We Need to Understand?

Maybe I’m experiencing some sort of creative block, but there’s really only one thing on my mind lately and only one thing I want to talk about. It is what I believe to be the crucial first step in all the challenging conversations we have to be having right now.

What can I learn? How can I listen better? What is the work I should be doing to teach myself, instead of depending on those already so emotionally burdened?

The title of this post means two things: what are the ideologies that we need to confront and dismantle, but also what do we require in order to be better listeners? What do we need to give ourselves in order to improve how we’re approaching this historical moment? And when I say “we”, I mean us non-black folks.

Adding these to my reading list: Ibram X. Kendi’s article “The American Nightmare” and his book How to Be an Antiracist.

And, if you have any sort of connection to New Brunswick, or if you’re a Canadian thinking “It’s not as bad here”, I’d like to direct your attention to Tyler Cline’s article “A Clarion Call To Real Patriots The World Over”: The Curious Case of the Ku Klux Klan of Kanada in New Brunswick during the 1920s and 1930s.