Finding Privilege

In the introduction to Healing Justice Lineages by Cara Page and Erica Woodland, they write, “2020 accelerated a reckoning that forced us to confront all that is buried beneath the facade of “America” and this so-called dream that many of us experience as terror. . . .2020 was the beginning of an awakening. We are living in the midst of a growing global resistance to fascism, white supremacy and all systems of domination and ways they collude and build upon one another in service of the ruling class.”

For me this was the beginning of my acknowledging the ways I am privileged. At first it showed up in obvious ways. Then little things began to reveal my privilege, just a word or a phrase. For instance “settled.” How may times have I told the story about my ancestors in the 1800s moving west and became “settlers in west Texas?” Only recently did I pause as I spoke the word settled and asked my self, “settled what, whom?”

Today I look at the above photo that my dad took in 1956 when we were living on Tachikawa Air Force Base in Japan. I see elements of race, class and gender waiting to be deconstructed.