I love this book, The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart, I am so happy to be reading more from it. The author, Alicia Garza, is very good at breaking down these concepts. All of these concepts are complicated, definitely a spider web of time, which is also why it is sop complicated to break.
She reviewed the concept of power to help re-paint the picture of the hierarchy of white privilege and power. It seems this has to be done every time a new topic is addressed, which reminds me of how talking about gender and race is in real time. There is such a lie held up to create this system of power and control, that we deny and defend it even when it does nothing for us. It takes constant work and reminders to break it down.
As a white woman I can sadly relate to the response that the “blonde woman” gives. I too was raised in a world that is so scewed in order to keep it this way, it’s hard to even see the truth through the lies, even when you think you are doing the right thing and having a progressive stance. A world that is built around white privilege and power has to have a lot of systems in place to also keep the white people blind to it. To everyone that isn’t white they ofcourse can’t imagine how we could ever be so blind, but when they say a person is sheltered, it’s really the truth. Sheltered is covered and protected, protected from the truth. In my case it was these stories of progressive ideals, equality, we’re all one, “don’t see color”. No one ever talked about seeing color, seeing the truths of other’s experiences, and seeing the truth of what it is to be privileged.
So, I am very grateful for authors like Garza, who will take the time to break down these concepts. In order to see outside the box sometimes it takes multiple explanations to start to learn a new way of thinking and seeing (like a language) that has been disguised by lies for your whole life. Although all of the injustices are different, learning about the cross over can be helpful. For example, I am not a person of color, I am a cisgender white woman, but I have been denied health insurance due to preexisting conditions. By relating through experience one can then build a metaphor, that helps translate. Which helps put yourself into another’s shoes, so to speak. The things I relate to and have experienced myself do not help me know what it is like to be a black woman, but it does start to open my mind to the fact that maybe my mind was closed. Maybe there is something I don’t understand, maybe I am wrong and what I’ve been taught is wrong or a lie.
It is not easy to open people’s minds and undo lie and denial. So, I recognize the importance of writers like this.
