May and June have been crazy months for bringing the attention of the public to matters of discrimination. First with the death of George Floyd bringing systematic racism that still infects most of the west to light, and then the ravelry update highlighting ableism which is a much smaller deal globally, but very important to fiber artists.
These two events have started me thinking about my response. There is no excuse for not thinking about discrimination and your response to it, but being a white middle class woman and having grown up in one of the least racially diverse areas of England has meant that I haven’t thought about racism as much as I should have. I just don’t encounter it very often.
Ableism is something I am more familiar with. In a previous life, I was a learning support assistant for teenagers and adults with learning diffabilities in a college, and then a teaching assistant in a primary and secondary school for children with similar and more profound needs. Especially in scenarios of integration, where I was supporting a child so they could access a mainstream class environment, I saw ableism happening. Sometimes just my presence was enough for the other students in the class to treat the student I was helping differently and it broke my heart.
The first thing that is very very clear in my head is that every individual has equal importance, and to say or suggest otherwise is just untrue. Having said that, I sometimes feel uncomfortable with the language surrounding anti discrimination. I feel uncomfortable when there is hatred just below the surface of the statement or the act of inclusion. Hatred of those who would discriminate. Yes, discrimination shouldn’t happen, but how will there ever be a fully inclusive society if there is hatred anywhere? Hatred is unhelpful and inevitably leads to hurt.
Another thing I feel uncomfortable with is when a person blows the inclusivity trumpet for their own gain. For the following they will get, to feel superior to those who discriminate. The aim of an anti-discriminatiom white person should be to build up those that experience discrimination, not to congratulate themselves for being such a great person. Now I know these two points do not describe every person fighting for equality, but I see these two things often and they make me unconfortable.
So my conundrum is this: how do I engage without becoming or being perceived as hateful or self congratulating?
Now, I am a Christian. I believe wholly and completely that I have been saved from death and my life now belongs to God. My purpose is to live for him. Because of this, the bible is the place I went to find answers to my questions, and this is what I found.
- Jesus came from Nazereth, and when Nathanael, one of his disciples, found this out, this was his comment: “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” John 1:46 NIV So Jesus experienced discrimination because of where he was from. He knew what it was to be seen as a product of his birth place first and a person in his own right second.
- Jesus shows very clearly in the stories he tells that its what is in your heart, not where you come from that matters the most. In Jesus’s time, the Jews (that he was one of) had a culture of discrimination against the samaritans. They saw them as inferior, so when Jesus tells the story of the good samaritan to Jewish religious leaders, where the samaritan is the loving neighbour, he is clearly telling them that love, not race, is what matters (Luke 10:25-37).
- In proverbs chapter 31 verses 8 and 9, it says this “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.” (NIV) In other words, use your voice to speak up for the people who won’t be listened to. If society chooses to listen to white able-bodied people and chooses to ignore those with disability or people of colour, then my job as a white able bodied woman is to speak up for them.
It’s very clear to me now what I should do. I should not be silent. I should speak up, I should share what people say. I should use my voice to say the important things because I am more likely to be heard.
The welfare of all people matters to God, because he carefully and purposefully created all of them.
“You have searched me, Lord , and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord , know it completely.
You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand— when I awake, I am still with you.
If only you, God, would slay the wicked!
Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!
They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name.
Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord , and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?
I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies.
Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
Psalms 139:1-24 NIV
Knit in the Forest 