2015

It’s new year’s eve. Which means that millions of people worldwide are going to be making resolutions under the assumption that somehow tomorrow they are going to wake up and suddenly be a completely different person. I’ve tried and failed to complete my share of resolutions in the past, and I don’t see the point of making wild claims that I know I won’t have time, motivation, or energy to fulfill.

My philosophy more recently has been, if you want to change yourself, do it when your desire is strongest. Aside from the fireworks, parties, and champagne, December 31 is no different from any other day in the year. I’m more likely to keep my goals when I start them any other day of the year. I didn’t set the goal because everyone else was doing it and it seemed like the right thing to do. I set the goal because I had a vision to see a change in myself and I wanted to start right away.

Nevertheless, it just so happens that I got the inspiration to start a new blog just before new years, so it’s as good a time as any to make a commitment to writing in it this year. This is my 10th post in 5 days because I’ve had nothing better to do, but I can assure you that come January 5, I will have plenty more to do. I work a LOT. And I’m usually exhausted by the time I get home, so I can guarantee that I won’t keep up my current pace of 2 posts a day. I’ll be lucky if I can squeeze out two posts a week. Or two posts a month.

So, despite my bad track record with new year’s resolutions, I’m making one anyway. I want to average 2 posts a week over the next year. That means 104 posts, but to make it a nice number, I’ll cut myself some slack and say 100 posts in 2015. Maybe I’ll find that to be incredibly easy and reach my goal way before December. If that’s the case, I’ll just keep writing. 🙂

So what are your resolutions for the new year and how do you intend to keep them?

On being a straight white middle-class American

It’s never easy to admit that you’re part of a privileged group. Everybody suffers, and as much as we can and should try to shoulder the burdens of others, we really can only feel our own suffering. So nobody can really honestly say that they know they suffer any less than somebody else. At the end of the day, all we can really know and feel is inside our own heads.

Luckily, humans possess empathy, and through this empathy, we can start to see and even almost feel the sufferings of others as if they were our own. Thanks to this ability to empathize, a structure of classes and privilege become apparent in the United States and around the world.

I’ve read plenty of articles and studies that provide numbers that I don’t have the energy to cite, but I’m sure you all know the story. Growing up in a white middle-income family in a safe neighborhood with loving, supportive, educated parents has led me to opportunities that are just not as easy to attain for people in other situations. But aside from the fact that a child’s environmental factors can affect their ability to get a better education and a better jobs and a more successful, confident, and stable life, a person’s race and socioeconomic status can cause them to fear for their very lives.

Of course everyone can guess where this is leading: police brutality against people of color in the United States. Due to decades of racism against people of color, many white Americans (many of them unfortunately occupying positions of authority in nearly all areas of American life) think that the color of a person’s skin determines their likelihood of becoming a criminal. It then becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy as a staggeringly higher percentage of minorities are locked up for petty crimes, creating the illusion of a racial link to crime when it’s really racism at the heart of the issue. This is an unfortunate repeating cycle that appears to have no end in sight.

So what can we do as white people? I often feel helpless and don’t know where to begin, but here are some suggestions, which I can’t take as my original ideas, but I do think they could have some shocking results if more white people took them seriously.

• Participate in protests to show your support. I feel kind of left out in this aspect because I’m so far from the US, but I try to keep an eye on what’s happening from afar and try to be with them in spirit.
• Educate yourself and then spread the word about racism and classism and sexism and all other “isms” and how they reveal themselves in modern society.
• Stop complaining about affirmative action (I myself have been guilty of that when I was pissed about being rejected from a prestigious university clearly based on the grounds that I was a white woman) and instead promote improved opportunity for people who didn’t grow up with the same privileges we did.
• Get involved in something where you can make friends with people who are different from you. Making friends is one of the most powerful ways to empathize with people who are different than you and realize that your preconceptions and stereotypes were all wrong.

Any other ideas or advice? Put them in the comments below! I’m looking forward to hearing from you.