Light and dark. Lightness and darkness. Good and evil. Just and unjust. White and black.
Think about that. Think long and hard about that and then come back to this.
***
These are all words. Just simple words. Words we use every day and words we’ve been using for centuries.
Light is almost always attached to good things and dark is almost always attached to bad things. White is for weddings and black is for funerals. Daytime is safe and nighttime is scary. We teach our kids this. Culturally, we embrace these concepts and today, as I think about all of this I cannot help but think that our separation of light and dark stems from the idea of white being supreme over dark.
Yes, I wrote that.
Culturally we have established that light is greater than dark and we have passed down, from generation to generation, the idea that white is greater than any other color.
As a society, we have attached value to color and we applied that value to human life.
Last night I heard two white men talking to each other as they dismantled the plywood shell that had been placed over the glass of a store front near the University of Minnesota. As they used their drills to remove the last screw on the piece of wood that would finally reveal the previously covered window, one of the men said, “let there be light”. It was a casual statement and a subtle celebration. As commentary, it likely originated in that person’s upbringing and education. A knee jerk response. Something this person has probably said hundreds of times, and before the most recent killing of an unarmed black man, something that most people would have agreed with. To these men, the plywood shield coming down was indicative of something worth celebrating. To these men, this act was a return to the security they enjoy in their whiteness. To these men, taking the plywood down marked an entrance into a time where “everyone” could walk around without the fear of riots and violence and chaos.
Unfortunately, walking around without the fear of violence is not a luxury enjoyed by “everyone”. In this nation, this nation of freedom and liberty, walking around without fear is something that has always been reserved for white people.
So…
”Let there be light”…or maybe not.
It made me sad to hear it. It made me stop and think. It made me want to tell everyone to just stop and think before they say something.
The words we use travel farther than we know and they always will.
As you go through your day, please think about the words you use and the learned and inherent values that are attached to them.
The world is positively changing right before us and we can add to that in ways that are simultaneously simple and complex.
Words. Use them wisely.