Jerseygirl, JESUS
I was on Facebook and a friend mentioned me in a string of comments on a copy of Jennifer’s “White Martyr” post that someone had shared. This friend of mine knows that social justice is important to me, as it is to her, and she said, “Kerry Connelly, my blood is boiling!”
She knew my blood would boil, too.
And a little lower down, there was a comment from someone that said, “What bothers me about this is the white silence, and the white denial that is to follow.” And I was convicted.
This is why I write. It’s why I do what I do. Here’s the thing: I’ve been called into offices for stuff I’ve written. I’ve gotten nasty comments on my blog posts and on my social media feeds about my views, and I’ve even gotten some hate mail from some family members. I can’t say that these don’t hurt — they do.
But a few days ago, I realized that I don’t do this to try to change the minds of the Donald Drumpf supporters, or the ultra-conservatives, or the misogynists or the racists or the homophobes. I don’t write to change anyone’s mind, actually. I write to messily work out my own faith, and I write to stand along side the people who have been marginalized by the church,or by politics, or by culture, and say, “If you’ll have me, I’ll stand here with you.”
And I get that some of those people don’t want me by their side. Black people don’t need me to fight their battles for them and gay people don’t need me to love them to discover their own self-worth. When I ask to stand beside you, it’s just as much — if not more so — for my own white, American, straight privileged-ass self as it is for you. It’s not because you need me. It’s because I need you to let me.
It’s because when one of us is oppressed, we are all oppressed. It’s because I want my children to grow up in a world filled with colorful variety, and to appreciate each unique being they encounter as the individuals that they are.
Too many of us decide to stay silent because we don’t want to give energy to this kind of hate; we don’t want to engage in this sort of dialogue because hey, why give it attention?
This thought process comes from a comfortable place of privilege. Any time we do not stand up against hate we default to participation. When I wrote my post about gay marriage, a friend told me she’d forwarded it to a man she knew. He is gay, and when he heard of a pastor who preached that the Orlando shooting was God’s will, he was heartbroken not by this hateful rhetoric, but by the silence of the rest of us, the complete void of voices saying, “No, that’s not Jesus.”
So once I decided to write about Not-So-Elegant Jennifer, I had to make a choice. Do I do the Christian thing and try to love her, since she’s obviously insane and probably writing from the institution to which she’s been committed, or do I go Jersey on her ass?
Decisions, decisions….
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