I Can't Go On / I’ll Go On.

I highly recommend taking a few minutes to read  I Can't Go On / I’ll Go On by Janice Lee. 

Quoting bits of it would be a disservice to the piece. Please read it in it's entirety. 

Tumblr: Black Girl + Mental Health.

While following the Twitter reports and conversations following the Charleston shooting last night, I followed a link that lead me to a blog called Black Girl + Mental Health.

I thought I'd share the link here. I'm not a black woman. I am however, not a racist white woman. I want to share this as a resource for POC who might find their way here. I also think that though race and racism play a particular role in the struggles of people of colour, those living with depression and anxiety have a similar internal struggle, words of encouragement to those living with mental illness are always appreciated, and should be circulated.

Race has been on my mind a lot lately. This whole Rachel Dolezal fiasco is a god-damn shit show. This article's title synthesizes what I've been feeling: Black Women Can Barely Make the News, But Rachel Dolezal Gets National Media. It makes no fucking sense that this is getting so much attention, and that the most coverage the Americas have had regarding race and racism is on a fucking white woman, when black man after black man has been murdered by cops on fucking video. It's just another example of re-centring whiteness. What the media is really saying is how much they can't believe someone would want to live the black experience in America. No doubt this story won't go away, and in the meantime we'll continue to be dealing with the media's disinterest in ongoing hate crimes and police-committed murders.

I wrote something on white supremacy and depression, and I'm trying to educate myself as much as I can, while also trying to be supportive and being mindful of the space I occupy. There aren't a lot of great resources out there for people living with mental illness, and when you compound that be adding the divisiveness of intersectionality, whether through race, culture, economics or gender and sexuality it becomes an exhausting quest to just get the smallest amount of help, or even just a kind word.

Mental health is the revolutionary political space for black people.
— The Real bell hooks (@bellhooks) May 7, 2015

I'm going to try and actively seek out resources and link to them here. There are a lot of supportive, powerful, wise voices out there, and we can all gain from hearing them.

White suprememacy and depression.

As a white person, I can't fully comprehend what it's like to be "othered" through race and culture. The only experiences I have that are somewhat comparable are gender oppression, and the prejudices/antagonism encountered for being fat. I've felt targeted and been threatened with sexual violence. I've been cussed at for being fat. None of this, however, can be compared to the insanity that is our history of white supremacy.

AlterNet has an article up on the 6 Ways White Supremacy Takes a Toll on the Mental Health of Black People. Though I knew that women are twice as likely to suffer from a mental illness than men, I didn't know that black people (this piece is written from a black American perspective) are 20 times more likely to report serious psychological distress than white people.

AlterNet interviewed several mental health professionals regarding the issue, including Erlanger Turner, a clinical psychologist and assistant professor at the University of Houston-Downtown:

“Research has shown that racism has negative psychological consequences for African Americans such as increased symptoms of anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress.”

This isn't difficult to understand, the systemic targeting and dismissal of black voices, and the disproportionate incarceration of black men in particular is overwhelming and seems akin to cultural genocide. 

Lisa Jones, a licensed clinical social worker based in New York City:

“While racism comes in various forms, be it through personal experience or media portrayals, black people tend to feel hopeless and give up mentally, often feeling as if they are not good enough. Living in a society where there is constant portrayal of racial injustice (forms of micro-aggressions, ongoing discrimination, unarmed black people killed by law enforcement) can lead to chronic feelings of despair. Many, at times, will feel like racial issues will never be solved. Such negative and consistent thoughts can trigger severe depressive symptoms.”

The article goes on to list the upsetting realities (author's term) faced daily by black communities. It's an important read. Depression and anxiety is often warranted. Yes, there are times when it's a medical, nearly ghost-like possession that we can hardly explain, but there are also real, lived experiences that inform the way we relate to the world.

The systemic devaluation of you, your ability, and your worthiness is a heavy, devastating reality for a lot of people, especially for people of colour and those targeted as minorities of some kind.

Here, in Canada, the systemic genocide of several aboriginal generations is something we don't hear enough about. Ideally educational policy would change, and Canadians would start discussing native culture and history in our schools. The genocide of our own land shouldn't be belittled and ignored. We see this systemic genocide today, through the over-representation of native women and men in prisons, and by the pervasive issues of violence, homelessness and substance abuse in native communities.

Aboriginal women have insanely high sexual-assault and murder rates. There have been constant calls for an inquiry into the systemic roots of missing and murdered Aboriginal women, and the government is quick to downplay their role in fostering the violence.

With Barack Obama himself being a black man, I have more hope for the dialogue around race and racism in the United States taking place than I do for the racism faced by Aboriginals in Canada. Harper, when asked about a possible inquiry, said flatly:

Um it, it isn't really high on our radar, to be honest.

Boom. At least Obama is engaged. This being his last term, he could really open up a dialogue, and possibly in-act real solutions. 

I say all of this with a lot of hope and I guess naiveté. 

It just seems like we're getting to a tipping point. White, rich, Christian, able-bodied, hetero-normative dudes are now the minority. . .

With every new law that allows gays to marry, with every non-normative couple adopting a child and starting a family, with every mixed-race couple, with every young person of colour going to university, with every trans person properly represented in the media, with every woman and person of colour (or gasp, both at once) in a position of power - all of it, the narrative is changing. 

A decade ago conversations of gender, sexuality, racism and class, of entitlement and privilege, of support and of being allies, all of this only ever took place in Women's Studies or activist spaces. The fact that this is taking place over social media, and in everyday spaces must be a good sign.

It must! 

Baltimore.

What's happening in Baltimore, the protesting and rioting, is necessary. The absolute devastation of black experience is unarguably historically rooted and needs to be actively addressed and corrected.

I don't feel discussing racism is my place, since there are fantastic writers out there covering what's going on. You can go on Twitter and follow, in real time what's going on. You can watch guerilla journalism happening, and see what is and what isn't being represented by the media. 

I post on Pushing Hoops with Sticks' Tumblr just tore at me. 

i don’t think people will ever understand how tolling this shit is on black people. during the bulk of the ferguson/eric garner protests during november i fell into the deepest depression. i couldn’t fall asleep until 6 or 7 in the morning, my jaw was permanently clenched, no appetite. i had ridiculous migraines and i’m someone who rarely has headaches, i would cry out of nowhere, i felt paralyzed/paranoid in public around any white people even my own mother/friends. no one will ever understand how draining this is for us.

This is brutal. I feel so deeply for this. I don't know what it is to be black. But I've known discrimination, and I know pain. Not like this though. 

I might not be super effective at discussing everything that's going on, but I want words of support and kindness to come from me, and to be expressed outwardly towards all those marching, all those protesting, all those doing what they can while they can to fight the systems of oppression and corruption. 

Montreal has a big, thick history of protesting. We're big on unions, we're big on student strikes. There's a lot of racism here as well, the Montreal police department is part of that, as is the long history of the indigenous people of Canada. The Oka Crisis wasn't that long ago. There are ongoing reparation problems. There was a cultural genocide of natives here, and people consistently choose to ignore that. Hérouxville is still fresh. Our hands in Canada are just as dirty as the white majority of the U.S. There's a lot of work to be done. 

MLK said that riots are the voice of the unheard. We're seeing that now in Baltimore, and all across the United States. We're also seeing that locally here in Montreal, and globally as a show of support. 

I've read a few articles on how to show support and solidarity for people of colour, as a white person who lives with a certain type of privilege, and it seems the consensus is using your whiteness to confront the racism in white spaces. 

11 things white people can do to be real anti-racist allies

Dear white Facebook friends: I need you to respect what Black America is feeling right now

There's just a lot out there. I'm trying to stay abreast of the situation. It's just such a brutal time. It seems every-time I log into Twitter, there's a new name, another black man immortalized by a hash-tag. 

#Freddie Gray
#Michael Brown
#Trayvon Martin

I cannot imagine the way this demoralizes a community. I listened to Part 1 of This American Life's pod-cast on how Cops See it Differently, this disconnect between how police see what's going on, and how "regular people" see what's going on. 

All I hear in the pod-cast is the pain in the voices of those being interviewed. It's just so personal and raw. 

I just don't want to be silent and complicit in this. 

Baltimore riots: How the Western media would cover the unrest if it happened elsewhere

It's just so fucked.