Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

I am a white middle-class sixty-something hetero male living in America. I am arguably the possessor of the highest level of entitlement in the less-than-billionaire world. I have lived my life in two of the bluest of blue demographic regions in the nation. I have never known any discrimination beyond those deserved by my own flaws.

I grew up, though, during an era of intense racial strife. My family and teachers brought the concept of civil rights into my young life. I learned that our nation had a history of treating people differently, based on how they looked. I learned that, though I did not personally feel the effects of prejudice, others in the world definitely did. I learned that the presumptions made about me were not necessarily made of others, if their skin was darker than mine, if their religion was different than mine.

And I was asked, did that seem fair?

It did not.

As I grew older, I discovered that it didn’t even matter if our skin was pale. If you were a woman, you could be treated differently, also as “less than.” Having been schooled by women, having been raised by women, this also did not seem fair.

But while I was able, as a teen ensconced in my bluish-ivory tower, to intellectualize all of this and say “Oh, yes, that is bad,” and, “That is wrong and we should work to fix that,” it took many more years before I realized that this unfairness, this prejudice, this smoldering (if not outright) racism and sexism, this misogyny, this antisemitism, this idea that pale skin imbued one with an inherent supremacy, imposed a level of stress and daily anxiety the like of which I had no concept. I had no idea what it was like to fear men on the street. I had no idea of what it was like for someone to take one look at me and decide my worth, my value, my humanity.

I did learn of it, though. It wasn’t a difficult assignment. All I had to do was open my eyes and pay attention for a brief period, because it was all there, easy to see if you simply looked around.

These days, though, it’s even easier to see. Now, you have to actively look away in order not to see it.

And many of us are doing just that.

If you aren’t, though … if you are paying attention and watching what is going on and seeing what is happening out there, in our nation, in our name, I ask you this:

Be extra kind. Take care to take care of those around you, be they neighbors or strangers or just folks in the checkout line at the grocer’s. People are on edge, and tempers are near the breaking point. None of us know what the person next to us in line has g0ne through today, or this week, or this month. They might be in pain, scared, angry as hell, and just barely holding it in.

It’s fucking chaos out there. So we need to be kind to one another. Just so we can all see tomorrow.

Together.

k