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April 21, 2008 at 07:38:56

The sorrows of race and gender in the 2008 presidential election

by Robert Jensen Page 3 of 3 page(s)

www.opednews.com

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Yes, we can. We can stop pretending that rhetoric -- no matter how inspirational -- will mask the fundamentally unjust and unsustainable nature of the systems in which we live.

Yes, we can. We can stop looking to those who peddle delusional hope and start creating the conditions that make authentic hope possible.

Yes, we can. Sí, se puede.

But if we are to do this, first we must not turn away from the sorrow. We must grieve.

Shortly after September 11, 2001, the writer Alice Walker reminded us that:

To grieve is above all to acknowledge loss, to understand there is a natural end to endless gain. To grieve means to come to an understanding, finally, of inevitable balance; Life will right itself, though how it does this remains, and will doubtless remain, mysterious. … It is this natural balancing of life that we fear.[5]

We are out of balance, within the human community and with the non-human world. We are reaping what we have sown in the fields of greed and self-indulgence. If we are to live in a decent future -- if there is to be a future for our children -- it will be because we moved out of those fields left dead by power and into fields of liberation to plant anew.

Between those two fields lie the sorrow fields. It is time -- long past time -- that we begin the difficult journey through those fields. If we are deliberate, careful, and responsible in that journey there is no guarantee, but there is hope, that yes we can find our way.

[1] Eliza Gilkyson, “He Waits for Me,” from the CD “Beautiful World,” Red House Records, 2008.

[2] Martin Luther King, Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., James M. Washington, ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), p. 240.

[3] Muriel Rukeyser, quoted in Adrienne Rich, What is Found There, (New York: W.W. Norton, 1993), page preceding preface. Originally published in The Life of Poetry (New York: Current Books, 1949).

[4] “Challenging Capitalism and Patriarchy,” interview with bell hooks. http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/dec95hooks.htm

[5] Alice Walker, Sent by Earth: A Message from the Grandmother Spirit (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001), p. 42.

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Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. His latest book, All My Bones Shake: Radical Politics in the Prophetic Voice, will be published in 2009 by Soft Skull Press. He also is the author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007); The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005); Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights, 2004); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2002). Jensen's articles can be found online at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html.