Do Your Part

DO YOUR PART:

I’m working to stay level, but the past month has made it really difficult for a variety of reasons. Everyone doesn’t have the same role to play. I know a number of brothers and sisters who will not be posting anything or marching anywhere today, tomorrow or in the near future. Not because they are not "woke," but because they’ve been fighting consistently over the past few years and they will continue to fight, since they do this for a living, not to maintain their woke (Starwood) status points. What unsettles me is a strain of type A, competitive, exceptionalism, that in the wake of real discrimination and marginalization that begs for people to humble themselves roll up their sleeves and courageously do the work, still, yearns to want to be special and use activism as a means to elevate their public persona as “the most” woke one.

I love the spirit of social media activism of today, it can and has brought awareness in real, practical ways. However, the fire that warms you is the same fire that burns you. There are many “activists” calling people out for inaction who will post a status / photo to a profile which is private and self-filtered for people who already agree with them, yet would not even dare to challenge the same bigotry in a conversation with a partner of their firm or brand sponsor who currently writes their checks. Will call out others for not deleting Uber off their phone, but will moonwalk and “cognitive disso-dance” around any conversation about trading in their Apple products because deleting Uber doesn’t really come at a cost to their lifestyle when you got comparable alternatives.

As I’ve shared before, I truly believe in the spirit of word that we are one body with many parts, all of us having a unique function. Not everyone will march, not everyone will post eloquent statuses, not everyone will write the big checks, not everyone can break down immigration law in masterful tweets, but everyone, within their sphere of influence can do something and humbly, courageously and graciously challenge someone where there is something at stake. And if there is any check on actions, the best place to start is with you because if you truly believe in the divine definition of love, which is sacrificial and your actions to serve really don’t come at a material cost to you, then you have to question whether the real person you are serving is yourself.

There are some people who truly believe in the spirit of Matthew 6:3, which is “when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,” so they are under no compulsion to prove to you that they are working or telegraph their passes on the internet. I used to view the fall of man as simply an issue of sin and while it is, I see the implications of the fall more and more in the chords of division and alienation at all levels of the human experience, from people wanting to separate themselves as the most woke of them all, to those who consider themselves the default, de facto citizens who made America, forgetting, we too were foreigners. Let’s fight together family.