I bought a new couch back in July. It was time for that old, brown, disgusting sofa bed to go. I ended up giving the sofa bed to a woman on the Facebook marketplace who had purchased new living room furniture, gave away her old stuff, and lost her job the next day so had to cancel the order for the new purchases. She was so relieved to have something to sit on, and I was happy the sofa that had served us through raising six children had a new purpose.
My new loveseat, blue, finally came yesterday. It took that long to arrive. I guess furniture factories are not essential services, and I understand. It looks great, it is very comfortable, and I have this deep desire to cover it with a sheet to protect it like my mother would.
They say you become your parents, and I have been noticing this for a while. But I think the deeper issue is fear of change. I don’t want anything to happen to that loveseat, I want it to stay new-looking forever. That isn’t bad in itself. I paid a lot of money for it. But to what lengths am I willing to go to avoid change?
All of us have been raised with certain values and expectations. We have been socialized to believe what is good and what is bad. Challenging and changing those ideas are hard and most of us like to avoid that. But it leads to stereotypes and inaccuracies that we don’t even realize we need to challenge.
For example, I can’t survive without community. But I have been taught to value individualism, to go after my own needs and wants before all others, and to care about myself first. Most of us have. It isn’t healthy, helpful or practical, but we have been steeped in individualism. Usually it doesn’t even occur to us to challenge that, or to forge a new way.
It is the same with attitudes toward race. As a white person, I was raised to glorify whiteness, to see my skin tone as “normal” and “the ideal.” My white-centric way of seeing the world isn’t something I ever have to question or think about if I choose. And yet, it isn’t the “norm” or the only or the best. And when we foster attitudes and practices that try to keep it the way we have been socialized, that is racism. And it impacts people, hurts people, every day.
As much as we don’t like to change, and as much as we think we have had all the challenge we can take for 2020, many of the things we don’t even question have disastrous consequences. They promote racism and division. They give us the excuse not to call ourselves racist or work to change any of our personal behaviors. They allow us to be comfortable and feel safe in a world where that is not true for most people.
Change is needed. It has to start in our own hearts. And we cannot be afraid.