Kristen Tea (certified wellness coach, author, and administer/owner of the popular MotherWise blog and Facebook page) recently posted on her FaceBook page a very popular quote that has gone viral. Here is her infamous quote:
When I first read this, I felt so many emotions–excitement, empowerment, validation, anger, heard, and included; these are few that come to mind as I sit here and write. I have seen so many people writing about being uncomfortable about the politics on social media and have opted to “take a break” or deactivate their account. While I agree that self-care is important, you can’t opt out of everything because you are uncomfortable or annoyed. There are millions of people fighting for civil rights and liberties–being nice isn’t going to achieve that.
Basically, those who make up the 1%, those who have varying levels of societal privilege, those who have never been impacted by the many -isms that constitute our society, are somehow offended, annoyed, disgusted, or exhausted by the voices of the oppressed to be heard. As nicely as I can say this, Get over it…
The system in place has been telling those whose very identities are constantly being treated as delinquency, immoral, wrong, or disgusting to get “Get over it” since the beginning of our existence. Now is the time for those disenfranchised groups to stand up and shout it back to you…”WE ARE HERE! YOU CANNOT IGNORE US! WE ARE STAYING HERE! GET OVER IT!”
I can only speak from my limited marginalized existence as a gay man, but I am exhausted from constantly be portrayed so negatively in our society. I am exhausted that we have to keep having the same conversations over and over about equity. I am exhausted that extreme religious ideologies continue to demonize so many. I am exhausted that you are constantly complaining that we are trying to be heard.
If you want FaceBook to be nice, make things right in our society and stop the same cycle of oppression, bigotry, and hate–realize that civil rights are human rights.
I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes:
“I believe that there will be ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don’t think it will be based on the color of the skin…”
― Malcolm X
chriscbryant.com 