That's All She Wrote

"Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured."

The least you could do is have some respect and recognize race. Recognize that your inability to see race means you have a certain level of privilege, because of the colour of your skin. It's the least you could do. Because for the rest of us, we're confronted by it (and/or other forms of systemic oppression) every day.

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Here’s another good read on the topic: http://hazlitt.net/blog/white-peoples-obsession-reverse-racism

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HOLD UP--UPDATE: This article from The Guardian from November 2015 explains how Ulay sued Marina sometime after this event, claiming that she has not given him credit for work they created together. 

The article says, “The memory of that tender moment [captured in the video] has now been banished, however, after Ulay launched a lawsuit...” While that may be true for some/to some extent, I like to think that the brief, beautiful moment they shared remains untouched, “unbanished.” It does for me, at least. This whole thing is just another instance of life and ego. I’m learning to try to cherish the brief, beautiful moments I get in life, and the brief glimpses of rawness I might see in another, because we are all human, and we all eventually exhibit or encounter ugliness or an overpowered ego--but that too, hopefully, is brief and offers lessons learned that keep the ego in check moving forward.