"Afraid": an etymological exploration

When was the last time you acted out of fear? You REacted out of fear? Was there an urge to control, offend, exclude, shut out? What did that feel like? .
I’m writing for the majority of people who follow me and who are in positions of privilege: let’s please question how those instincts, expressed in the most common, domestic, intimate settings like a friendship or partnership, might be the seeds of larger systemic violence. Control can turn into repress, offend can turn into attack, exclude can turn into discriminate, shut out can turn into kill. .
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In these times where I feel all at once helpless, heated and hypocritical, I keep on circling back to this baseline: the urgent need to familiarize myself with my fears and the ugliness they bring up. Where is the judgement, the bias, the xenophobia and racism in me? The question is very uncomfortable to write, but it is open, not self-victimizing. .
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C’est une question qui dépasse les frontières américaines et qui s’adresse aussi à mes amis en France. .
Tragically, none of this is new, and one reason might be that we’re not doing the work to understand what our values and shadows are as individuals, communities and societies. I might claim I’m a Liberal, cool, but WHY? It’s taken me a WHILE to distill my internal struggle on these topics and the way forward seems twofold:
1- Take urgent action(s) listed in the posts shared in my IG story. There are many ways to contribute, read up on whatever you chose.
2- WHAT IS YOUR SHADOW? You can start by checking your implicit biases by taking the Implicit Association Test at https://implicit.harvard.edu/ (there are others)

#blacklivesmatter #justiceforgeorgefloyd