This commentary is by state Rep. Mari Cordes, D-Lincoln, a member of the Vermont House Health Care Committee.
If wishes were fishes, we’d all have a fry. I often heard that from my mother in law on our vegetable farm in the Northeast Kingdom.
Another quote: “I had a long talk the other day with a man about this bus situation. He discussed the peace being destroyed in the community, the destroying of good race relations. I agreed that there is more tension now. But peace is not merely absence of this tension, but the presence of justice. And even if we didn’t have this tension, we still wouldn’t have positive peace. Yes, it is true that if the Negro accepts his place, accepts exploitation, and injustice, there will be peace. But it would be an obnoxious peace. It would be a peace that boiled down to stagnant complicity, deadening passivity and … if this means peace, I don’t want peace.” 1956, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. the day before his trial for violating Alabama’s anti-boycott law.
And this: ‘If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them.” Frederick Douglass, 1857, Canandaigua, N.Y.
Listen to the poet laureate Amanda Gorman’s words again: “It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit; it’s the past we step into and how we repair it. “
Recently we have heard many calls for unity in the context of a long history of insufficiently addressed systemic racism, and the rise in white supremacist attacks noted globally and by the U.S. State Department.
But unity without the necessary work of repair isn’t justice. Quiet isn’t peace. Calls for unity without accountability are, in fact, a form of “toxic positivity,” the belief that no matter how painful or traumatic a situation is, we should maintain a positive mindset. It is dismissive of very real trauma, which adds to the trauma.
Imagine if women being denied the right to vote had been told to seek harmony with those who believed that only men should vote. Or people fighting for integration should just shake hands with white supremacists and accept their conditions in the interest of unity.
All of the very imperfect gains we have made in this country have been made through considerable struggle. The Emancipation Proclamation, while conditions for slavery still live in our Vermont Constitution. Women’s suffrage (except for Black, Indigenous and Womxn of
Color until many years later). Our own independence as a country, which comes with its long history of genocide against Indigenous people.
If wishes were fishes, we’d all have a fry. Wishes for unity will never work on their own unless we do the hard and necessary work together to repair and grow. There is a very necessary tension in this work. It is hard. As Layla F. Saad, New York Times and Sunday Times best-selling author and host of the podcast “Good Ancestor” says: “The journey of becoming conscious of the various hidden-in-plain-sight injustices of the world is one full of heartbreak and grief.”
Listening to and accepting how I have hurt others through my ignorance and how I have stumbled is painful. Effective anti-racism work is more than sharing devotionals or social media posts — it requires action and deep listening to each other and, most importantly, to those experiencing harm. It requires upsetting the status quo. It requires taking personal risks in order to benefit someone else, someone we may not even know.
Whether we agree or are aware or not, we are all, myself included, a part of the system of white supremacy that was fundamental to the birth of our constitutional government. If we were born in this country, we were born into white supremacy. We have all been acculturated in it — which, if we’re not experiencing the harm from it, makes it too easy to dismiss or disregard.
With these words, I am not demonizing or blaming myself or anyone here when I call for us to continue to do better, to try harder to deepen our understanding of systemic and institutional racism and our place in it. Elected leaders have a unique duty as people in power to actively listen and, from there, to lead and to model active anti-racism and fierce compassion.
This reckoning and repair is our work for those of us who are white. We are called to this very consequential opportunity as a responsibility. Consequential because there are outcomes to action as well as inaction. In gratitude, I fully commit to choosing action, for the benefit of all, with all of you.
This commentary is based on Rep. Cordes’ devotional to the Vermont House of Representatives. See the video here; it starts at 0.15.
