“My Southern Angst and the Way I See the World”
I would like to live long enough to experience a country where I am fully accepted as a Black woman and a Southerner — that I may finally heal from my personal psychological scars dating to Jim Crow segregation. I want to know what it is like not to feel a visceral reaction for survival whenever I sense the revulsion of a White supremacist, whose roots of hate were instilled during the origin of what would become the US. These roots were imbued in the Doctrine of Discovery created by the Catholic church in 1493, giving White men permission to destroy the lives and culture of anyone who would not convert to Christianity. I feel angst that such thinking continues to rule who I am. I want to know what it would be like as a Black woman, only six percent of the US population, not to be thought of as the savior of democracy. I am exhausted and my shoulders hurt from moving that boulder of social change, although I will never stop doing my part to build a country where my existence matters.
Facilitator: Charlene Ball
Musician: William Chelton