70. Day 70. I haven't checked the news or Twitter yet. I'm still in yesterday, but not for long.
It's the morning after the night before. I didn't end up writing yesterday because I was some kind of busy, and then knackered. I spent the morning trying to absorb what's happening, particularly in the USA. I read some of White Fragility: Why it's so hard for white people to talk about racism by Robin Diangelo, which I'd bought weeks ago and not started. I got it at the same time as Why I No Longer Talk to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge, which I listened to back then as an audiobook and also learned from, and you should too. It's good. It's written for white people, although anyone can read it. If you're white, please read it now. It's about how little we, as white people, understand about the larger racist system. Diangelo states matter-of-factly that we're all prejudiced. We almost can't help it. It's when that prejudice is honed into systemic exclusion it becomes racism.
In it she quotes J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, professor of American studies and anthropology at Wesleyan University, who explains, "Racism is a structure, not an event."
It's really good. Read it. I wish I was the last white person to have read it, albeit spurred by the event of George Floyd's murder in cold blood, on camera. But, I'm not. I hope you'll excuse me if this sounds basic to you.
Apart from that, yesterday I had a friend in need, who's feeling the pressure and the pinch of isolation and childcare and madness, so we went to her allotment to be outside and with earth. I was very happy to be company because actually, I wanted calm and outside and earth and a simple job and a barbecue and children. I cleaned out a bunch of asshole thistles. What wondrous proof of evolution they are, the bastards. Prickly as fuck, and with no apparent purpose other than to be prickly as fuck. Deeply unpleasant to put in your mouth, I'm certain.
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| The Allotment |
I still have the grubbiness of the allotment on me. I was going to have a bath last night but didn't. I rode through London Fields and Victoria Park to get there, and I was really shocked at all the humanity there, in groups well over six, no masks, no distance, and booze. A viral paradise.
Wow. All of a sudden, in the USA particularly, if the pandemic doesn't get you, police violence might. The cops that pulled me and Bex up that day were very polite. They managed to not run us over with their car.