(I am way overdue for an update on actual events in my life. Lots of important concrete stuff has happened lately, much good and some bad, and I need to blog about it, but I want this off my chest first.)

‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’ – John 8.31-32

Advent is the beginning of a new liturgical year. It is a good time to change things.

A recent conversation has thrown a defect of my character into sharp relief.

I tell lies often. Even when I am not lying, I rarely tell the truth.

There is a whole spectrum of untruth that is broader than deeper than lies. G.K. Chesterton put it brilliantly (I am not a schoolboy, yet this still resonates with me).

I know there does still linger among maiden ladies in remote country houses a notion that English schoolboys are taught to tell the truth, but it cannot be maintained seriously for a moment. Very occasionally, very vaguely, English schoolboys are told not to tell lies, which is a totally different thing. I may silently support all the obscene fictions and forgeries in the universe, without once telling a lie. I may wear another man’s coat, steal another man’s wit, apostatize to another man’s creed, or poison another man’s coffee, all without ever telling a lie. But no English school-boy is ever taught to tell the truth, for the very simple reason that he is never taught to desire the truth. From the very first he is taught to be totally careless about whether a fact is a fact; he is taught to care only whether the fact can be used on his “side” when he is engaged in “playing the game.” – From “What’s wrong with the world?”

I have never had a single friend, relative, acquaintance,  teacher/tutor,  employer, coworker, boyfriend, support worker, or mental health professional to whom I have not lied at least once. I struggle to be honest with myself, let alone others.

But truths can be stitched together to make a Frankinstein’s monster of omissions, distortions, false implications and general dishonesty which is a million miles from the truth, without ever containing an explicit lie. And that’s a HUGE problem.

Please pray for me. Pray that God gives me the courage to learn to tell te truth.

Lying is addictive because it seems like the best way to avoid getting caught is to cover up one lie with another. I accept full responsibility for my own actions. It’s nobody else’s fault that I lie. It is my fault and my responsibility to deal with it. But at the same time, I have got myself locked in powerlessness and whilst it is my responsibility to get out, I can’t get out without submitting to help, including help that feels unpleasant.

Adapted from the 12 steps of AA:

1. I admit powerless over dishonesty—that my lies and half truths have become unmanageable.
2. I believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore me to sanity.
3. I promise to turn my will and my life over to the care of God.
4. I will make a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself.
5. I admit to God, to myself, and to another human being the exact nature of my wrongs.
6. I am (or by God’s grace, will soon become) entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. I humbly ask Him to remove my shortcomings.
8. I will make a list of all persons I have harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all.
9. I will make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. I will continue to take personal inventory and when I am wrong promptly admit it.
11. I will seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God,  praying only for knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out.
12. Through God’s grace, I will have a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, I will try to carry what I learn to dishonest people, and to practice these principles in all my affairs.

Lord, help me.

Domine, non sum digna ut intres sub tectum meum, sed tantum dic verbo et sanabitur anima mea. Amen.

Oh Lord, You have searched me and You know me. And for some reason, You still haven’t given up on me.

This post is a less morbid version of what I did in “Hate me”.

(Full, uninterrupted lyrics here. I’m not sure Tim Minchin would like his words being used in a theistic way, but you [insert vague ramblings about the irrelevance of authorial intent, deconstruction, not being able to own words etc])

This is my Earth
And I live in it
It’s one third dirt
And two thirds water
And it rotates and revolves through space
At rather an impressive pace
And never even messes up my hair

⁵You set the earth on its foundations,
so that it shall never be shaken.
⁶You cover it with the deep as with a garment;
the waters stood above the mountains.
⁷At your rebuke they flee;
at the sound of your thunder they take to flight.
⁸They rose up to the mountains, ran down to the valleys
to the place that you appointed for them.
⁹You set a boundary that they may not pass,
so that they might not again cover the earth.
¹⁰You make springs gush forth in the valleys;
they flow between the hills,
¹¹giving drink to every wild animal;
the wild asses quench their thirst.
¹²By the streams the birds of the air have their habitation;
they sing among the branches.
¹³From your lofty abode you water the mountains;
the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.

- Psalm 104. 5-13

And here’s the really weird thing
The force created by its spin
Is the force that stops the chaos flooding in

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, ²the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. ³Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. ⁴And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. ⁵God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. – Genesis 1.1-5

This is my Earth
And it’s fine
It’s where I spend the vast majority of my time
It’s not perfect
But it’s mine
It’s not perfect

And never more than now I know
That man’s first heaven is far behind;
Unless the blazing seraph’s blow
Has left him in the garden blind.

Witness, O Sun that blinds our eyes,
Unthinkable and unthankable King,
That though all other wonder dies
I wonder at not wondering.

- G.K. Chesterton, The Mystery

And the bloke who runs my country
Has built a demagoguery
And taught us to be fearful and boring

Fear is in the news again. A report this week from the Mental Health Foundation – In the Face of Fear – suggests that our individual and communal fears, many of them misconceived or exaggerated, are both exacerbating the economic downturn and hindering recovery. When we worry about our jobs and fear for the future, we spend and lend less, avoid risk and feed economic paralysis. As fear overrides logical thinking, the crisis deepens. Half of us are worrying about money and two-thirds are anxious about the credit crunch. Women and younger people feel most frightened but 77% are more fearful than they used to be. High levels of fear and anxiety have a knock-on effect on the levels of coronary heart disease, gastrointestinal problems, asthma and allergies. They raise our blood pressure and make us more likely to smoke and drink more and eat junk. [...] As sociology professor Frank Furedi puts it, politics has internalised the culture of fear: “British politics is dominated by debates about the fear of terror, the fear of food, the fear of asylum seekers, the fear of anti-social behaviour, fear over children, fear about health, fear for the environment, fear for our pensions.” Full article here

This is my country
And it’s fine
It’s where I spend the vast majority of my time
It’s not perfect
But it’s mine
It’s not perfect

“I pledge allegiance to Fawlty Towers and faulty trains and that small, almost silent sigh that shudders across a carriage when the train stops for no reason in empty fields. I pledge allegiance to the wrong kind of snow.

“I pledge allegiance to the fact that the London Olympics in 2012 will be messier and shabbier and far more prone to disruption by protesters than the Beijing Olympics.

“I pledge allegiance to the boys who died in the mud at Normandy so I could be free. I pledge allegiance to the women who slept in the mud at Greenham Common so I would not burn. I pledge allegiance to Ateeque Sharifi, who came here as a refugee from Taliban Afghanistan, only to be blown up by Talibanists on the Circle Line. I pledge allegiance to everyone who drives an ambulance or teaches a child on this rainy island for paltry wages because they know it’s the right thing to do.

“I pledge allegiance to the people of Britain, not because they’re the best in the world, but because they’re mine.”  – full article here

This is my house
And I live in it
It’s made of cracks
And photographs

Marriages, families – famously difficult to live in. Religious communities – there will be someone who will insist on clicking their nails behind you in choir, or say intolerably moronic things in recreation. But what do we singles do to make sure our corners are rubbed off? Volunteering for a day a week is not the same thing at all.

I recommend adopting a granny, your own or someone else’s. One party gets a strenuous drilling in forebearance, consideration and patience, and you have someone to peel the potatoes.   Think about those stories in Cassian and hagiographies, where adopting a Difficult Widow is on a par with living in a cave.  If like me you’re not up for caves, adopt an Occasionally Mildly Trying Widow(er). - by berenike

This is my house
And it’s fine
It’s where I spend the vast majority of my time
It’s not perfect
But it’s mine
It’s not perfect
But it’s mine

Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. – Exodus 20.12

Get Out of My Life: But First Take Me and Alex Into Town – possibly the best book title ever. Haven’t read the actual book, but the title tells me everything I need to know about being a better daughter

This is my body
And I live in it[...]
I spend so much time hating it
But it never says a bad word about me

For it is lifelong. There is no cure. Once, when I tried (gently) to get this across to a parent who possesses the same melodramatic messianic passion as Sally Kirk, I was accused of being bleak and defeatist. “I believe in a God who heals!”

My unspoken response, uttered mentally as a prayer, was, “I believe in a God who did His job well the first time round.” – Vicky on disability and “cure”

This is my body
And it’s fine
It’s where I spend the vast majority of my time
It’s not perfect
But it’s mine
It’s not perfect

For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. – Psalm 139.13-16

This is my brain
And I live in it
It’s made of love
And bad song lyrics
It’s tucked away behind my eyes
Where all my screwed up thoughts can hide
Cos God forbid I hurt somebody

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
²You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
³You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
⁴Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
⁵You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
⁶Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it. – Psalm 139. 1-6

This is my brain
And it’s fine
It’s where I spend the vast majority of my time
It’s not perfect
But it’s mine
It’s not perfect
I’m not quite sure I’ve worked out how to work it
It’s not perfect
But it’s mine

Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me.
¹¹Do not cast me away from your presence,
and do not take your holy spirit from me.
¹²Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and sustain in me a willing spirit – Psalm 51. 1-12

Domine, non sum digna

Ut intres sub tectum meum

Sed tantum dic verbo

Et sanabitur anima mea

Details to follow.

From Open Left

The point here is not about achieving sainthood, about suddenly changing your attitude and becoming a “real” social actor.  In fact, the point is the reverse.

If you want to recycle, if you want to make sure you turn off the lights when you leave a room, if you want to create an elaborate compost system in your kitchen, go ahead.  But do it for yourself, be honest about that, and not because it’s some deep contribution to the universe.

Of course, once you acknowledge that, you may find you don’t want to do it anymore.  You may want to get a hip haircut instead.

So, an assignment:

–throw out a can today
–leave the light on in a room overnight
–drive your car to work when you don’t have to.

Don’t feel guilt.  Your guilt is your own self-aggrandizement.  It is your own effort to make yourself matter.  Your guilt is about YOU.

Plus I should be writing my essay rught now and I’m not.

Just under18 months ago, I was in a situation where there were 3 options:

1. Do the right thing and make a friend’s life much easier. I would also make my own life much, much harder in the short ter, but easier in the long term.

2. Do the wrong thing, make said friend’s life MUCH harder make my own life much easier in the short term and pretty much the same in the long term.

3. Do the wrong thing, lie unconvincingly about it and make everyone’s life MUCH harder in botht the short term and the long-term.

Guess which one I chose?

The consequences of choosing number 3 are still hurting me and Friend Who Shall Not Be Named. I have no idea how to fix this in the present. I can’t apologise to someone who refuses to have anything to do with me. Since she no longer trusts me, she wouldn’t belive my apology anyway.

I can either:

1. Accept that this friendship is destroyed irrevocably, move on with my life and never lie to anybody again.

2. Accept that this friendship is destroyed irrevocably and only make friends with people who are poor lie-detectors in the future, so I can get on with treating people in the way that is most convenient for me, regardless of what’s right.

3. Continue to pine over Friend Who Must Not Be Named, try to get third parties to make her like me again through pity and not change the fact that I’m a pathological liar.

Guess which choice I’m tempted to make?

I never learn. I never bloody learn.

Ok, I took a break from my essay to check out the FWD Disability Blog Carnival. It’s great, check it out.

I was especially pleased, however, to find this post from Juggling with Colours and Smoke. Woo! A fellow-dyspraxic blogger.

I’m not aware of that many of us. Vicky and Danni are good bloggers, but they focus more on autism (not that I’m criticising them for this or telling them they should write more dyspraxia posts – it’s obviously entirely their decision what they write and I appreciate their writing ). Ruby is currently too busy to blog, as is Mr Negative. (Again, no criticism – it is good that they have livesaway from glowing rectangles.)

Are there any other dyspraxic bloggers out there?

Now, back to Meno…

Ok, I wrote and deleted a post on why Oxford sucks. I deleted it because berenike left some comments that made me think “No, it wasn’t Oxford’s fault. It was all my fault. I’m just stupid and lazy and bitter.”

Then this evening I spoke to a friend who’s there.

It’s NOT just me.

Sanabituranima:

How be?

 I’m fine. Well, as fine as I can be after 3hrs40 of my parents whinging about my sister’s academic prowess.

The Angry Medic:

Sanabituranima:

hugs As in lack of it, or more of it than you?

The angry Medic

Not her prowess exactly; it’s just that I am not entirely convinced I support their efforts to get her into Oxford.

Sanabituranima

Tell her about me.

The Angry Medic

They know. I mentioned that, like, all my friends are depressed, and I can’t in good conscience do Access.

Sanabituranima

Access? Is that the “please come to Oxford” thing?

The Angry Medic

The “no, everyone has loads of free time, and there are loads of pupils from deprived schools, and you get loads of help” thing.

Sanabituranima

I have a verbal IQ in the top 0.1 % of the population. That’s not boasting. That;s from my Ed Psych report, to show my problem wasn’t stupidity.

The Angry Medic

Oh – my sister quite wants to come. It’s my parents I really want to talk out of the whole plot.

They really, really want her to get in like I did and have a wonderful career one day.

Sanabituranima

What’s she applying for?

The Angry Medic

Dunno. Not for a few years yet.

Sanabituranima

If it’s medicine, she’ll have a wonderful year if she gets in anyway.

*career

*anywhere

I do that a lot. Sorry.

I suggest getting her to apply for English or History. Her chances of getting in are low (something like 1 in 6 get in) and the workload is bearable-ish by Oxford standards (or so I’ve been told)

The Angry Medic

I…I don’t know.

Sanabituranima

Sorry.

Sorry.

The Angry Medic

My parents are trying to push her towards the sciences.

Sanabituranima

Are you ok?

The Angry Medic

I’m not worried about the workload so much as the lying-in-bed-crying-all-day which so far appears to be the favourite hobby of most of my friends.

I’m fine.

Sanabituranima

Hmmm…

There’s a certain type of person that’s never satisdfied with themself.

And Oxford likes takinf such people, and using that trait to make them learn.

And doesn’t care if in the process it makes people want to die/ become convinced they are demonically possessed /’become bulimic/ get three hours sleep a week/ become an alcoholic/ all of the above

The Angry Medic

I’ve just ‘passed’ Nightline training, if that’s the right word. There are a lot of unhappy people walking around this place.

Sanabituranima

hugs Glad you aren’t one of them.

The Angry Medic

I’ve just ‘passed’ Nightline training, if that’s the right word. There are a lot of unhappy people walking around this place.

Sanabituranima

hugs Glad you aren’t one of them.

The Angry Medic

…to the extent where if someone tells me ‘Really? You know lots of depressed people? I don’t know any!’ then I immediately assume they’re a crappy person who has depressed friends, but they’re just to scared to say.

Sanabituranima

Perhaps, however, you haven’t been exposed to a typical sample.

The Angry Medic

It wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

That I haven’t. I’ve been hanging around a disproportionate amount of state-school educated kids who were either deeply uncool during their adolescence, gay, or mostly both. We were all social rejects; it’s like a breeding ground for acceptance issues.

Evidence suggests it’s not all that atypical though.

A friend who is coming back to start 2nd year (she left last year; severe depression, and a reaction to the fluoxetine meant she needed therapy) tells me her psych said the rate of mental health/sleep disorders in Oxford was 3/5.

Sanabituranima

Fucking hell.

Sometimes I want to burn that city down. I am stressed here. But largely still because of what happened there.

The Angry Medic

Yeah, I’ve been stunning entire rooms of people into silence with that statistic all term :-)

23:36Sanabituranima

And all those beautiful buildings and there are so many people selling the Big Issue. I mean there are a couple in Durham, there are homelss people everywhere, but so many people dying in the cold.

One of the few worthwhile things I did in Oxford was talk to a homeless guy who dying of liver disease.

The Angry Medic

Don’t burn the city down, Sanabituranima! There are at least five good people here!

Sanabituranima

Dying in the fucking freezing cold when they spend so much on books which no-one enjoys reading because they’re so stressed…

Yes, I won’t burn it down. Perhaps I shall flood it and get an ark to rescue to the people who still want to live, if there are any.

I know someone who says he’s happy at Oxford, but his every word stinks of “the lady doth protest too much”

The Angry Medic

Oh, you’ll have to drag them onto the ark. There are good people here, but they don’t realise it.

Sanabituranima

Don’t realise that they’re good or that Oxford is bad or that their lives are worht living, or all of the above?

The Angry Medic

First and third.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/02/oxforduniversity?showallcomments=true#comment-51

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/jemima-lewis-live-the-brideshead-dream–go-to-newcastle-536225.html

…guess what I’ve been Googling recently :-(

Sanabituranima

“Pxfprd University suicide”

*Oxford

The Angry Medic

…not quite! Thankfully.

Sanabituranima

hugs Sure you’re ok?

The Angry Medic

I’m bitter and frustrated.

I dunno. I’m miserable right now, but I’m not depressed in the clinical sense. Still functional, still hopeful.

Too angry to be depressed.

Sanabituranima

hugs You can transfer out after 3rd year, right?

The Angry Medic

I can. Not going to.

Sanabituranima

You sound like you want to.

The Angry Medic

Stockholm syndrome. And Nightline. And there are people I need to keep an eye on.

I…it’s not for myself that I’m angry.

There’s stuff that needs doing here. Maybe before I can leave I can do a little of it.

23:44Sanabituranima

See… part of me still feels like a failure. Like I didn’t want that, but I want to be worthy

hugs You are a wondeful person and you will make a wonderful doctor

The Angry Medic

You are worthy!

Sanabituranima

That’s not what Oxford thinks.

The Angry Medic

Fuck Oxford. They don’t know shit.

The Angry Medic

Anyway, I’m not worthy of four years in that pretty little torture chamber.

I deserve better.

The Angry Medic

And that’s why I have to stay and teach them.

You do.

23:45Sanabituranima

Can I publish the conversation on my blog?

The Angry Medic

Go for it.

Anonymous, though, yeah?

I might be getting a reputation as the Angry Medic.

Snabituranima

nods

The Angry Medic

There were Cambridge people at the clinical open day and they asked me what Oxford was like. I said “Don’t go. Go to UCL. Everyone’s miserable here, all my friends are on antidepressants, if you get a 2:.ii they make you stop doing extracurriculars on pain of being kicked out.”

Yeah. Angry.

Oxford don’t know shit.

One of my friends was getting panic attacks and wanted to retake the year, got a note from her doctor, and the dean said “Well you /look/ fine…”. Another friend got told “But I don’t understand how you can be clinically depressed…none of us have noticed!”

Urgh. Sorry. This turned into my rant, didn’t it? Sorry.

Persons think themselves isolated in the world; they think no one ever felt as they feel. They do not dare to expose their feelings, lest they should find that no one understands them. And thus they suffer to wither and decay what was destined in God’s purpose to adorn the Church’s paradise with beauty and sweetness.
Perhaps the reason why the standard of holiness among us is so low, why our attainments are so poor, our view of the truth so dim, our belief so unreal, our general notions so artificial and external is this, that we dare not trust each other with the secret of our hearts. We have each the same secret, and yet we keep it to ourselves, and we fear that as a cause of estrangement, which really would be a bond of union. We do not probe the wounds of our nature thoroughly; we do not lay the foundation of our religious profession in the ground of our inner man; we make clean the outside of things; we are amiable and friendly to each other in word and deeds, but our love is not enlarged, our bowels of affection are straitened, and we fear to let intercourse begin at the root; and in consequence, our religion viewed as a social system, is hollow.
J.H.Newman, Sermon on Christian Sympathy

So, VA has stopped blogging. :(

She was sweet enough to give me a “georgeous blog award” in her final post. I’m touched.

Thank you for your wisdom, your wit and your general awesomeness.

Good luck in the real, glowing-rectangle-free world.

Now, six Georgeous Blogs (caveat lector – some of these blogs do say some things which I think are just wrong, but I still respect and appreciate the blogs greatly, most of the time.) Choosing six was really hard – don’t be offended if you didn’t get an award.

1. Writing in the Margins of My Mind – In-the-margins may have mutliple DSM-IV labels, but her wisdom and gallows humour show that she meets G.K. Chesterton’s definition of sanity – “being able to have tragedy in your heart and comedy in your head.”

2. Chambers of the Sun – this isn’t so much a “blog” as a series of essays about a journey – which is why the link goes direct to the first entry. It makes the most sense if you just read it in order (though you’re ulikely to have time to do so all in one go.)

3. Asperger Square 8 – my all-time favourite autism blog.

4. Cripchick’s weblog -  in her own words “It amazes me to see what these words become when I string them together— who I become, how free I can feel when I see truth staring back at me, how much writing is a part of my process for navigating and understanding the world.”

5. Danni’s Blog – The Diary of a Christian Socialist Computer Addict.

6. Brilliant Mind Broken Body – And, might I add, a brilliant blog.

I filled in this questionnaire. It’s about white anti-racists/ white “race traitors”. Fill it in if you’re interested. I posted my own responses below.

Do you consider yourself a white anti-racist?

I consider myself a white who tries to be anti-racist, although I ought to try much harder. I am not always successful.

What led you to adopt this identity?

I believe that God created all humans equal and that race is a social construct which results from Original Sin. Obviously, differences in skin colour do exist, but defining people by those differences is a social construct. Cultural dffereces are real, but “white” and “black” and “Asian” and “Arabian” and “Latino/a” are applied to such a broad range of cultures that it doesn’t make sense to use those labels.

I started becoming race-conscious/anti-racist for several reasons. Firstly, I was going through a tough time and having severe mental illness and I hated everything about myself, including my whiteness. I was aware of racism hurting others and not me, but that seemed like an inevitable thing, just something I felt impotently guilty about.

At around this time, I had dropped out of University because of inadequate accomodations for my multiple disabilities and I became interested in the disability rights’ movement. There was a lot of discussion about privilege and intersectionality and through it I learned what privilege really meant, and what I could do to mitigate oppression.

At first I was resistant to this. I thought having privilege=being a bad person – to the extent that I prayed to have my race changed and considered amputating my own legs so I would be “more disabled” and have less privilege. This tied in with the depression – I was just so convinced I was a bad person and going to Hell that I couldn’t think of it any other way. However over time my defensiveness eroded, especially as I became less depressed.

I am not very involved- I could mae excuses, but in the end, I need to try harder. I blog and sign petitions and try to “call people out” but that’s about it.

Do you feel that experiencing (an) oppression helped you come to anti-racism? If yes, please explain.

As I said in my last answer – yes.

I don’t hate abled people. At all. But I do resent inaccessible spaces (including many whihc are accessible to me but not people with different disabilities to me.) I resent mocking, bullying and stereotypes based on disability. I resent discrimination in employment and education.

Being able to see the distinction between resenting injustice and resenting people who aren’t being hurt by said injustice is SO important.

I am a woman, but I don’t think experiencing sexism had that much effect on my views on race.

Was there one concept (in coming to an anti-racist consciousness) that, when you learned it, gave you a “click” moment? If so, what was it, and what was the “click” moment like?

Nothing “clicked”. It was all gradual.

Have blogs aided in your development as an anti-racist? If so, how?

Yes – very much. I can’t begin to explain how much.

The advantages of blogs are that you can ask questions directly, you can clarify things (although I try not to be the annoying-please-educate-me-now-white-person) and that they are so readily available.

Are there any books, movies, music or media in particular that helped you discover or encouraged your exploration of white privilege?

Two things stand out.
Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman.
Meridian by Alice Walker. That made a difference. I read “The Colr Purple” aged 14 but it had no impact – I just thought it was a sad story about “bad things that used to happen but don’t any more.”  But Meridian, for sme reason, actually worked on me.

Do you think there is one way in which most white anti-racists primarily are “made”? If so, what is it?

No.

What do you think is the most important thing white anti-racists can do as allies to people of color in the fight against racial oppression?

I think the most important thing we can do is let PoC themselves aswer that question and then actually listen to an act on said answers.