If you are even a casual user of social media and an occasional reader of a newspaper, these words appear in much of what you are recently reading and hearing.
Over the past month, however, these words are strung together with a body language that is demonstrating increasing shrill, persuasion, ego, anger, frustration, division and hostility. What is informative and meaningful for me becomes a loaded and provoking political statement for someone else. As a society, we haven’t quite reached the maturity of listening to each other with the respect and patience required for understanding the meaning each of us has developed, because of our life experiences, relationships, cultural programming and indoctrination.
In the process of trying to figure things out, we are becoming more divided and our own worst enemy in our attempts to provide solutions that inspire hope rather than confusion and more disharmony. Personal egos, competition, self- interest, political rhetoric and ignorance bordering on sheer stupidity provide the recipe for an agenda of “here we go again” types of dysfunction rather than meaningful progress.
Let me suggest two words that are receiving much recent attention: systemic and racism.
Systemic means embedded within and spread throughout, affecting a whole system or society.
Racism is the belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.
As a rather fumbling gardener, I have learned that if a plant like a raspberry bush has systemic root rot, the harvest of berries will continue to decline until the rot is dealt with and eliminated. Forget about a good healthy crop of berries until the root of the problem is addressed. This may mean not only focusing on the raspberry bush but also the soil in which the bush is planted.
The lesson here is that our society is much like the raspberry bush. Racism will do for society what root rot does for the raspberry bush. If the herbicides and pruning haven’t addressed the problem, maybe it’s also time to take a closer look at the cultural soil our society depends on for its nutrients.
Two articles on the Opinion page of the June 30 edition of the Edmonton Journal, by Rachel Notley and Jason Kenney, are helpful in understanding racism in our society and it is interesting to note that “Systemic Racism” was emphasized in the headline of Ms. Notley’s article but not once spelled out in Mr. Kenney’s article.
May I suggest that both of them get together, be consistent with a body language of co-operation and sort out the fundamental meaning of these words, which will help provide some fresh soil to the political culture in which we all live?
As a final note, maybe the liminal space provided by our dealing with this whole Corona virus will help give us some pause and we can learn from whatever good lessons this opportunity provides for all of us.
Must continue to HOPE.
Wilf Borgstede
St. Albert
