Shrinking our Big Selves: Part 3 of “A big-picture, co-intelligent vision of diversity and privilege”
We are each a complex, networked, ecosystem of a self, not just a role or a race or a name. Beneath our shallow surface appearance and social identities we are full, whole people, deeply alive and potent with meaning and gifts for ourselves, those around us and our communities and societies. One of the greatest tragedies of the identity-based inequities and shallowness of our cultures is the vast loss of that richness. What is it about? Where does it come from?
Racism and sexism and classism and all our other oppressive systems are structural, and they are also visual. We sort and treat bodies based on how we’ve been trained to mis-see them. How do we render that mis-seeing visible? How do we correct and repair our limited vision? How do we remember that we’re often misunderstanding one another, often mistaken?
Sarah Sentilles, author of “Stranger Care: A Memoir of Loving What Isn’t Ours” in her “How to Write Love” interview https://orionmagazine.org/article/how-to-write-love/
