This morning in Quaker Meeting a Friend told this story that gave me a little space to breath hope.
My Friend grew up in the deep south of Arkansas. It was a small town then, with only 3 doctors – all white. When she was a child in the 1980’s she remembers the doctor’s offices all had two doors. One was for white people, the other for colored people. Long ago they’d had signs that said “white” and “colored”, but those came down when the law said so. But the waiting rooms stayed segregated.
Sometimes a new patient would stray into the wrong waiting room. They’d know right away they were in the wrong place. It was very embarrassing for both white and Black people. But of course the doctors wouldn’t have thought of putting a sign back up, because that would have been racist.
Years later when she started going back to visit family, she realized that the doctors had built nice new offices. When the offices were rebuilt, somebody must have noticed that they didn’t need two waiting rooms, since no doctors offices now had them. The old infrastructure – the offices – were built to keep the races apart, and it was only when the old infrastructure went down that a new infrastructure that fit the new way for races to relate could be built.
It’s vitally important that we do the work of protesting and educating each other about the truths that were hidden about oppression. But eventually, the real work will be to build a new infrastructure that embraces the new relational reality. In that reality human beings of all colors and genders and cultures will stop being segregated and will put their energy into appreciation of each others diverse and interesting qualities.
The work of building new spaces that we share fully won’t be easy either, since where we’re coming from is so twisted. But because those spaces will be built to encourage fully human beings, there’ll be space to breath the deep sweet breath of freedom no matter the color of your skin or the gender you identify with or any of those markers that keep us apart in the authoritarian system. It’s worth our time dreaming that one into existence.
My friend’s story is powerful to me. There’s more that needs to be said about it. But for now I’m sitting with the image in my mind of the old offices coming down, and the doctors of small town Arkansas moving into the future without a second thought.