The WORD

There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.

There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.

Trigger Warning to anyone for whom this word is just too much to bear, no matter where it exists and even if it is just being referred to. I love you and I mean no injury to anyone. I write this to face myself and heal myself. What I can not write about today is what happened when I voiced this word out loud in a group of people yesterday, sharing how racism shows up inside us.

If I hesitate to post this, trying to make it better writing, I might never post it — while I can not encapsulate what is in my heart to say today, I can, at least, point in the direction.

There is some good in the worst of us, and evil in the best of us. Facing the “evil” inside is brutal, but in facing it, we are less prone to hate ourselves and more prone to healing, not only ourselves but our world.

I said out loud last night what is possibly the ugliest word in the English language yesterday. I was admitting that the word exists in my mind from time to time, rarely, and completely unbidden, completely out of the blue (which it is not). It is a word of unparalleled vitriol in which 400 years of rape, violence, dehumanization, and societal consequences live. This word has had the power to deeply and permanently traumatize and retraumatize, like a bomb going off and off again and again. This word has decimated and destroyed lives, given rise to murders, maiming, and justified horrific behaviors and unthinkable brutalities. It has been inflicted within and without. It has caused self-inflicted injuries uncountable and continuing. It plagues us. It existed before we were born. It is the sickness inside humanity. Encapsulated in this one word is the history of our country, slavery, and hatred. This word is very much alive in gross and in subtle, everyday, seemingly innocuous ways, in how people choose to fit into the status quo, families, and friendships. It exists in the great literature, which some think should now be banned, and in books to educate our children, which some believe should burned— Each side wanting to shoo it away, like a dirty fly from our dinner plate. But it is a word that doesn’t shoo or flush down the toilet along with the bile it produces. It is a word too important to kill because it is a word that can be the key to unlocking truth and transformation. We must not cover our eyes and ears; close our minds, ignore or erase the truth. We have to face it. We have to look at it, deal with what it has wrought, and what it still builds. We must talk about its causes and effects.

Girl In Oaxaca - Photo: Linda Wolf

This word, I am told I should never say, this word that invades my mind, every once in a great while, for no good reason, against no one in particular, when I am alone in my car simply driving to the grocery store, when suddenly like a shot from a gun, like a reminder to stay vigilant, to keep speaking up, to keep facing, appears and shocks me back to reality. I know where it comes from, the collective hivemind of humanity, like any other word. But, still, I am shocked it appears out of nowhere, out of everywhere. And with all the power of the love I have for human beings, I, too, shoo it back down into the incinerator located somewhere near my anus, knowing it will crawl out and be born over and over again because it will not die... It must not die until it has transformed all of us. I defend myself and calm myself when it appears in me, this “evil” Martin Luther King has identified in even the best of us. And I, like you, inherited it when we arrived naked and innocent into the dire beauty of this world. How can I not tell the truth that it exists in me, this word made up of simple letters? I first heard it yelled in the playground of a drive-in theater when I was little. I knew because I felt its effect that it was a terrible thing to call the boy it was hurled at. I ran back to my father at the car and repeated it, asking what it meant. He couldn’t explain more to a 6-year-old unable to put the letters together, but I must never say it, he said. It was a bad, bad word. But, of course, it became stamped on me, implanted inside my innocent little girl self as it will sadly be implanted in my small grandson on the first day he sees it written on a wall, the first day he becomes aware the world is not all-loving, the first day he feels the power of it rush through the cells of his body. Because we are awash in this word and the hurt it continues to inflict. It is a word we hear all the time… from a hip-hop song blaring from the car next to us at a stop light, or from a character in a movie, or a comedian, or on the street between friends as they use it to defuse it, take control of it, say it in jest and camaraderie, and in circles I'm not invited into, and would never be allowed to say even if I was allowed in.

I was taught by my parents never to say this word. I can imagine being slapped across my face by my mother if I ever said it out loud about anyone — something she never did and something I never did or would have ever done.

I was taught by my parents that all people matter, that I am not better than anyone else, that it is an unfair world, and that terrible horrors have happened to our people in a different, horrific way... I learned the horrible history of our country and what it did to people. I learned the history in school and through the few personal friendships between people who shared with me how it landed on them and their ancestors. I read books. I grew up knowing what happened, and I saw how the viper of its power infiltrated all aspects of human society —in every business, every community, every corporation, in every leader of every corporation, in every human mind and every human being, no matter what tone of skin color. It is the big, black, ugly word hidden in all of us; silenced in our families, whispered in a joke, and we are told over and over by our elders, and by those who stand up and speak out, “Do not, under any circumstances say that word.” It bespeaks the fatal flaw in humanity. It is our county’s fatal flaw. It is the wound that continues to fester, no matter how we evolve. Its reach goes backward and forwards. It is here now and it shows up in us all, no matter who we are. And we must look at it clearly in the light of day because it has the power to heal us, to mend us. It contains the poison and also the medicine that must be delivered straight to our hearts which is the only place from which it can grow outwards and heal our collective race, the human race.

Dominick & Ella May - Best Friends in Venice, California Photo: Linda Wolf