Everyone's Shadow Is the Same Color

Last Monday's Norwich City Council filled me with more hope for who we could become than I've had in a long time. 

The agenda item, Resolution #6, with thirteen action points was concise and clear from its very first point, 'the Norwich City Council asserts that racism is a public health crisis affecting our entire community.' I watched the meeting on public access and have rewatched it twice since and heard not one word aiming or blaming anyone or any institution for the way we are. 

Rather, I heard and was inspired by a lot of voices sharing experiences, dreams (dashed and otherwise), and hopes for brighter and better days primarily because the most important step in solving a problem, any problem, is admitting that you have a problem. 

At my next natal anniversary, I will celebrate (though my current social circle suggests I'll be the only one so doing) my seventieth year here on The Big Blue Marble. During all that time, despite my best effort and most strenuous exertion, I remain a white man who will never know life as a person of color, as someone of a religion different from mine, a person whose physical or mental abilities are not as mine or whose sex, sexual preference or orientation is other than my own. 

I tell myself that I am not alone in feeling both empathy and sympathy for all those whose lives differ from mine and think of myself as an 'ally,' but based on the action points outlined in the resolution the City Council unanimously adopted last Monday our world is more likely to change by our actions rather than merely our words. 

Some time back I came across a cartoon of two eagles in easy chairs discussing whether an owl is a predator, concluding that because neither of them had ever been attacked they had no idea what a mouse was complaining about. The smile the cartoon created was quickly followed by a grimace as the realization dawned that too often our reality fails to accommodate the lives and struggles of others we choose to not know. 

Reaction on social media platforms to local newspapers' coverage of the council's actions confirmed my fear that too many of us have bubbles that we refuse to acknowledge or attempt to expand (that is the great thing about being a pessimist; I can only be surprised, never disappointed). 

I'd hope the health equity committee, whose members are community helping hands who've been bailing out the ocean with teaspoons for years, established as part of the adopted resolution will continue their efforts to transform the goal of equal rights, opportunities, and treatment for anyone into the reality of equal rights, opportunities, and treatment for everyone, energized by the importance and urgency so many in Norwich showed up in Council chambers to demonstrate and to represent.

This is the moment, if we so choose, to calculate the distance we've traveled towards a more perfect union and better city and then map a route for what lies ahead and how to continue the journey. Change is incremental but also inevitable; don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Now is not the time to be daunted at the size of the task ahead but rather determined to continue the work each of us must do in a process that we all must own. Don't be distracted by gaslighters and their strawman about Critical Race Theory. The goal is Diversity, Equality, and inclusion because everyone's shadow is the same color.
-bill kenny