The above image is from Wikimedia Commons.
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. — Martin Luther King, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
My name is Sarah. I am a White woman who has crocheted for many years and has finally gotten knitting to click in my brain. I am a fiber crafter who spends most of her Instagram time on my craft account because first I needed a break from my more political and news account and then did not want to go back. I am a social worker who spent the first four years of my career working at an adolescent residential facility seeing first hand, and sometimes participating, in the ways the US does not treat poor and/or families of color well. I am a person who saw the recent racial discussions in the fiber community and for one tiny, terrible moment was sad to find these hard subjects had followed me to this side of social media.
I am a woman whose knee-jerk response to men in communities I frequent saying they’re “tired of talking about gender” is “me too but I never get to stop.” Experiencing oppression for one part of my identity does not stop my privilege from blinding me in another. I wish it did, for all of us. The world would be kinder and easier, I think.
As I live in this universe, there is instead continued work for me to do to be a better crafter and accomplice. Here’s how I plan to do it:
- Twice a month learn a new knitting or crochet stitch.
- Twice a month learn the history and tradition of fiber work from a different culture around the world.
- Twice a month research and understand how a type racist action/view/expression came to be and how it is used to hurt BIPOC to this day.
- Write about all that here.
If you’d like to interact with me around this, feel free. I will note down all of my resources. If I have messed up or need correcting, feel free. I know this is a journey and there is no human perfection. I need to do this for myself and those I interact with in this world. Good luck on your own journeys.
I used the MLK, Jr. quote and have linked both the text of his Letter from Birmingham Jail and a recording of him reading it below because of an Instagram post that Leesa Renee Hall made on MLK Day. She is an incredible educator and she very kindly shared a prompt for free asking people to think about the differences between how MLK was viewed by his White contemporaries and how he is used by White people in power today. The 60s radical Black man is now the idealized quiet, respectful, “correct” protestor. She asked that we do this work by listening/reading Letter from Birmingham Jail and pulling two quotes that you felt highlighted that difference. I will be posting my quotes with a link to this post on my Insta as directed in the post.
My quotes are:
- “Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with.”
- “Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation.”
I picked them because they so perfectly respond to a lot of the protest tone policing being spouted by White commentators during the height of Black Lives Matter responses to American police murdering many unarmed Black men. The same things are still being said by White people who don’t want to change the status quo. If BIPOC just jump through the correct hoops White people agree to their have rights and safety! If they don’t, they can continue to sit at the back of the bus and get shot for having dark skin.
Links:
Leesa Renee Hall’s Writing Prompts
Text of Letter from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Audio recording of Martin Luther King, Jr. reading Letter from Birmingham Jail
Knit One, Learn Too 