A Good Friday Kind of Love

Good Friday shifts the perspective to crucified people. Where it belongs. Consider this. A recent study analyzed the response of white people to horrific headlines saying Black and Indigenous folks and other people of color are 2-3 times more likely to get killed by covid. The study says that this data led white people to drop their fear of the disease and to demand that governments lift mandates and open schools and businesses. White folks embraced entitlement over empathy. Of course, this is not news to Black and Indigenous folks and other people of color. Many call this “whiteness.” Not so much a skin color, but a spiritual condition. 

 

Whiteness is not rooted in hate, but supremacy. It teaches us that we are smarter and work harder—so those outside of our orbit are unworthy of our attention, care and sacrifice. Whiteness trains us to believe that crucified people are dying because they are doing it wrong. Not because their bodies have sustained intergenerational trauma or because they are denied decent health care and nutrition. Whiteness justifies the decisions we make for ourselves and our families—no matter how our decisions affect anyone else. Whiteness is the spirituality behind a national strategy that now swaps out social safety precautions for personal decisions. It’s all about protecting our own families—and corporate profits. Whiteness calls this “freedom.” 

The opposite of whiteness is open-heartedness and an obligation to others, no matter what it costs. This alternative path runs through a Good Friday kind of love that takes up the cross. A demanding love that pays attention to what is happening to people we do not know and calls b*llsh*t on the corporate-sponsored spin designed to keep the economy open no matter who it crucifies. Covid numbers are going back up and whiteness will schlep it off by saying the symptoms of this variant are minor. Maybe this time around, we make our lifestyle decisions based on the reality that what might just be a cough for us will be a cross for someone else.