For the last few weeks I have been without words. I am a white woman, born into a family with no money, but who was privileged to have access to a free education, times of high employment and professional training, opportunities to explore some parts of our amazing world and live and work in different cultures and places.
I acknowledge this privilege, hard won by all the feminists that came before. But, of course, it shouldn’t be a privilege, due to historical circumstance or what kind of family/community we happen to be born into. It deeply sorrows me that this is still the case, even in a rich,western country like the UK, where ‘democracy’ has long roots. Many of those roots though have taken their sustenance from centuries of Empire, built on the toil of other peoples.
I want, here, to give thanks to the many people across our world working hard to challenge and change these inequalities.
To all artists like Lubaina Himid who raises awareness of UK colonial history, and racism through her artwork. For example, her installation ‘Swallow Hard’, 2007, on the slave trade in Lancaster, and her more recent work (lubainahimid.uk).
Like Kara Walker in the US, representing some of the current and past violence and oppression of her country; brought to my attention by womensartblog.wordpress.com:
Thanks also to writers, performers and activists; and to the many groups of people in communities all over the world who are working to support each other, and to bring individuals together to make governments and institutions change, for the well-being of every one of us. They are too many of them to name here – which gives me with hope.
So much more to do. Keep going.
Fragments of self 