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polygona143 karma

I believe I have COVID19 (tests in my area are only for very very sick people and healthcare workers, which is wise, but I've had the symptoms-dry cough, fever, headache, difficulty breathing / "floor" in my lungs, shortness of breath, and ongoing lung pain for 7+ days, quarantined for 10).

On the day I was sickest, I woke up and my bedroom smelled like bread yeast (kind of hard to describe, but a lot like dough that was rising). My husband couldn't smell it at all. Is it possible I can smell the disease? It was super weird.

polygona86 karma

I think the thing that speaks most to who set at least some of the fires is the fact that Mike Brown Senior's church was burned to the ground that night.

polygona14 karma

I don't think you understand how this works at all. Communities aren't monoliths and the damage and looting in Ferguson wasn't the act of an entire city, nor is there one cohesive understanding of these events in this area, only thousands of individuals confused and broken by the events of the last few months. You don't understand because you have only seen this play out on your TV, but your words cause more pain in a city that, quite honestly, already has enough pain. Your anger and blame are misplaced if they are aimed at a community that is currently best described by heartbreak.

Edit: I know this is getting downvoted and I don't care. Ferguson is hurting. St. Louis is hurting. The business owners whose businesses were decimated are hurting, the people in their houses who never asked to be involved are hurting, the people protesting on the streets are hurting. All around this city there is just heartbreak and you can point your finger all you want, but you don't live in this city and you don't feel the sadness walking by places you know and love and seeing them burned down or seeing windows broken and businesses looted, so it's convenient for you to sit on the internet and say these hurting communities should just be abandoned, but that's not how it feels to me here. I care about these communities and I want them to thrive.

polygona12 karma

I couldn't get air to the bottom of my lungs. It's like there was a barrier halfway up my lungs and I couldn't push any air down below it. It was like my lungs had a "floor" above the bottom of my lungs that was getting higher up in my chest. It went away after an hour or two.

polygona11 karma

As a white person and a BLM supporter from the St. Louis region, I have a lot of experience with this and I thought I'd pitch in my thoughts. First, I think you need to find out whether ignorance is avoidance mechanism. I have seen people who don't understand the issues facing black people in our community because they are uninformed and removed from these issues and I have seen other people who are ignorant of these issues because they want to use that ignorance as a weapon to avoid talking about the significant problems in our community and our country. Ignorance can be a shield that allows people to justify staying out of an incredibly important conversation. Education and training can't reach people who don't want to be reached, you have to start with the people who are willing to listen. Even if they currently disagree vehemently with what you're saying, they have the ability to change their minds.

I always start with the personal stories of friends of mine and with the emotions that those stories stir up for them and for me. Logic is good, but it is easy to fall into a black hole of logic and some people can use logic as a weapon to "win" instead of as a way of searching for the truth. I tell people how afraid I am for the black women and men in my life, how I have seen them treated very differently from me. I tell them about the fear I see on my friends' faces when the pass the police. I tell them about the tears I have seen people who I respect deeply cry when they talk about their fears for their black sons about the women who have told me that they don't want to have children because they can't stand how fearful they would be for their lives.

Then I start to explain some of the differences in black perceptions of racism. I talk about the fact that we, as white people, are socialized to think about ourselves as individuals and black people are usually socialized to think about themselves as part of a community. So when black people talk about racism, they often mean the faceless systems that make it harder for people in the black community to get a good education, find a job, and even stay alive. When white people hear the word "racism" they often think of it personally (I'm not a racist!) because they're conditioned to think individually, instead of thinking about all of the systems around them that make it subtlety easier to be white than to to be black. They think racism is just a word to describe bad people instead of thinking of it as the water we all swim in and the air we all breathe. I'm not sure any of us can completely get away from the racism that was built into this country from the beginning--I know that I unthinkingly do and say things that I later realize are filled with assumptions or are unintentionally hurtful. I think that fact is actually freeing--racism is something that was foisted on all of us and the real question is not "Are you racist or not?" but "What can you do to fight against the racism in your community and even in your own subconscious mind or heart?"

I think it frees people from this unhelpful guilt. If you feel guilty about your white privilege, you are doing it wrong--you didn't ask for that privilege, but you have it, so what are you going to do with it now? How are you going to use it for the good of your neighbors and your brothers and sisters? I think this is actually incredibly empowering. As someone who may have a lot of unasked for power, you can actually make a huge difference in this fight, and yes it will be uncomfortable and you may come across parts of yourself that you find really unsettling or ugly, but wouldn't you rather know where your weaknesses are so you can work on them instead of pretending they don't exist as they rot your soul from the inside? And wouldn't you rather take that power and use it to actually make a difference instead of hording it like some sort of miserly, evil king in a fairy tale? Anyway, that's where I start and I have seen some people (not everyone, but some people) respond really positively to it.