The Big Lie was always about racism

[calimary]

10. As she spoke, and the pain fleetingly showed on her face, I couldn't help think that.

The pain actually showed itself, briefly, several times, even as she maintained poise and composure.

I cannot imagine THE BURDEN. I can't imagine having to lift that and carry it around EVERY day. Waking up to it. Living and breathing it. Knowing you're surrounded by it and feeling rightly suffocated by it,

I'm just an old white lady, so I can't understand in the fullest and most intimate extent. I can sympathize but not empathize. I never lived that. Never grew up with it - or in it. Wound up in all-girl Catholic schools that were basically all-white except for the occasional Asian student, or later on, Latina, or from India or the Middle-East.

I felt a nobility in Shaye Moss - almost intangible, but very much there - almost like when you walk past somebody's orange tree during flowering season, and get just the barest perfumed whiff of orange blossom. She made me want to stand up straight out of respect. She made me want to hug her and tell her how sorry I am for the way she was treated and disrespected. And frankly, MY feelings really didn't matter, and don't. It's HERS that do. Those in and around her community that do. Those in the hearts and minds and life-experience of her brothers and sisters and all the aunties and uncles and great/great-great grandparents that do.

Ever since I watched her (and WHILE I was watching her), I've been kicking this around in my mind. She really got to me. Deep down.