The Movement That Never Ended

I was too exhausted to complete my last blog post yesterday, so here I am finishing it now. I do not think that's necessarily a bad thing, though, because now I am in the early stages of processing everything. I think that it is easy to become swayed by events, and the things that we learn from ourselves by reflecting immediately are essential, but I also believe that the things we take away a couple of days later are just as important. So, where do I stand? What am I thinking?

For one, I am honestly astounded by how close this group became throughout the week. I've gone to the same school for my entire life and for that reason, I think, I have come to understand that you can only build relationships through time and similarities. Coming into this trip, I don't think I believed we had the potential to bond as much as we did. I don't think I believed this because of any prejudices I had; no, I think I believed it solely because of the homogenous understanding I have of my own past.

I think it is exactly that, the power of one's own past, that I am left most shocked and troubled by. We build conceptions of each other and of the world without even knowing it. That might be obvious, but how these conceptions are then played out when we actually put ourselves in situations that we aren't comfortable in is striking. I wish that everybody from my school could have the experience of going on this trip. The reality is that nobody really gets it until they do it themselves. I wish that my friends weren't comfortable in their own skins all the time. I wish they had the urgency to put themselves in settings they haven't experienced before. But I understand why they don't have this urgency. They, and all who they know and interact with, are well off. I think that we are naturally enclosed beings; it is hard for us to empathize with people that we don't know or interact with on a regular basis.

I think it is ignorant comfort that I most want to challenge and fight against. Young people need to mobilize themselves and meet new people with different backgrounds and with different values and ideals. We need to understand our history together, not from homogenous, separate, and largely segregated classrooms. We need to fight the disparities that are growing and have been growing for a long time now in this nation. As the movement "ended", so did those who led and spoke out for what is right. I believe that we have the potential to spur another movement, but that will only happen if we young people mobilize ourselves and test our boundaries. 

-Xandi