I feel so fortunate to still have a little treasure from college, which emerged last night while cleaning: a ticket stub from a lecture my junior year when Angela Davis came to campus. I wish I had taken notes because I don’t remember exactly what she said to us in 1997, but I remember very clearly being utterly changed by it.
I learned last month that Angela Davis began meditation and yoga during her time in prison, which I find fascinating and inspiring. She evokes complicated feelings for Americans, even on the Left.
Here are some more recent words by her to help close out this 4th of July, a holiday steeped in the Euro-centric mythology of America, which is undergoing a search for its soul in the wake of the George Floyd murder.
I don’t know whether we grasp the extent to which racism has affected and infected the entire history of this country. It’s not a simple thing. We cannot wish it away. What we are addressing today are issues that should have been taken up in the immediate aftermath of slavery. We have to refuse any kind of permanency to that which is simply because it is. This particular historical conjuncture hold possibilities for change we have never before experience in our country. In 2020 we are finally witnessing decades and centuries of attempting to expel racism from our society.
Angela Davis
Élan Young 