I discovered in my work with young people that they might choose specific words and phrases to test and question, try out and explore, or struggle to describe but that they were also always testing our reactions to their words. Were we listening? Would we be triggered by something salacious or edgy and cease to see them? Could we reach behind the words and hear what was really being said?
I am a member of the Southern diaspora, but do not appear so at first glance. Many people I know in Memphis work ceaselessly for justice and equity, and I love the meme that asks us to “Consider the South to be large communities of people of color and small resistance cells held hostage by fascist governments.” I am not alone in my belief that the American South is key to shifting how we live, to teaching us how to work together, to building the world we need to survive crisis and change.
