Imagination As Liberation

“We are in an imagination battle.

Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown and Renisha McBride and so many others are dead because, in some white imagination, they were dangerous. And that imagination is so respected that those who kill, based on an imagined, radicalized fear of Black people, are rarely held accountable.

Imagination has people thinking they can go from being poor to a millionaire as part of a shared American dream. Imagination turns Brown bombers into terrorists and white bombers into mentally ill victims. Imagination gives us borders, gives us superiority, gives us race as an indicator of ability. I often feel I am trapped inside someone else's capability. I often feel I am trapped inside someone' else's imagination, and I must engage my own imagination in order to break free.”

―Adrienne Maree Brown,Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

We posted the above quote from Adrienne Maree Brown on our twitter today- and someone responded saying they felt bad that she believed this “false narrative” because their upbringing was different…

Which literally emphasizes one of the reasons this quote is powerful.

If your imagination is limited to only your experience, or the experience you are told, then you are stuck inside someone else’s imagination.

Each of us must engage our own.

Each of us must educate, question, meditate, learn and unlearn what we have seen, beEn told and taught

This is exactly why we need CRT and studies like it.

This is why our children need access to diversity in their books

To expand imagination, to expand the possibilities of our worlds, to make it more abundant, inclusive, safe, free.

Rather than continuing to love this outdated vision of the “American dream.”