My 2 Cents

For days, months, maybe years now, I’ve been contemplating what to say in my own words. I’ve fluctuated between feeling angry and feeling despair at what little it seems I am able to do to help. But with the ongoing efforts of the Black Lives Matter movement over the last few years now morphing into actions that are demanding the attention of the country and the world, I feel I have to speak my mind and be candid about my thoughts and beliefs, if not to change the minds of others, then for my own form of therapy.

I am a half-black, biracial woman living in America during a time where the black community does not feel safe and protected while going about their everyday lives. As a lighter-skinned mixed-race person, I have not faced racism in the same way that members of the black community with more-malanated skin have been forced to encounter. Our experiences are not the same and I will not pretend I have encountered the same level of blatant and dangerous racism many black women and men face every day for simply living their lives.

I cannot and will not try to speak for the black community as a whole. But I will speak to people in my life and in my community who feel racism is not still an issue or who feel eradicating racism is not their responsibility. If you somehow cannot see the desperate grasp racism still has on this country then you are not paying attention. If you do not wonder and worry about how your race may skew someone’s impression of and interaction with you, you experience a privilege most, if not all, black people may never know.

Reach out and talk to people of color in your life and you will see that racism is still very much an issue. If you do not have people of color in your life, you have found your first problem.

You will see the number of times people of color have been made to feel uncomfortable, unsafe, or threatened in certain spaces and situations based on the color of their skin and harmful stereotypes or expectations perpetuated by our history and current society.

You will see how the seemingly harmless jokes and comments made by friends, family, and colleagues truly have made someone feel unwelcome and belittled.

Our differences in skin color, culture, and history allow us all to bring a variety of experiences to the table in order to move the world forward. This is why comments such as the ever-popular, yet uninformed statement “I don’t see color” do more harm than good. By saying “I don’t see color” you are saying “I don’t see your history, I don’t see your struggle, I don’t see your pain”. Acknowledge that we all have different life experiences that have made us who we are, even if you may never truly understand or feel the pain of what someone has gone through.

I am far from an expert in the appropriate way to call out people when something degrading or harmful is said about black people, or any marginalized group. But I do know that the first and most essential step is speaking up when something is wrong.

Listen closely to conversations around you and that you are a part of. Use your voice to correct the prejudiced and racist things people in your life say because I promise it happens more than you may realize.

Change takes the effort of EVERYONE, not only the group demanding it.