I used to worry that I was going to say something wrong when I talked about race. I used to worry I was going to offend someone when talking about injustices and the poor. I used to worry that I didn’t know what I was talking about since I am a white privileged woman.
The conversations need to happen. Black people are getting killed for driving their car, for going for a run, for sleeping in their apartment and us white people need to make this OUR problem too. It is not right that another Black man died unjustly and it isn’t fair that it will happen again and again if nothing changes. We are going to mess up, we are going to say the wrong thing but if we continue to say nothing then as Martin Luther King Jr. said, “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.” We are at that point where if you aren’t saying anything or grappling with these injustices, you need to ask yourself if you are part of the problem. I want to be part of the solution. It isn’t easy to look into myself and see racist tendencies but most of us white people have them. We need to be calling each other out, we need to be challenging ourselves and those around us to see these issues and care about the people who are affected.
I believe that fear drives racism in our county. I think this quote is a start to make a change, “People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.” Martin Luther King Jr.