The Undercover Introvert

America, This is Exactly Who We Are

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Last week, I watched an angry white mob storm the heart of our nation’s capital in an attempt to subvert the will of millions of voters. These people came armed, not just with weapons, but with an innate sense of entitlement endowed by their skin color, a certainty swimming in their blood that they could livestream what they were doing with no fear of repercussion. I watched in horror and fury as the foundation of our fragile democracy trembled beneath thousands of angry footfalls, unsure if it would hold after the last four tumultuous years.

In the wake of this failed insurrection, I watched dozens of public figures proclaim that we are better than this as a country, that this is not who we are. There were social media posts aplenty making similar pronouncements, such that they became a persistent drumbeat that was impossible to ignore. Unfortunately, these hearty arguments and entreaties were little more than feel good bullshit.

America, this is exactly who we are.

I’m not sure what part of our history these folks are referring to when they make sweeping judgments that we, collectively, are better than whatever terrible event just occurred. The hundreds of years of chattel slavery? The horrors inflicted upon indigenous people, including genocide, land theft, and broken treaties? Jim Crow? Redlining? The War on Drugs? Internment camps during WWII? Women treated as second class citizens? The exclusion of the LGBTQ community? Lynchings?

Stop me when I get to the parts that prove what we’ve always been wasn’t on full display when hundreds of terrorists invaded the Capitol Building the other day.

Listen, I think America is the land of endless promise. It’s something on which the Founding Fathers and I are in complete agreement. The country is at its greatest during the times when we inch closer to its founding promise, the one that says everyone is entitled to a life lived freely and with dignity. But we are not that country all the time. We need to accept that, because lasting change doesn’t occur unless we do. Pretending that we are better than we’ve proven ourselves to be throughout our history is disingenuous and self-defeating. The idea of America is a shining beacon of freedom and equality recognized across the globe. The reality of America is much less hopeful, though not completely hopeless. Therein lives the motivation so many of us feel to make the reality of this country finally live up to its promise.

This country is comprised of millions of people living their lives within its borders. Many of these people are good. But there are also many that aren’t. Thousands of the latter kind were in the nation’s capital the other day, attempting to disenfranchise about 81 million of their countrymen and women. I could go on for a few hundred paragraphs about the kind of deep seated entitlement one must feel — that this country is yours and always has been — in order to do that kind of thing, but that’s not the point of this. The point is to pull us around to a collective mirror and invite us to really look at what we see there: good, bad, hate, love, forgiveness, stubbornness, hope, fear, entitlement, and pain.

This country isn’t just one thing, good or bad. It’s many things. We are the people that stormed the Capitol Building, armed and determined to keep a failed president in office by any means necessary. We are also the people that peacefully protested for Black lives after the death of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. We can be both, and a million other things, at the same time. What we can’t do is pick and choose the parts that we use to define ourselves. We’ve done that for far too long, and it’s gotten us into the mess we’re experiencing now.

Refusing to reckon with our complicated past is as American as apple pie. We cleave to the good things, holding them up like gleaming, hard won trophies, and forget the rest. But history repeats itself when we refuse to learn from it the first time, or when we refuse to even acknowledge it. That’s where we are right now: relearning lessons we resisted initially. Pretending the actions of these fellow Americans don’t reflect the country that birthed, coddled, and empowered them just continues this unfortunate cycle. We can be better — I truly believe that — but only if we embrace our collective faults and commit to changing them.

Our democracy suffered a real hit this week after years of repeated blows, and it troubles me to know how delicate it is, how unstably it sits atop layers of air and convention, how much of what we understood to be foundational to the health of our way of governing is more akin to a gentlemen’s agreement. I can honestly say the events of last week shook me to my core, but they also infuriated me. This is my country too. I see it clearly, and still love it, for all it could be if only we keep pushing. But I refuse to suffer those that indulge in revisionist history in order to view this country through the rosiest of rose colored glasses.

We are not better than what happens within our borders or on our watch. We are not better than the things we do. But we can be better. That’s what keeps me going.

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The 19th Amendment: 100+ Years of Black Women on Their Own

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First, let’s set the table.

Yes, I am that person that interjects with white women whenever someone mentions that it’s been 100 years since women gained the ability to vote. And if I don’t interject, I’m definitely thinking it. That might cause some folks to roll their eyes, but that doesn’t make my clarification any less true. We can celebrate an achievement while also pointing out how that same achievement fell well short of enfranchising the diverse range of women that lived in America in 1920.

History is a funny thing, isn’t it? Especially in this country. Instead of learning from it, we stubbornly choose to sand down its rough edges in order to draw our collective gaze to the loveliest smoothed over parts, completely avoiding the dry rot underneath that just keeps spreading. Maybe it’s because human beings are the kinds of creatures that crave rich narratives with beginnings, middles, and (happy) ends. Sweeping tales of heroes and heroines, all white, with the occasional person of color in a supporting role. The movement for women’s suffrage is no different.

Growing up, the story I learned about women’s long fought battle for what would become the 19th Amendment was fully housed in towering white champions like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. My small eyes scanned pictures of women in flowing white dresses and sashes, marching and demanding equal access to the ballot box, not a Black or brown person among them. No one mentioned Black women, who absolutely did not get the right to vote, despite their contributions to the movement. No one mentioned indigenous or Asian women either, who weren’t even allowed to be U.S. citizens at the time. Latinas were also left completely out of this victory for all women, as we’re taught to celebrate it today. This was a movement powered by white women, my history books assured me, without ever explicitly stating it. But you’ll be a woman one day, and so this was your victory too. Cool, right? I didn’t question this narrative, because what kid does? We ingest what we’re fed, until we’re old enough to realize that some crucial ingredients have been left out of the stew.

Throughout the month of August, folks have been talking about the 19th Amendment, leaning heavily into the Stanton-Anthony industrial complex, as they’ve always done. So I suppose it’s no surprise that this centennial of white women gaining the ability to vote has me lowkey annoyed, an undercurrent of unrest that buzzes directly behind my eyes. All month, I’ve been thinking about feminism’s historical inability to negotiate the intersection of race and gender. And this unwillingness to embrace intersectionality persists to this day, carried forth by generation after generation of women. I left a rather famous women’s organization in 2017 because of the blatant racism and toxic white feminism I saw and experienced there, a suffocatingly clique-ish environment dressed up as ‘sisterhood’. It was okay to have Black women and other women of color toiling for the organization and peppered into group photos, but it wasn’t okay for them to be in leadership roles or to ever point out racism within the ranks. In that way, it was very similar to the movement for women’s suffrage.

The betrayal of Black women by their so-called white suffragist ‘sisters’ caused a fissure in the feminist movement that’s still a gaping hole to this day. It always seems a little too easy for the concerns of Black women and other women of color to get indefinitely delayed or outright ignored so the group can focus on more pressing matters. Pressing always means what’s deemed important by the white women in charge.

When we learn about the battle for women’s suffrage in school, we never hear about the deep seated racism of its white leaders. We don’t hear about the tokenization of Asian and indigenous women, or the erasure of Latinas. We don’t hear about how it was just fine for Black women to do the work, but unacceptable for them to expect a seat at the table. Back in the day, ladies like Stanton were enraged at the thought of Black men getting the right to vote before white women. This is despite the fact that Frederick Douglass was an avid and vocal supporter of women’s rights, even showing up at the convention at Seneca Falls.

Racism was in the DNA of this movement. That much was evidenced by the racist rhetoric of its leaders. And the scope of the movement was narrow: push just enough to enfranchise white women, then stop. In the same way that Black men weren’t magically able to practice the voting rights set forth for them in the 15th Amendment until the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Black women also weren’t able to access their right to vote after the passage of the 19th Amendment. But did newly enfranchised white women continue to fight for them? Of course not. Because this was never about the rights of all women. Black, Latina, indigenous, and Asian women were on their own, despite how hard they’d labored to make the ratification of the 19th Amendment possible.

The 19th Amendment didn’t do anything about the intimidation, poll taxes, literacy tests, and violence Black women faced when they tried to register to vote, just like the 15th Amendment didn’t protect Black men from such treatment. But Black folks had to figure this out alone. No help arrived from white suffragists. And, years later, these same white women would be lauded as heroines that contributed to the great American story while the suffragists of color were fully erased from my history books.

As so often happens in my adult life, I feel terribly cheated out of learning crucial parts of the American story during my first twelve years of education. It wasn’t until I was in college that I learned about Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, and so many others. I lived nearly two decades without understanding the crucial role Black women played in a battle for equality that I’d been led to believe was fought only by white women. American history is a story of white achievement, and all but a few people of color are erased by the centuries of white folks that have carefully constructed that narrative, from the ships arriving on Plymouth Rock to the present day.

Racism played a central role in the movement for women’s suffrage, and I’m not here to celebrate that. What I celebrate are the thousands of Black women and men that never stopped fighting for voting rights until they were signed into law in 1965. I celebrate the folks still fighting for these rights to this day, because the suppression never stops, it just takes another form: purging of the voter rolls, voter ID laws, polling locations closed without notice, etc. This month, I celebrate the perseverance of Black women, the way they keep rising, no matter how hard this country shoves them down or erases them from its history. We have a long way to go, but we’ve also come so far. I celebrate that too.

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A Black Woman’s Guide to July 4th

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In 1776, a group of wealthy white men officially declared independence from a tyrannical monarchy. This collective of learned individuals stated boldly:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness.

More than 200 years later, many of us are still waiting for the full realization of this cherished ideal, our ears straining to hear freedom ringing from sea to shining sea. The great American fairy tale — that we were all in chains until the Declaration of Independence and the triumphant end of the Revolutionary War, which solidified the creation of this nation — always fails to mention that the United States was constructed to exclude most people from this pursuit of life, liberty, etcetera. Black people remained slaves. Indigenous people had no place in white society. All women were excluded, and only select white women could benefit from the power wielded by their landowning husbands or fathers. At the birth of our nation, very few people living within its borders were actually free.

And now?

I am a Black woman. I have a job I love that earns me a good living. I have a family and friends and live in a sleepy suburb along the coast. My life would have been unimaginable to the Black folks that toiled, enslaved, on plantations and in the homes of rich masters. But they are part of the American story too, integral characters that too often fade into the background. They built this country. They yearned and dreamed and pushed for freedom. They fought to bring the nation closer to what its founding documents claimed this land already was: a place where life and liberty were to be cherished above all else. A place where all men were created equal.

The relationship Black people have with this country is complicated. But we don’t learn about the depths of this complication in school. We learn that slavery happened, though we aren’t made to look closely at its abject cruelty. It was just a thing that occurred a long time ago and was absolved by Abraham Lincoln. We don’t learn that he was no great champion of Black people. We only learn about the Emancipation Proclamation, and not even that it only freed slaves in the confederate states. And after that? We aren’t taught about Reconstruction’s shivering crescendo and how, sparkling with promise that wouldn’t be rekindled until the 1960’s, it ended with abrupt finality, plunging Black folks into the dark ages of Jim Crow. All of this is glossed over as we join our teachers in leapfrogging from colonial times — the British are coming! — to the end of slavery — let freedom ring! — to the Civil Rights Movement — I have a dream, y’all! And now, here we are, living in an entirely civilized, post-racial America — we’re so great that we don’t see color anymore!

I was raised in a military family, and a fierce love of this country was the undergirding of my entire childhood. I still feel that love today, though not as pure as it was when I was a child waving a flag at airshows, because I see the object of my affection much more clearly now. This is my country, though the Founding Fathers never meant it to be mine. It is imperfect, unequal, and unwelcoming to anyone that doesn’t fit the description of the Founding Fathers themselves: white, male, rich. I’ve been told that if I don’t love this country, I should go back to Africa. I’ve been told that slavery was a long time ago and I should get over it. I’ve been told racism no longer exists in this country — BECAUSE OBAMA — and that I am the one who seems to be practicing the dark arts of reverse racism. I have watched as Black men and women are killed in the streets or in their own apartments by police officers whose sole job is to protect and serve the community. And why? Because Black people were never supposed to be members of the community. We could live in America — actually, it was compulsory — but we couldn’t be Americans. The founding documents weren’t talking about us, though the success of the nascent nation depended on us: our labor, our sweat, our tears, our babies, our blood.

Today, 244 years after an Independence Day that did not include people that looked like me, I assert my own independence, and I claim this country as mine. I stand on the backs of giants, the generations of Black folks that toiled and fought and stretched their fingers towards a freedom that still lies on the distant horizon for me, hundreds of years later. But I’m closer than they ever were, because of them, and the next generation will be closer than I am, because of me. That is America. This striving to be better, freer, more truthful about who and what we are. That is the spirit I celebrate today, and it’s what I honor in the work that I do, creating change that will make this country closer to what it claimed to be in 1776.

We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union…

We aren’t there yet, not even close. But I celebrate us — those that were never supposed to be part of that so-called perfect union. I honor those that made it possible for me, a Black woman, to be sitting in my own dining room, tapping away on a computer while my dog snores beside me. The people who looked like me are mostly hidden in our history, but nothing we celebrate today would have been possible without their invisible labor, their struggle, their thirst for freedom that I still feel at the back of my own throat, an itch that never goes away. Tonight, while I watch fireworks explode in the distance, I will think of them, running towards the North with only the stars to guide them.

That is the America I celebrate.

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No Justice. No Peace. No Words.

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Words come easily for me. They always have. No matter what’s happening in my life, no matter how upset, furious, or forlorn I am, if I sit down in front of the computer or a sheet of blank paper, the words come. And there’s release in that flow of words, a siphoning off of pressure, of pent up emotion, that has comforted me since I was a young girl scribbling in my journal. This release of words makes gathering my thoughts possible. I can sharpen them into a point and then attack whatever’s ultimately upsetting me. Or I can turn them into a lullaby sweet enough to neutralize the chaos in my head and usher in blessed peace. But the last few weeks have been a struggle, y’all, and it’s been hard to find the words, to urge them out, to pin them to the page so I can start making some sense of everything that’s going on.

We watched another black man repeatedly tell police he couldn’t breathe right before he was murdered. This was after watching a black man out for an evening jog get brutally killed by white men who would have gone without punishment (and still might, ultimately) if not for sustained public outcry. Right after learning a black woman, sleeping in her own bed, was shot and killed in the middle of the night by police executing a faulty warrant. This is on top of a global pandemic that’s killing disproportionately more black people due to generations of purposefully poor healthcare infrastructure in our communities together with the racism inherent in the medical profession itself, as recently evidenced by a doctor (and elected official) asking in a public forum if black folks are getting infected at a higher rate because they just don’t wash their hands. Add to that a sprinkle of watching yet another privileged white woman call the cops on a man that had the audacity to bird watch while black in a public space. The hits just keep coming.

This last month has been trying as hell for us black folks. But, if we’re being real, it’s been a trying four centuries.

Being black in this country means constantly trying to square America’s promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness with the horrors you experience in your daily life. You watch another black life taken in HD. The loss is sensationalized, and you can’t get away from it, leaving you feeling frustrated, furious, and helpless. You look at your children, and you wonder if things will ever get better, if they will know true equality in this so-called land of the free. Or will they still be learning the names of black men and women murdered by police and white vigilantes? Will they have to take to the streets, marching for justice that remains on the horizon, ever elusive? Will they be able to breathe? Or will the country keep a knee on their necks, slowly suffocating them as it has you?

As I poked at the stubborn words clustered in the back of my skull, trying to coax them out into the light where they could be of some use, I found myself wondering how we’re supposed to give our black children something we’ve never experienced ourselves: peace, freedom, true equality? What does that even feel like? What could it mean for their futures, their well being, if the color of their skin was no longer a liability? And how do we make sure it’s real, not the switcheroo that keeps being perpetrated on black communities from the end of the Civil War, to the crushing finale of Reconstruction, to the Civil Rights era? Two steps forward only to get shoved three steps back.

And yet, I feel hope. How can such a thing exist, in light of what’s happening? In light of what’s always happened?

There are folks marching in the streets, demanding change, accountability, and equal protection under the law. Not just the same tired lip service, but actual equality. An end to racist institutions. A true reckoning such as this country has never seen, not even when soldiers took up arms against their former fellow countrymen over the abolition of slavery.

This is different. I can feel it.

But that doesn’t mean a happy ending is waiting at the end of this nightmarish 400 year long fairy tale. It just means there’s more work to be done.

For those of us working in the advocacy and political space, the amplification of this moment feels like a resuscitation, smelling salts broken beneath our noses that get us even more focused on the path forward and the critical work ahead. We knew racism was the binding agent undergirding every aspect of American society, but it’s in sharper relief now, more visible and undeniable. Unaffected folks are suddenly seeing it — really seeing it — for the first time. Given the work I do, I find myself almost compelled to believe this will make some difference. I cup the flickering flame of hope in my hands, protecting it against high winds that would snuff it out for good.

In retrospect, maybe the words weren’t the stubborn part of this operation after all. Maybe it was me all along, burying myself into the work I find so important, the work I believe could deliver some of these sorely needed changes. Because my response to stress and turmoil has always been to keep busy, to run hard and fast, to collapse into bed at the end of the night, exhausted and unable to think of anything besides blessed sleep. Because the reality of what this country has been and currently is for black folks will crush us if we don’t keep moving, working, hustling, and pushing for change. To stop, even for a moment, is to risk obliteration beneath the weight of centuries of people, policies, and precedent, all working together to make sure anyone that looks like us never succeeds.

So I’m going to keep running in the direction of what I hope waits for us on the horizon. I’m going to keep taking this frustration, anger, sadness, and helplessness and turn it into something useful: words, actions, plans, policies. All the while, I’m going to keep Maya Angelou’s words at the front of my mind.

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

And I’m going to rise. We all are.

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So You’ve Been Called Out: A White Person’s Guide to Doing Better

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As someone who writes and talks about race, racism, and white supremacy a lot, I’m used to pushback whenever I point out our racist institutions or racist behavior in individuals. And as a black woman working in mostly progressive spaces, I’m also used to the constant stream of microaggression and casual racism within our ranks. Occasionally, the racism isn’t so casual at all, but those instances are somewhat rare. What’s not rare is the automatic response whenever I or another person of color dares to point out racist behavior in some of the white folks dwelling in these so-called progressive spaces. A torrent of defensiveness is unleashed at the mere suggestion that the white person in question needs to correct their conduct. This reaction is almost always amplified to outrageous levels because, on the whole, progressives believe themselves to be completely ‘woke’. Anything that puts that wokeness in jeopardy is met with brutal defensiveness.

And because this defensiveness is a constant, I’ve come to know it pretty damned well. It’s the kind of thing that never travels alone. It always arrives in the company of several tried and true excuses for why the behavior or comments weren’t problematic at all. These excuses are so common, so often used, so seemingly set in tired, frustrating stone, that you can set a clock by them.

Suffice to say, I’ve heard each and every one of these excuses more times than I can count, and they’re always brandished by self-identified allies taken fully aback by an uppity negro questioning their solidarity with black and brown folks. So, I figured, why not review them one by one? And, while we’re busy reviewing them, let’s also outline in detail why they’re complete and utter bullshit.

That’s Not What I said!!

Yes, the double exclamation point is absolutely necessary. TBH, I could’ve added upwards of three more. This gem of a go-to response also doubles as a great example of gaslighting, wherein the white person tells the black person that what she heard with her own ears (or read with her own eyes) just isn’t true. It didn’t happen that way. She has to be mistaken. Of course, she’s not mistaken, and this plaintive denial only makes a bad situation worse. That’s not what I said usually pairs well with you’re twisting my words, why are you lying?, and why are you trying to make me look bad?!

I Have Black and/or Brown Friends

There’s no piece of evidence more convincing to a defensive white person newly called out for making a racist comment than a conveniently leveraged roster of nameless, faceless black and brown ‘friends’. These alleged best buds of color serve as a convenient barrier behind which a white person can hide from any and all accountability for problematic words and actions. It’s pretty damned gross, but it happens ALL THE TIME. Black and brown folks don’t exist to shield you from blame for whatever you just did, said, or posted online, white folks. Stop doing this.

And, furthermore, I’d like to go on record by calling bullshit on these folks having black and brown friends in the first place. More like, they’ve seen black and brown folks before. They work with them or went to school with some. That’s likely it. You can’t tell me that you have genuine, deep friendships with people of color and you see no problem with using them as proof that you couldn’t utter a racist comment.

But let’s pretend that you actually do have a black friend (again, doubtful). Just because this single black individual is allegedly fine with your bullshit doesn’t mean that I am, simply because I’m also black. You do understand that’s not how this works, right? I would never expect you to act the same as another white acquaintance because you’re white too. Thinking all black people act essentially the same is part of the problem, as well as further evidence of the impossibility of you having genuine friendships with black people.

You Don’t Know My Heart

This tired excuse is usually either shouted or accompanied by tears. If typed in response to a post or comment, it comes ready with some exclamation points, is in all caps, or both. The translation for this excuse is: forget what I just said or did to you; let’s focus on who I’d like folks to think I am. Because that’s the long and short of all this defensiveness. No matter who you are, getting called out on your inappropriate behavior is uncomfortable. So is knowing that you did or said something that hurt people. I get it. We all like to think we’re good people, and many of us actually are. I truly believe that. But every single one of us was raised in a society that was built on a foundation of racism and white supremacy. Some racist shit is going to come out of your mouths, white folks, often without you realizing why it’s problematic.

If you’re called out on it, instead of taking that as a brutal indictment of your character, understand it for what it really is: an invitation for you to be better. Personal growth is something that shouldn’t stop for any of us as long as we’re alive. Don’t you want to be better tomorrow than you are today? I sure as hell do. And if I’m doing or saying something homophobic, racist, ableist, Islamophobic, transphobic, or antisemitic, I want people to call me on it. Immediately. Why would anyone want anything different?

Everyone Knows I’m Not a Racist

I just had a white woman tell me this the other day. I laughed out loud, of course, but it also made me wonder, aren’t I part of the ‘everyone’ to which you speak? Very telling. I guess you meant every white person knows you’re not racist. But I digress…

This sounds like something Donald Trump would say, TBH. And can we all agree that if you’re sputtering excuses that make you sound like Trump, there’s a problem? Allyship isn’t a state of being. It’s a journey. And the work is never done. You don’t reach a state of ‘genuine ally’ that, once attained, means you can’t behave in an ignorant, hurtful manner. Don’t brandish your DIY ally badge at me like it wipes away the impact of your terrible behavior. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you don’t get to announce to marginalized communities that you’re their ally. That’s something that gets said about you. Like coolness. Loudly proclaiming yourself cool just means you’re not cool at all. Only calling yourself cool doesn’t hurt anyone, but calling yourself an ally while refusing to listen to POCs when they point out your hurtful behavior actually is causing harm. And following that up by using the blunt end of your defensiveness as a weapon against said POC only multiplies the damage done.

I’m Fighting For You and You’re Just Being Divisive

Calling a black person divisive is a white person’s best chance at quickly ending a conversation that could be damaging to their self-image. Because defensiveness is what happens when the idea of who we are comes face to face with the reality of who we show up as in the world. When someone calls you out for racist comments or behavior, they are implicitly pointing out the gap between who you say you are and who you show yourself to be in your day to day life.

It’s always struck me as odd that the pointing out of racism is considered more divisive to some white folks than the racism itself. But, that’s the situation in which black folks and other POCs find themselves in this country. That’s bad enough, but it’s also the situation in which we find ourselves in progressive spaces and movements. And, if we point it out, woe be to divisive, ungrateful, angry, troublemaking us.

Just because you’ve never been called out before doesn’t mean you’re good to go. Since the situation so often turns nuclear when we point out racist behavior, many POCs don’t even bother to bring it up. Sometimes, it’s just easier to put it behind us and get on with our day, especially since much of the fallout usually ends up burning us. If a POC actually calls you out, keep that in mind. She probably dealt with many dozens of microaggressions before she finally broke and said something to you. She probably calculated the pros and cons using the same automatic equations POCs know all too well. Because, most of the time, it’s just not fucking worth the trouble, no matter how unfairly we’re treated.

I Don’t Even See Color

I wish I had a couple dollars for every time a white person has told me this. I’d have a fuckton of dollars. But, instead, I just have enough pent up frustration to power another thousand articles like this one.

White folks, we all see color. It’s ridiculous to pretend otherwise. What’s more, I want you to see me as black. I just don’t want you to lose your damn mind and treat me like a second class citizen solely based on that blackness. And, for the record, that’s what Martin Luther King, Jr. wanted too, despite your carefully curated understanding of his I Have a Dream speech. The Promised Land had nothing to do with being unable to see racial differences. That’s just ridiculous and lazy. It’s about treating each other the way we hope to be treated: with fairness and respect. It’s about equality, accessibility, and inclusivity in all facets of American life.

The problem isn’t that I’m black and you’re white. The problem is that we live in a society designed to benefit you because of your whiteness and oppress me because of my blackness. You didn’t have anything to do with how that system was constructed, but any racist attitudes and behavior uphold that system instead of tearing it down. Don’t you want to stop upholding that unfair, oppressive system? If so, think of being called out as a blessing. It opens a door to a better way of showing up in this world. It leads to personal growth. And once you walk through that door, you can turn to help others through it as well. Or you can ride away from that opportunity on a tidal wave of your own self righteous defensiveness, which helps no one, least of all you.

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