"Judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character"

Events over the last 4 years have turned this country into a powder keg of racial tension, and there have been explosions everywhere.  The most recent one, the murder of George Floyd by 4 White police officers in Minneapolis, has put the nation front and center in terms of racial disparity and unrest.  There have been peaceful protests as well as rioting, and people are at a loss as to what to do.  

This is just one in a long line of things that have happened to make my heart bleed.  As the daughter of a Black man, the sister of a Black man, and the mother of a Black man, I am saddened and disappointed and scared because things in this country seem to be getting worse instead of better.  

I was born in the North and was subject to my share of racist behavior. It wasn't nearly as overt and often, but it happened. The problem is, I learned later, that I was raised in a "nice" Black family. A Cosby show type of family. A non threatening family that was light skinned enough to make people feel comfortable.  My mother had been an English major in college and people told us all the time we "spoke" well.  Like there was another option. We had the nuclear family with mom and dad and kids. My parents both had regular "upstanding" jobs. People were comfortable inviting us over and having their children sleep over at our house. My mother worked for a big insurance company and my father worked for the phone company. They were very social and had an amazing and diverse group of friends.  I grew up with people of all races and economic backgrounds coming and going in my home and I thought that was normal.  Apparently it wasn't. I went to a high school that was predominantly White, and I can remember feeling like I was included rather than excluded in just about everything. The first time I really felt racial "tension" was when a Black student from our rival high school was murdered by a White student that went to my school.  The words, "race war" were uttered for the first time in my peer group. The big intercity football game was the weekend after after the shooting and for the first time in my life, I was worried about racial violence. Then when I got to college, I really became aware of the racial lines that had been drawn in our country.  I remember being part of the Black Student Union and one of the big quotes in the late 80's was, "It's a Black Thing, you wouldn't understand".  We had shirts that said "It's a Black Thing, ASK us and we'll HELP you understand".  I had no idea 30 years ago how true those words would still be today. 

I have two biracial children that have often been mistaken for Latino or Pacific Islander.  They get questioned all the time as to their "blackness".  My son has had to show people my picture to prove that their mom is Black.  I raised them to judge people on the content of their character, not the color of their skin. They had friends of all races and I thought that the world they were being prepared for was going to be much more tolerant than the one my parents and grandparents grew up in. I was wrong. I sent my daughter off to college in 2015 and she attended a small, private liberal arts university in North Carolina.  For the first tie in her life, she had to "choose".  She couldn't be biracial.  It was either you're White or you're not.  Period.  The first time my daughter was called "Ni**er" was in college. It broke my heart because I foolishly believed that she could just be herself, not judged by her outward appearance.  

I can't tell you how many times I've heard that we are "better off" now than we were under Obama.  That may be true from a purely economic and upward mobility standpoint.  I'm not here to take away from that.  But what I am going to dispute is HOW we are treated.  It's like that old saying, "A drunk man's words are a sober man's thoughts". The country had been acting "sober" for a long damn time, now we have someone in a position of power that opened the liquor cabinet.  Racism has been alive and well for years, ever since Black folks were found to be little more than animals and weren't even considered human beings. But people were more covert about their racist attitudes.  Since 2016, hate crimes and racial violence have increased.  The rise of social media has allowed people of like minded ideas and ideologies to fuel the fires of racism.  In the past, if you were a card carrying racist, you had to seek to find them in your own community.  Klan meetings are still held all the time, they were just done in secret.  People would go to work in a 3 piece suit in an office full of diversity, and go home and put on the white hood.  Now? After Ahmaud Arbery was hunted down and murdered in cold blood by 3 men in Georgia, you can find pages and pages of people who support them.  People who think that what they did was okay and justified.  People have been comfortable enough in their suits of bigotry that even my son has had other children walk up to him and ask, "Now that Trump got elected, are you going to get deported?". My son is not Latino. He's not Mexican. He's half black and half white and his mother, grandmother, great grandmother and even farther were BORN in this country.  And the terrifying part is? That he could be detained for WEEKS without being able to call me and thrown in a damn detention center just because someone may assume he's Mexican. Children live what they learn, and they are being taught this shit at home, and they are comfortable enough in the current climate to SAY this out loud. 

I have had things happen to me that would NEVER happen to my White friends. Never.  How many of my White friends can say that their great grandparents had a child stolen from them and given away...because he was light skinned enough to "pass" for White? How many of my White friends have stood over their grandfather's gravesite and have a group of non White people drive by in a car and yell racial slurs at them? How many of my White friends have had a total stranger stop by their table in a restaurant and yell at them that their child is an abomination? How many of my White friends have been stopped when walking down the street in a group "just because" they looked like they were doing something wrong?  How many of my White friends have been told that they "speak well" despite being White or told they "don't sound White" when they talk on the phone?  How many of my White friends have had to tell their sons don't dress a certain way or they might be singled out by the police? 

Let me be VERY clear and transparent that I do not agree with looting and the destruction of property for the sake of personal gain.  I think it detracts from the overall message that we are trying to send.  However, I DO understand the feeling of hopelessness and helplessness. I DO understand the lack of trust in a system that has failed us for hundreds of years. A system that had to establish not one, not two, but three separate Constitutional Amendments to grant us the freedoms that Whites have, and it still took almost 100 years after being granted the RIGHT to vote for Black people to actually be able to EXERCISE that right in all 50 states. A system that let the murderers of a 14 year old boy go free after one of the most heinous crimes of the 20th century.  A system where Black prisoners are 50% more likely to be wrongfully convicted and spend more time in prison than their White counterparts.  A system where Black people are disproportionately more likely to receive the death penalty for killing a White person than the opposite. A system where even though the numbers may be similar on paper, Black people are disproportionately more likely to be shot and killed by the police than White people.  A system built on the backs of slaves in which Whites have a far better chance of economic mobility than Black people do. A system where White people think it's okay to "weaponize" their privilege and call the police on Black people for innocuous and inane reasons.  

People are pissed off and they have a right to be.  They have a right to be angry about the injustices done to their parents and grandparents, the injustices done to them and their children.  But if you want to change the dynamic, if you want to TRULY effect change, you have to vote.  Get the fuck out and VOTE. Don't assume your neighbor's vote is going to help you.  Don't assume your vote doesn't count.  FORTY THREE PERCENT of eligible voters didn't bother to get their asses out and vote in 2016.  That's almost HALF. And I'll bet a large part of that 43% is sitting and bitching about the way things are right now.  And it's not just the Presidential Elections.  Vote in your state and local elections.  Those elections in some ways are even MORE important than the presidential one.  

Don't assume that because I went to church with you or babysat your children or was the team mom for a sport with your child, that I am any Less Black.  Don't assume because I speak a certain way that I am any Less Black.  Don't assume that because I have biracial children and am married to a White Man that I am any Less Black.  Don't assume that because I have a "White" name (which by the way, is Greek in origin) that I am any Less Black.  There is nothing at all keeping me from being treated like Breonna Taylor or Kathryn Johnston or Atatiana Jefferson. That's how Black I am.