Crying for Them
**Bonus Blog! I’m feeling this one very strongly right now (and I’m getting a backlog of posts) so I’m giving this one to you today**
Okay. Let’s start off by saying that I’m completely sleep deprived right now. I really haven’t slept well in weeks, and last night was especially bad.
That being said, I seem to be highly emotional today, and not in a good way. I just watched a video on racism. It wasn’t a particularly touching video, and yet it got the tears flowing.
I’ll be the first to admit that I have no idea what it feels like to be a black person in today’s world. I can guess at it, but I really have no clue as to the depths of the persecution they experience every single day. I try to be more aware, but without walking a mile in their shoes, it’s impossible for me to really understand. I am a woman, so I have experienced misogyny, but I don’t think that even comes close.
I saw this on Facebook yesterday and reposted it:
Ahmaud was not killed because he was Black, but because those men are white racists. Black is not the problem, being white & racist is. Change the narrative, otherwise being Black will continue to be the deficit.
Change the narrative…
Eldrid Harris
I thought it was a really good point. Like with narcissists, racists don’t see their beliefs as problematic. They feel like hurting others is justified because of how they see others. They feel better than. If there was some way to show them the truth, the world would be such a better place. They very unknowingly add to the cruelty, pain, and sadness of the world, fully believing they are in the right.
I was really disheartened when a family member responded like this:
He was killed because he made a bad decision. He ran towards a man with a shotgun. And he was shot by a father who was protecting his son.
Now, I don’t know what happened in the situation. My family member might be correct in the fact that the father was shooting in self defense. From what I’ve read I don’t believe that to be the case, but I wasn’t there, so I really don’t know for sure.
What I do know is that isn’t what the initial quote was about. He had completely missed the point. The point was that it wouldn’t have happened, had the gunman not been a racist. Period.
I’m not even going to get into the fact that an innocent man was shot and killed FOR RUNNING!!! The entire thought of that makes me want to weep for humanity until I vomit.
The thing that saddened me about this was that my family member was outing himself as uncaring of the plight of People of Color (POC) at best and a racist at worst. I’m sad to admit that it didn’t surprise me at all, but it definitely made me lose all respect for him.
The embarrassing part is that I wanted to lash out at him. I wanted to hurl in his face hurtful things which (while true) had nothing to do with the issue at hand. I also didn’t want to make family gatherings more uncomfortable than they will be now that I know how little he cares for POC.
While on Facebook this morning, racists themes kept coming up. I found this scale which I thought was really helpful:
Where do you fall? Is there room for improvement? Do you care enough to take steps to learn and become a better ally?
I was happy with who I was in this until I saw this scale. I can do better. I need to do better. I need to figure out how to be better. The article where the scale is has a lot of helpful resources. I’m going to use some of my down time to do some reading so I can be better.
- Posted in: Uncategorized
publicinhiding 