Keep Talking

In the week that my mother passed away, my inbox was flooded with emails of support and friendship. My community texted me, some even called, to tell me they were there for me and that I could count on them for anything I needed. It meant more than I can say to feel the support of people around me who stood by me, even if they had no experience with the pain of my loss.

After that initial week, an occasional question would flit in, asking how I was doing, maybe, but for the most part, life went on for everyone else, as it always does.

And I understand it. We all like easy, status quo, we like to return to things where we left them before we had to look up from our own lives for a moment.

It feels like that time now again, about Charleston.

 

The first time reaction posts of the horror of Charleston have slowed to an ebb. We're now celebrating Marriage Equality in America, which is rightly so a mind-blowing historical and just event. But today is the start of a new week, and we return back to the lives we have.

It's human nature to tire of work. Emotional work feels equal in effort to physical. Writing about Charleston is an emotional landmine—as anything that is about race. Tempers flare, friendships are lost, and the confrontational nature of opposing sides makes some of us feel like running to our homes and locking the doors behind us.

But we can't let the talk of race die down because the impact of racism in America continues. Even if in your heart, you tire of explaining to people—sometimes even in your family—the dialogue needs to remain. Racism hurts us all, every one of every color. How many times in the past have we pretended with other things in our lives, that something isn't there? It doesn't work. Problems don't disappear.

We all need to keep talking about race, and not leave the work from here on out now to people of color. Whistling about how we don't see color, and we're not the ones with the problem, or how we're not racist and have taught our children to not see color, does not make racism in America fall away. It is there. To see it, read the news on any single day. It's not enough to write our one golden post or deliver our one in-person request to not engage in hateful bigoted dialogue. Without a doubt, anyone being vocal is appreciated, you could even say it's our duty. But we can't dust off our hands now with “my work is done here.”

We need to keep on writing and speaking on the injustice and existence of racism in America. Especially when others have stopped. The hostility from some we know may continue, and we will probably be told by others that we don't see the whole picture—That's when our words take on even more importance.

America has finally started talking about race. Voices dying down can bring that same death to this topic.

 

You can keep the talk of racism in America alive, but your voice has to be the breath within it.

Please keep talking:

Series of Nighttime Fires Bring Arson to Six Black Churches

 

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Sometimes The Way We Have Always Done It, Doesn't Work

When I think of how different I am from how I used to think 10 years ago, 20, I can't believe I am the same person.

I am, but I have changed. There are things I no longer fear, and things I have grown confident in. What has led me to pursue the hope of growing into a better person and fingers crossed, one that helps make our world better even for one person, is to consider that my thinking needs to change.

This week, I read articles that left me in a private moment of stillness. The writing in them the kind that calls on us to be open, not reactionary, and to examine what it is we harbor. Even if we buck against it.

I am hoping that you read at least one of them. And then to reflect honestly about the words here, we can't always be right and we can't always keep thinking the way we've always been thinking.

It's time to see the world as it is for others.

Thank you.

From Alternet . Taking Responsibility for Racism and Why People Freak Out When They're Called Out About Race

From Huffington Post . Why It's Hard To Talk About Racism

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