We Are Not Like Them

It’s a privilege to never think about race. I don’t have that privilege.

It kills me how some people want so badly to believe racism is buried beneath layers and layers of history, “ancient history,” they say. But it’s not. It’s like an umpire brushing the thinnest layer of dirt off home plate: it’s right there.

So maybe the marching, rallying, showing up, it serves a purpose. It says, We will not be invisible or afraid. We will not give up. And that’s not nothing. It might actually be everything.

White silence is violence.

You think racism is so awful. You want to level that playing field I mentioned. But are you willing to acknowledge how much you benefit from white supremacy? That every single social, political, and legal system in this country is built and maintained by white people, on the bedrock idea of white power, and that allows you to move through the world with a basic confidence in your sense of safety, opportunity, and respect. That as white people you are automatically associated with everything that is good and right and ‘normal,’ and everyone else’s experiences and value are weighed relative to that.

If I were a man, they’d be celebrating me for that. That’s why my philosophy is WWWMD.” “I’m not even going to try to guess.” “What would a white man do?” “Ha-ha, love that.” “Seriously though, a white man would come into this office, or a boardroom or whatever, and believe he had the duty—the power—to change things, make history, lead a charge. Well, I do too.

Well, it's not usually white kids being accidentally being shot by police, is it?

The longer you let something go, the easier it is to stay silent, and the silence is where the resentment starts to fester and rot.

It's a dangerous combination when we have officers with weapons and all the power, who also feel superior to the people they serve, when they look at our communities as places to control and police rather than protect and serve.

For the hanged and beaten. For the shot, drowned, and burned. For the tortured, tormented and terrorized. For those abandoned by the rule of law. We will remember.

Sometimes you can’t think your way out of a thing. You have to feel it. And sometimes you just have to let it out. You can’t just push it away and pretend it’s not happening.

Now I’m wondering why we always wait to say things at all. It’s mighty foolish of us to wait for anything. To wait to tell someone we love them or that we’re mad as hell at them.

Sometimes you just need to be around someone who loved you before you were a fully formed person. It’s like finding your favorite sweatshirt in the back of the closet, the one you forgot why you stopped wearing and once you find it again you sleep in it every night.

All too soon these sweet boys will be seen as menacing and scary, as trespasser's in places that certain people don't feel they belong, as people who deserve to be questioned or confronted, or even killed because of the color of their skin.

God, I need mercy in my heart, and grace in my soul.

The only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people that are better than you are—not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous and more forgiving—and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad—or good—it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. But the best, as well. —A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara

What do you see when you see me?Have you made up your mind about who I can be?You could get to know me if you triedYou could see what I'm like inside I am made of blood, bones, and muscles too.So how can you say I am less than you?I have so many dreams, even at my age.Let me be free, don't put me in a cage.Watch what I can do.

All I'd hoped was that it would be better for y'all. But here we are again, fifty years later and ain't nothing changed but the music.

It’s a privilege to never think about race.

Now there ain’t no point in crying about it. How many times has Gigi said that to me, after lost races or unrequited crushes? Hasn’t it been the mantra of Black women for generations? What choice do we have except to get on with it already?

Maybe it's what we all want from the people we love: to be seen for exactly who we are.

Maybe it's what we all want from the people we love: to be seen exactly for who we are.

and sometimes we need to swallow our pride and reach out. Even when we don’t know what to say and we’re afraid of messing everything up by saying the wrong thing. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to talk about something. All that matters is that you try. The longer you let something go, the easier it is to stay silent, and the silence is where the resentment starts to fester and rot.

Being a cop, or a cop’s wife, is like living in your own country, a parallel nation to the US, one with its own language, own rules, own secrets.

I wasn't finished with him yet. I had so many things left to teach him, to tell him, I'm never gonna get the chance now.

Real talk, it’s time for a new day. We can’t have the same old, same old. Not anymore. Not on my watch. It’s a dangerous combination when we have officers with weapons and all the power, who also feel superior to the people they serve, when they look at our communities as places to control and police rather than protect and serve. The white officers approach white people one way and Black people another way, often with less humanity, less concern, less humility. That’s just a fact, whether they even realize it or not.

The only way change can happen is if people care.

A thousand books and movies and lessons in school have told you this was true, so much so that it’s seeped into your very soul. That wasn’t your fault, but what you do about it now is. So how will you confront the lie? What will you sacrifice? What are you willing to put on the line? Are you going to send your kid to the public school down the street? Are you going to rent your house to a young Black family? Are you going to hire more eager dark girls with kinky curls to be your junior executive? Because your well-meaning intentions, your woke T-shirts, your Black Lives Matter tote bags, your racial justice book clubs are not going to cut it.

Or you can choose to control the one thing you can: your mind-set.

Cookie in her wedding dress, a replica of Princess Diana’s, but even bigger and more sparkly;