To add more...
My wife is black. My best friend, my brother, I live in a community where the majority of us are POC. When my wife, my children and I go into predominantly white neighborhoods, we’ve experienced the awkward stares. Cause we’re lesbian? POC? Who really knows, but the energy is glaring.
Seeing police brutality brings me to tears, the first thing I think of is my brother, my sons friend, my nephew, so many people that I hold dear to my heart and it could have easily been them...because they’re black. My nephew has to be taught how to behave when pulled over because he is a 6’5 black man. Sweetest soul ever, brilliant, a full ride scholarship to an amazing college, but because society sees him as “less than” or “threatening” he has to be taught to conform and change how he behaves to appease others and “make sure they don’t feel threatened by his presence” seriously? He’s a human being.
An entire population of people speak of their experiences and mistreatment and have been speaking to police brutality for decades...they should have never been dismissed in the first place. They have to be ok losing life after life, watching the legal system acquit the murderes involved and then watching the country not listen. Not care. Not educate themselves. So now they have more protests on the same matter. Risking their health during a pandemic when studies show our POC are disproportionately effected by this virus. Yet another mark on our circumstances. Poverty and lack of access to healthy foods create illness...now our underlying illnesses during a pandemic kill us off. Go figure.
Next time a news report wants to take a way from a protest by discussing the riots, which aren’t even the protesters sometimes, remember that the protest is about LIVES, a riot is on material. One can be replaced, one cant.
Black people in this country experienced slavery, that lives and hurts their communities thru generational trauma. On top of this very unaddressed generational trauma, they experience all the inequalities they have of today in daily life. Sometimes hurt comes out in anger, violence...society uses this as a mark against black people, instead of seeing the hurt they are really suffering. Instead of compassion, understanding, helping.
To think that slavery’s harm just “disappeared” among an entire group of people is ignorant. We look at one another here and when we discuss FOO, we look to the parents...but then we have to show compassion and understand they did the best at they could with the tools they were given, so we look to their parents, and their parents and so on...if you’re Black in America, then you can trace back your FOO to eventually find an ancestor that was enslaved. What did they teach the slaves? To be muted, that they’re nobody, to fear, to abuse to assert power, control, to not feel...
Now we have an entire community of people that never had these emotional traumas addressed, that were sent off into the world after slavery and essentially told to figure it out. Now we had them pass this trauma down thru their generations. And we dare to judge, dare to scold, dare to minimize their pain. Mental health is EVERYTHING. Showing up in educating yourself on what is happening in this country and what is happening to an entire group of people is crucial. See the person. Hold compassion. Stand up when there’s wrongs, help when you can, if people speak to their experience, listen. Don’t discount their voice.
Black is beautiful. Every color, every human, beautiful in their own ways. If you find yourself thinking things that mean “some hold superiority” than others, then you should take the time to assess why you think this, and work through it. So that you don’t pass it to your children, to others in society.