I took a week. I listened and read. I probably didn’t do enough of that, but I did what I could. I spilled some tears, and held some more back in front of my older son, as I watched him play in his privileged glory, knowing that he has an easier path ahead of him than so many. I felt guilty, and I felt thankful, and then I felt guilty again. 

I’m not trying to make this about me, but this is my blog, and I generally write in the first person. I want to write in support of women – women of all colors and shapes and sizes, women in all life stages – but support of women of color is all I can think about at the moment. And what that support needs to look like. My first realization through all of this was that I have been so worried about offending people that I’m not always forthright with what I believe. 

So here it is: I believe that people of color are being cruelly and criminally discriminated against in most public as well as private spaces in this country. I believe this must change as soon as possible, and if that happens at an expense to me, it will be worth it. The fact that I need to write this down as if it’s some grand gesture to declare it is laughable, but what’s worse is that I was subconsciously worried about alienating people who did not agree with these sentiments. Now, I realize that if a person does not agree with these most basic facts of the state of race in this country, we have nothing in common and that person’s readership or support is not something I seek. 

I try to put myself in the shoes of the black women who fear letting their sons go out at night because of what the POLICE might do to them, and I am horrified. I try to put myself in the shoes of the women of color who are statistically the poorest, the most likely to be passed over for jobs and promotions, the most likely to need to work multiple jobs to provide for families and children they need to leave at home alone, and I am shaken.

The news cycle is slowly moving on. The hot topics are now defunding the police, a conversation the protestors started, and voting to get people in office to promote lasting change for equality, so this is a really exciting development! However, we can’t leave the important conversations behind. We can’t stall in our evolution. We can’t stop trying to become a nation that does not discriminate against people for the color of their skin. We can’t stop trying to become a nation whose police officers do not gun down unarmed people of color and then hide behind their badges and unions. We truly need to continue this fight. In order for our institutions to have anti-racist policies, the people running them, the people of this country must be anti-racist. More soul-searching and more change needs to occur on the individual level. 

It has taken too long and has cost too many lives to get to the point for white, suburban women like myself to be outraged to the point of action. I take responsibility for my part in that and wish I could apologize, but instead of words, I will try to present action. I will own my role in this fight, to examine my privilege and denounce it. I’ll be honest that I don’t totally know how to do that yet because it’s more complicated than I thought. I thought I was not racist. The concept of anti-racism was utterly unknown to me until Saturday, May 30th when the protests took over social media. My people-pleasing tendencies are causing me to have a hard time because I don’t always know what to say. 

I just know this can’t be it. We can’t just “go back to normal” now. Things can never go back to how they were before the recent deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and the protests they sparked. Obviously it should never have taken the deaths of innocent people to bring about this change. The people of this country, mainly the white people who weren’t listening, should’ve had the compassion to listen to the voices of people of color LIVING through this violence, not just the ones who died at the hands of it.