Dear (Fellow) White People

The first time my Facebook posts started drawing rebuke from certain friends and family members was when I posted in defense of Black Lives Matter. One racist acquaintance took to commenting in ill-formed and misspelled sentences about how Black people were thugs, and when I deleted his comments, he took it as an invite to start private messaging me Infowars and Breitbart articles about how Black people are thugs, and didn't I know that BLM was a terrorist organization that wants all white people dead? They're not and they don't, and that person has since been deleted and blocked. I got into a political argument with a family member about the death of Freddie Gray. Can't they agree that, regardless of a person's race or even crimes committed, they don't deserve to have their spinal cord severed in the car ride to the police station? Before Trump's campaign, BLM was the topic that opened my eyes to the disconnect between my world view and the world views of people I know and love. But what is to be done about it? 

Sometimes, like when that person used to be married into your extended family and isn't any more and private messaging you offensive and violent garbage, they can be deleted. Sometimes, you love this person and have an otherwise close relationship with them so you drop it to save the relationship. But, you can't let it go permanently. I can't let it go because lives are on the line. 

Two years ago, 9 Black church members were studying their Bibles on a Wednesday night in their sanctuary, their safe place, and a white supremacist murdered them, a white supremacist radicalized by the same alt-right conspiracies and hate speech that have found an elevated platform under this administration. This white supremacist took the lives on nine people, without guilt, because he believed the hateful ideologies maintained by Breitbart, and InfoWars, and the other insane rags racists like to message me articles from. White supremacy means that Black Americans are not safe in their own houses of worship. These ideologies have consequences. 

Yesterday, the courts ruled again that cops can kill Black people without legal consequences. Philando Castile was pulled over in a traffic stop because the officer thought he "looked like someone involved in a robbery" even though he couldn't get a good look at the passengers... Castile then informed the police officer that he had a gun on him because he had a concealed carry permit before reaching for his ID in his wallet. The officer shot him SEVEN times, killing him, with his fiancee in the passenger seat filming the whole exchange, and his young daughter in the backseat, watching her father get murdered. Yesterday, the jury found him not guilty, not even on charges of murder, but on charges of second-degree manslaughter and reckless discharge of a firearm. Does it matter that Castile was following the directions of the officer and had a permit to carry? No. Because the officer's fear of a Black man with a gun justifies that man being shot seven times inside his own vehicle in front of his child. Does it matter that Castile was not a robber, but a beloved public schools worker whose death inspired the school children to send him letters with hand-drawn rainbows expressing how big his heart was and how sad they are that he is gone? No. Because his Blackness overrode the goodness, the love he poured into this world. This case shows once again that racist fear matters more than Black lives, and living good lives won't keep Black people alive. 

Today is just another day in America with yet another reminder that our racism has deadly consequences. So today I'm praying for a day when we can agree that Black Lives Matter, regardless of political party affiliations, and I'm donating to organizations that support black communities and advocate for police reform. I'm also promising that I will continue to have tough conversations with my people, because we cannot allow this hate to flourish in our own families, our own communities. It's just too dangerous. We have to do better, for Philando Castile and for Reverend Clementa Pinckney, Cynthia Hurd, Reverend Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Tywanza Sanders, Ethel Lance, Susie Jackson, Depayne Middleton Doctor, Reverend Daniel Simmons, and Myra Thompson. 

Philando Castile