I feel enormous sadness, fear, and anger.

Black people have been choked and shot on camera for a decade. Children have been shot. Children have gone to play in a park and never come back. I wish that pain on no person.

For this decade I have silently lived in fear. I have not wanted to speak and be criticized. I do not understand what my fear given me to keep me trapped, but it is no longer enough. If I were Black, anyone could shoot me, or my friends, or my family, or place me in a chokehold for eight minutes and forty six seconds. Since I am White, I do not pay for this injustice in bodily insecurity.

I pay for it in spiritual insecurity. I expect to receive my generous portion of respect, civil rights, and legal recourse precisely because the scraps are given to the Black half of society. My family’s intergenerational wealth is grown from the bitter seeds of the GI bill and redlining. My comfort is built on exclusion, death, and the silence of generations of White people.

I will not be silent. I will stand up and be counted. I will read, listen, learn, and speak.

 

I give a damn.

 

Black lives matter.

 

Love to all.