“This afternoon I took a walk down our block in Los Angeles and a white man yelled, ‘Go back to Inglewood or Ima shoot you like they did that Trayvon Martin!’
I was going to say something, but I had my son. And I didn’t know if the white man really had a gun. And I want my son to stay alive. So I left and came home. Then I read the text my sister had just sent me that Zimmerman had been acquitted of murdering Trayvon, and I understood why that man felt he could run out after us and say what he said. This verdict has set a precedent giving racists the carte blanche to kill people of color and get away with it. And I am terrified.” – What About Our Fear?: An Open Letter To My Fellow American Friends and Neighbors
This is not okay. To my white friends: it’s not enough to just coolly sit back and assess the case and look at this visceral response from people of color and somehow think that this is “their” problem. Nope. Racism, the overt kind as well as the subtle biases and everything that comes with that…that is very definitely OUR problem.
And it pisses me off that the onus of proving that point is always on people of color when WE need to do the work and LISTEN when they tell us what’s wrong, and analyse our assumptions and beliefs and privileges, and learn where we can do better, and call out our friends and family for their bullshit and teach them how they can be better and more aware, and always, always, always stand up when we see injustice.
Every damn one of us should be enraged. Every damn one of us should want to stop this. And every damn one of us is a starting point. So c’mon. Let’s do the work. Change starts right here, right now.