The past few weeks have been difficult. I don’t know that I really have my thoughts together yet, but here’s the best I can give.
Growing up, I was a sheltered, only girl, PK with a very protective family. Needless to say, those rose-colored glasses were BIG. When I moved away at 19 l, I had my first boyfriend. He was white, and his brother called him a nigger-lover. Being thought of poorly because I was black, along with many other racist things I’d come to experience, was and still is very exhausting, difficult & infuriating.
The year I met my husband (he was 16), he was riding a bike home from work & his family had just moved into a nice, white neighborhood. He was stopped by a cop and taken in because “he looked like he didn’t belong there.” Even now as a successful, black man, he receives comments about his loc’d hair not being “tidy,” and has people treat him like he’s a threat (grabbing pockets when he walks by) in our own apartment complex.
This year, Alvin (5) told me that white kids at school were calling him “hot cocoa.” Thank God he didn’t realize what that meant. A few months ago, Zoe (3) cried to me that someone said she was too dark. I’m pissed that I have to explain this type of hate to them at such a precious, innocent, young age.
I’m encouraged to see the abundance of people pleading for justice & change w/Black America. But I’m also pissed every time I get on social media & see people say racism isn’t “that present” in our society, or that “we’re being controlled by media,” when WE know that racism is something that’s present & consistently experienced. I can’t understand why it’s so hard to acknowledge someone else’s pain & I hate that our pain is overlooked and ignored simply because others don’t experience it.
Thankfully, I’m no longer the 19 year-old girl who doesn’t know how to handle life. Life and my understanding of the Gospel have taught me that we live in an incredibly broken world where racism is present & close. I often feel like this is never going to end and that our cries will never be heard. I hate that feeling, and I am trying really hard to not feel hopeless. The only thing I can rest in is my one assurance that I have eternal hope, eternal joy & eternal peace in Christ.
