Dating : Who Will Lead Us Into A New Era of Equality and Peace, If Not All Of Us?

The rage we feel toward the people who still, somehow, do not care to open their eyes and see Black people as human is a virtuous rage. But we don’t have the luxury of ignoring our willfully ignorant family members anymore. We don’t have the luxury of yelling at them. We’re wrong to do that. We have to help one another see, and then we have to go be something different out in the world.

I went back to her. I touched her arm and said, “I’m sorry for yelling. But Mom, this… it isn’t okay. People are getting hurt. People are dying. Can I show you what’s happening?”

There’s no tidy, happy ending. The deeply internalized beliefs so many of us have held for so long will not dissipate in one afternoon. But she looked at what I showed her. She listened. She tried to debate, and I didn’t yell. In the end, she said, “I hadn’t watched the video. I’m sorry… I’m sorry.”

It’s hard to have these conversations. We’re afraid to say the wrong thing. Afraid to lose our temper and push loved ones away. Afraid to sound like insensitive, bumbling idiots. I’m part of this too, trying to do my best to continuously open and re-open my eyes, because this is how change happens.

This is what we need on the micro level — one person to another, trying. And then going out and doing something about it. Vote. Advocate. Change, change, change.

Trying is real. Opening sand-crusted eyes, wanting to immediately shut them again to block out the blinding light, but hearing a whisper telling us it’s not possible to close them anymore.

We have to remember that no one is all good, and no one is all bad. We are all both hero and anti-hero, a swirling mess of love and fear and misguidedness and ugliness and pain and hope. We have to know that we should be uncomfortable. We should be upset. We should be rageful. We shouldn’t be able to compartmentalize and go about our day as if all is well and right, because it’s not. It has not been right for a very, very long time. We’ve been pushed to the point of no return, and that’s what we need.

Because this is how change happens. One person, then another and another, waking up and not going back to sleep.

As we move forward, what becomes of us if we don’t see each other’s humanness?

Who will lead us into a new era in which equality triumphs and peace, at long last, permeates the lives of all the people?

Who, if not each of us individually?

It’s at this point that we need to reach each other’s hearts as we keep up the fight. Are we finally changing? I hope so. We have no other choice.