Hey, silent white people I grew up with
Hey, silent white people I grew up with.
I get it. I was there. I grew up in the same school as you. I went to the same places and parties and jobs. I benefitted from a safe neighborhood, middle class upbringing, and white privilege. You maybe don't think this has anything to do with you. You're a good person. You have friends who are people of color. You don't try to do anything to harm anyone intentionally. You had hardships in your life. You feel sad or numb or just kind of confused about what is going on and you don't know what to do.
I get it. But you have to wake up now.
I remember the moment I woke up. I felt this heavy weight I couldn’t lift. I felt the whole world crashing down. Everything I had been taught was an absolute lie, and the issues I faced were so small in comparison to the intricate ways oppression works around the world. I cried the entire way home that night. I couldn’t face it.
I understand your compulsion to stay on the outskirts of this. To not involve yourself.
But I had to. I tried again. I went back. I listened to people of color, to LGBTQ people, to people with disabilities, to women, to people from various classes and upbringings, to people from different places around the world, to people of different ages, and intersections of it all. I read a lot of opinions that were about people like me that were not nice or easy to digest. It was uncomfortable, but it paled in comparison to what marginalized communities have been through. And I didn’t want to cause any more harm. I didn’t want to float through life doing nothing to help, but I also could no longer be silently complicit and condone what was happening around me.
Now I’m not saying this to suggest your path or that I have the answers. Far from it, in fact. I’m saying it because I bet you may have had a similar experience. I’m saying this because I want to be here for you to talk to. We are not going to get anywhere if we don’t start having these difficult conversations about whiteness with one another. We owe it to the rest of the world, especially communities of color. We have to figure out ways to heal these wounds and stop them from continuing to happen. I know it feels hard or different or like it doesn’t involve you, but it absolutely does.
It’s called “woke” for a reason, right? We can no longer close our eyes to these injustices and violence at the hands of whiteness. These are people who live amongst us- who say hey to you at work, come to your kid’s birthday party, sit next to you at the movies. We have to do better. We have to acknowledge that we benefit from this system, even if our hands didn’t carry the torches. We have to talk. We have to have difficult conversations. We have to educate ourselves. We have to open our eyes and listen to others. We have to dismantle white supremacy.
Consider this the simplest call to action. Speak up; let’s talk. Because your silence is deafening.
