This is re-posted from my personal Facebook page, originally written on 5/29/2020.
Those of you who have known me or have been following me for a while probably know that I never post anything that might be considered controversial or political in nature. Over the years, there have been many reasons for this, the top one being that I don’t like to argue. I’m not good at it. I’ve never been good at it.
Despite that choice, I still have strong opinions, and I still care deeply about a wide range of topics and people.
As the years passed, things kept happening that I thought were wrong, things that I wanted to post about, state my opinion. Like the time an anti-abortion group erected ten-foot tall, high-DPI images of aborted fetuses on my college campus. Or the time my student body president was murdered as part of a gang initiation. Or the day that I found out the state of Maine was introducing legislation to raze 10,000 acres of forest.
But these issues pale in comparison to the violence that black people in our country face every single day, and have for literal centuries.
The names kept piling up. Daniel Shaver. Philando Castile. Freddie Gray. Laquan McDonald. Tamir Rice.
I cared. Yet, I never posted about any of them. I listened, I read the news, I paid attention. I worked on identifying racist attitudes in my own head. I followed activists, and joined progressive groups on social media.
But I never said anything.
The reasons for this vary:
I didn’t want to argue about it.
I didn’t want people to dislike me because I said something they disagreed with.
I didn’t want to accidentally say the wrong thing.
I didn’t want to be wrong.
I didn’t want to muddy up my author brand.
I didn’t want to lose potential readers of my books.
I didn't want people to think I was using a social issue to sell my books.
I didn’t want to upset family members who might disagree with me.
I didn’t want to say the wrong thing.
I didn’t want to cause more harm than help.
Everything had already been said already.
I didn’t want to be one of those people who always jumped on the bandwagon.
I didn’t want there to be a public mistake that might come back to bite me in the future.
I didn’t want to alienate anyone.
I didn’t want to feel stress or anxiety over it.
I didn’t want to lay awake at night worrying about whether or not what I said would be misconstrued.
I didn’t want to get in the way of a statement or opinion that might be more valid than mine.
Etc.
Mostly, I was just a coward.
Even today, amidst the chaos surrounding the murder of George Floyd (only a few weeks after the murder of Ahmaud Aubery!), I thought to myself, I want to say something, but I don’t want to be one of the bandwagon people who just jumps on board because everyone else is. People are going to ask, “Why didn’t you speak out when Ahmaud Aubery was murdered? Or Breonna Taylor? Trayvon Martin? Freddie Gray?”
But fuck that.
There is literally no good time to come out in support of people who are suffering except for right now. Unless we, white people, start acknowledging the racism inherent in the system we live in, we can’t fix it.
There is no such thing as colorblindness. The Civil Rights Movement did not eliminate racism. And whether you admit it or not, every single one of us has racist prejudices built right into the core of our social consciousness. But we can’t fix it unless we admit it.
So consider this my admission. I am white in a culture that prioritizes white people first. I benefit inherently from this system both in ways that are obvious, but also in ways that I can’t even begin to fathom. This does not mean my life was easy, but it means that I will likely not be shot by the police. I will not be denied a job because of the color of my skin. My brothers, father, nephews, uncles, and cousins will not be murdered because they are black men.
Growing up, my mom always used to say to us, “Don’t leave your brain at the door of the church,” and this has stuck with me to this day. But it’s not just about religion. It’s about challenging the beliefs that were ingrained in us from childhood. Just because someone in power says something, doesn’t mean it is right, or good, or true.
Just because we inherited certain attitudes, beliefs, customs, and traditions, doesn’t make them right or good.
I’ll be honest with you. This post is a little bit selfish on my part. It’s selfish because I don’t want to go down in history as being silent. I don’t want my nieces and nephews to remember me as being complacent, complicit. And I don’t want the people who are connected with me via social media--the people that follow my blog, my 1500+ followers on my author page, the 1600 Instagram followers, my spattering of Twitterers—I don’t want a single one of you to think, even for a second, that I might support our current President. I don’t want a single one of you to think that I don’t feel sorrow for the people that have died because of the racism in our country and in our police force. And I don’t want you to think for a second that I don’t care about the people that are different than me, whether they are black, or Asian, or Muslim, or disabled, or incarcerated, or immigrants (legal or otherwise), or transgender, or gay, or any other.
Compassion is my religion. Care for other people is my purpose for living.
I might not always get it right. Perhaps this essay was the wrong thing to post at the wrong time. Even now I worry that this is too much about me, and not enough about the people who need to be heard.
But I have to start somewhere. So I am starting here.
#quarantineart #georgefloyd #blacklivesmatter
