And this is something, I’m guessing, that you want for your family and your children, too. It starts with noticing: take notice of the faces in your community, of those who make up – or don’t make up – the schools and the churches and the shopping malls you inhabit every day.
Who are those faces to you? What do they represent for you?
Stare at the color of your skin, perhaps for the first time. If you are white, your skin color alone grants you privilege in our society. Privilege isn’t a word we like to hear: it makes the hairs on our backs stand up and an ugly, defensive spirit can emerge within us.
But the ability to ignore the news of innocent black men, women and children being killed is privilege.
The ability to not worry about your son or daughter being gunned down by the police for no reason is privilege.
The ability to walk through a store and not have an employee follow you is privilege.
“It’s the fact that simply by virtue of being a white person, of whatever socioeconomic status, you get the benefit of the doubt,” writes opinion columnist Christine Emba.
This privilege is far from just, but it’s true.
So, examine your privilege. Turn privilege into understanding, and let understanding guide you toward a desire to learn. Then, when your insides are itching and screaming and thundering for equality, let this desire be funneled into activism.
“All lives matter equally to God,” says World Impact President and CEO Efrem Smith. “But in this upside-down, broken and Bizarro world, not all lives are treated equally. This is why we must say Black Lives Matter.”
Let’s do something about this: let’s make all lives matter, including those of our black brothers and sisters.
I’m white, and I have come to no other conclusion but this: I have contributed to issues of racial injustice. I’ve had to educate myself, so I can deal with the shame and embarrassment that comes with ignorance.
But I’m committed to using my voice. I will speak up and I will tell the truth. I will beg for the courage to do and say and believe what hasn’t been done and said and believed before.
I’ve learned to accept that this new way of thinking is a journey I will travel on for the rest of my life. I’ve had to give myself extra amounts of grace, when I’ve made mistakes and said the wrong things, and I’ve had to pick myself up, all over again. But I wouldn’t change this new way of seeing the world for anything.
So, is it the same for you?
Are you willing to speak up and tell the truth, to your children and to your communities?
Do you have the courage to model these values and be a person of influence as we seek to change the narrative of our country, one relationship at a time?
We can be the change we wish to see in our families, our communities and our country. We can take a posture of learning and seek to understand what it means to love others first, before passing judgment upon them.
And in doing so, might we begin to see and celebrate and wildly applaud the profound bounty of color found on this earth. So we can then proclaim – loudly, unashamedly, gloriously – that every human matters.
Are you with me?
