It Is Our Place
I’m not one to share my opinions or beliefs without being asked directly or without having a really good reason to.
The only person I’ve really talked to about the Black Lives Matter movement (along with everything else that’s going on in our country and in the world) is my best friend, who’s half black. And mostly, she just needs someone to listen to her vent about everything she’s going through and feeling and experiencing.
She and I have pretty similar thoughts and feelings about everything going on. But even though I’ve expressed my thoughts and feelings to her, I haven’t taken them to a public platform. Because I didn’t feel like I had a good reason to.
The Epiphany
Hold onto hope instead of fear. Spread love instead of hate. Embrace harmony instead of division. We stand together as equals.
Today, I had a major epiphany: that joining my voice with the thousands of people demanding equality IS a good reason. Adding my voice adds one more stone to the foundation on which we’re building a new society. A new normal. A new way of accepting others as equals.
I am 100% for the Black Lives Matter movement. I am 100% for seeing major changes in law enforcement. I am 100% for LGBTQ+ people having equal rights. I am 100% for indigenous peoples no longer being ignored and silenced. I am 100% for women getting to decide what they do with their bodies. I am 100% for ending the oppressive patriarchy that our society was built on.
I was absolutely ignorant for a long time about the struggles that people of color face on a daily basis. I was completely ignorant about the struggles my own best friend has faced. I admit that freely because I know I have grown since then and my best friend has opened my eyes to a lot of things I never would have seen or been aware of otherwise
Charlottesville, VA
A photo I took of the Community Chalkboard in Charlottesville, VA
In August of 2018, my best friend came down to North Carolina to participate in an incredibly powerful spiritual retreat. A few days afterwards, we were to meet up with our other friend at a halfway point between North Carolina and Pennsylvania. The place we picked was Charlottesville, Virginia.
I don’t know exactly why we chose Charlottesville. I think Spirit gave us all a nudge. Because the weekend we went there was the year anniversary of the alt-right protest that resulted in a woman being murdered with a vehicle and 19 others injured.
I had no idea we were going there on the year anniversary. I had no idea until we got there and saw all the memorials and the community chalkboard covered in remembrance and love and anti-hate writings.
I had no idea the scope of what had happened there. I vaguely remembered it, but it had been a year ago and to me it felt like it was in a totally different country.
But that was the weekend that truly opened my eyes to the daily hell that people of color go through.
The three of us stayed two nights there. We left the day the memorial started. But one of the nights we were there, we went to an outside bar that a lot of college kids went to. And dancing on a table was some dude and his buddies. And he was being a drunk asshole to my half black best friend and a lot of other people of color in the area.
My best friend started to get riled and was gearing up for a fight. She kept talking about how she wanted to take him down a peg. Now, my best friend is usually all love and light and accepting others and all that. That should have been my first clue that something else was going on with her (aside from the dude being racist). I kept hearing the message from Spirit that “it’s not our place.” Literally that. Over and over again. So that’s what I kept telling her. It wasn’t our place. We didn’t go to that school. We were only there for a weekend. We were just having fun and catching up because the three of us hadn’t seen each other in years.
It wasn’t our place.
That message still haunts me to this day.
We ended up leaving the bar shortly afterwards and went back to the Airbnb we were staying at. And that’s when my best friend started telling us about the harassment she’d experienced throughout her life and the hate she’d received just for her skin color and how my other friend and I couldn’t understand because we were white.
I silently listened to her, but in my head I was fuming and I was defensive because it felt like she was yelling at us for being white. It felt like she was blaming us for everything that had happened to her. It felt like she didn’t see us as friends and allies but as enemies.
And guess what? The more I think about it, the more I realize she was right.
It Is Our Place
Imagine seeing this every day and knowing your ancestors were bought and sold like cattle.
I’ve been thinking about that trip to Charlottesville a lot lately. I’ve been thinking about what my best friend must have been going through and thinking about as we walked through “history” with plaques indicating where slaves were sold and statues immortalizing historic figures who owned slaves. I’ve been thinking about how she must have been walking around with us wondering why history is remembering people who bought and sold slaves but not the slaves themselves or the people who helped free them. She must have been wondering if any of her ancestors stood on that auction block and were sold as slaves.
When we went to Monticello (Jefferson’s estate) we all heard how slaves worked in the fields and flattened the top of the mountain so their owner could build his estate there. But while my other friend and I were listening and going “oh, that’s so interesting,” our half black friend must have been mortified. She must have been empathizing with her ancestors, feeling their pain and their sweat and their lack of equality. She’s incredibly empathic and psychic, so it must have been so much more difficult for her. And my other friend and I didn’t have a clue. We just wandered around looking at history, not feeling connected to it. But my best friend must have felt incredibly connected to it. Because she’s still experiencing what her ancestors went through.
Simply because their skin was darker.
White people as a whole have turned a blind eye to what’s been happening to black people for way too long. We have let this happen to our friends, our family, our neighbors. We have let this happen to strangers.
And it’s time to put an end to it.
Because it is our place.
It’s our place to stand up for those who have been oppressed for far too long. It’s our place to join hands with those who need it. It’s our place to join our voices with those who have been silenced. It’s our place to demand equality for those who still fear being discriminated against because of the skin color, their gender identity, their culture, their hair, their sexual orientation.
It is our place.