The author of this piece's experiences all sounded pretty racist to me. Sometimes it helps to imagine yourself in another person's shoes, and seeing the issue from his/her perspective. It could make you decide to be an antiracist. Like me. Since I was six. I just didn't know that it was called that (antiracist) until I went to community college as an adult. All I knew deep down in my heart was that racism was wrong, and it made me feel sick inside to realize my first Black friend, named Emma Ruth Jones, in first grade was afraid no one would want to be her friend because she was Black. Her mother told her that. I did not understand---but then, I had not been taught yet about all the history behind that fear. I did not know the full extent of our American history of racism until I saw ROOTS and soon after that went to college and found out everything else I had never been taught. It's pretty sad to learn there were/are plenty of lies kept hidden from us because if we really understood our complete history, any person with a developed conscience would have to at least try to speak up and advocate for reparations for all the hurt, and even genocide our ancestors heaped on people of color since the dawning of the country we stole from American Indians and built on the backs of free slave labor. And inequality still exists. Lynchings still happen at the hands of white people who hate "the others" not like them. Prison cells are the new slave quarters for many innocent people of color who resist complying with orders from persons of authority. Saying we are sorry for continually mistreating fellow human beings is not enough. Reparations are called for. Silence is complicity. And ignorance is no longer an excuse for anyone who knows how to google "Systemic Racism" and pass the information on to their children and grandchildren. Racism was our nation's original sin, and if we as a people allow it to continue then we too share the responsibility for all the bloodshed that got us to this current place. MLK showed us the way to achieve equal rights for all of us through non-violence. Before him, Gandhi did. And way back before them, Jesus did. It is He that we must answer to at the end of our lives here on earth. Whatever we said and did to our brothers and sisters in Christ, we said and did to Him. It's time to turn our country around and begin a process of truth and reconciliation, so that we can heal the hatred that is killing the soul of America.
