To all my non-black readers - (MAY 27, 2020 Patreon Archive)
It would be careless and remiss of me if I did not address this.
You've heard time and time again of one black body after another being harassed, assaulted, and killed for nothing other than being black. Know their names. Racism has always existed, it's only get more visible now because people are filming it. Believe BIPOC when they talk about racist encounters.
What I want to talk about here is what do we need to do? This can't continue. It's 2020 and we need to stop saying the year we live in because it doesn't matter. Whether it is 1500s or 3000s, dehumanizing, killing, enslaving, anyone based on the color of their skin, religious beliefs, and so on, should have NEVER been okay. Doing any of those things to a human for merely being different in any part of someone's identity should never happen, gender, sexual orientation, ableism, etc.
But here we are. It's still happening. It's not over. Racism and hate is still very much alive and well.
So non-black citizens of the world, it is our responsibility to stop racism in our communities, workplace, families. Asian and Latinx communities are just as complacent in upholding yt supremacy and anti-blackness just as much as yt people. This doesn't mean going around picking fights with people who say racist things and are clearly never going to change. It starts with the people closest to you. It's calling them out/in when they say the n-word or when they purchase an Native American "head dress" for Halloween when they are not Indigenous people. It's calling out/in when they don't understand black lives matter and say all lives matter instead. It's about having conversations, discussions. It takes more than a comment on an IG post or 280 characters in a Tweet. Ask yourself, if there wasn't social media, how would you help in ending racism? This is life's work, daily work, and it's about awareness. Be aware of who you are engaging with and how to approach it in a way that people will institute change in their lives, which will in turn influence more lives after that, like how they raise children, how they talk about it with their spouses, how they deal with customers. Ask yourself, how can I get to this person, how can I get them to care? Screaming and yelling into the abyss for someone to listen to you is not going to change anything. In fact, from experience, it'll only exhaust you and make you question what you're doing, and the whole point of doing the work gets lost. Remember this work isn't for those who refuse to listen. It's to free black lives, so they can exist as they are, so we can stop seeing one black body after the other die for no logical reason.
I say a lot on IG because it is the quickest way for me to reach a wide range of people at the same time because I can't possibly have a personal relationship with everyone. What I am doing is encouraging you all to do exactly the above, have conversations with your circles just from reading a post, reading a news report, sharing a story, to start a discussion, to open up more minds. And the hope is this spreads. That this spreads until the majority of the world will be those who believe black lives matter. All lives DON'T matter until black lives matter. The hate makes a lot of news and it truly feels like they are the majority, that they take up spaces in most of the world. While a lot of these heartless people are in positions of power, the hope is as long as we keep asking for morals and ethics, as long as we demand change, take action, we will see these people fall and goodness rise.
Sharing some voices you should take in and support: