Things That Make White People Uncomfortable

by Michael Bennett

It’s a reminder not to judge someone for not speaking out but to create the space so that when their time comes, they’re ready.

hate comes at you when you make any stand. It’s the price of trying to be heard. If that’s the case, and we accept it, then it’s a waste of emotion to react to the negativity. The hate, the rage that people throw at you only has power if you let it affect you.

For me, that was a reflective moment, to acknowledge that I’m a man if I think about my family first, not if I think about myself first.

But it’s so much easier to talk shit than to do shit, because once you are out there representing what you believe, people see the real you.

I was half god, half property. But whichever half they were dealing with, I was never fully human.

It was a word we used as a stand-in for emotions we could not otherwise express. The word made you feel something bone-deep, so we used it to make the people around us understand that what we were saying was real and demanded attention.

We were catching up, and I told him I had three daughters, and do you know the first thing he said to me? Not “Congratulations” or even “That’s cool!” He said, “Oh, you better get a shotgun. That’s going to be hard.” Why can’t people say, “You have daughters, man they’re going to be blessed. They’re going to be something great.” If I had a son, they would say, “Your son is going to be the greatest player ever!”