We Are Not Like Them

by Christine Pride

I mean, this is a kid who named a hamster Neil after some science guy. But yeah, yeah, he must be a gangbanger, right? Because we all are. It’s some shit.”

it’s like we’re on a damn treadmill set to the highest setting and we just keep trying to climb, going nowhere fast,”

So maybe the marching, rallying, showing up, it serves a purpose. It says, We will not be invisible or afraid. We will not give up. And that’s not nothing. It might actually be everything.

This is always the scariest part of depression, the panicked edge where you think, If I can hold it at bay, stay out of its grip, I’ll be okay. The fear of the fall is so much worse than the bottom, because once you’ve let go, once you’re in the darkness, there’s comfort in the dull surrender. It’s easier than the fight.

So how will you confront the lie? What will you sacrifice? What are you willing to put on the line? Are you going to send your kid to the public school down the street? Are you going to rent your house to a young Black family? Are you going to hire more eager dark girls with kinky curls to be your junior executive? Because your well-meaning intentions, your woke T-shirts, your Black Lives Matter tote bags, your racial justice book clubs are not going to cut it.”

But what’s the point of the high road or of being the exception, the anomaly, of rising above, when your whole community is struggling, unable to catch a break, the thumbs of oppression on their necks?