We Are Not Like Them

by Christine Pride

It kills me how some people want so badly to believe racism is buried beneath layers and layers of history, “ancient history,” they say. But it’s not. It’s like an umpire brushing the thinnest layer of dirt off home plate: it’s right there. Only too often the trauma, the toll of it, remains unknown generation after generation.

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.

It’s the all-powerful myth of exceptionalism that people salivate over so they can use it to validate the rags-to-riches possibilities of America. If this Black girl did it, everyone else can too. So if someone doesn’t, or can’t, it must be a personal failing. Never mind the systemic issues stacked against people—brown people, poor people—all the barriers and disadvantages that keep the playing field in this city and this country about as level as a seesaw with an anvil on one end, and the American dream on the other.

The longer you let something go, the easier it is to stay silent, and the silence is where the resentment starts to fester and rot.”