We Are Not Like Them

by Christine Pride

Sometimes you just need to be around someone who loved you before you were a fully formed person. It’s like finding your favorite sweatshirt in the back of the closet, the one you forgot why you stopped wearing and once you find it again you sleep in it every night.

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.

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.

That as white people you are automatically associated with everything that is good and right and ‘normal,’ and everyone else’s experiences and value are weighed relative to that.

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.”

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.”

Sometimes you can’t think your way out of a thing. You have to feel it. And sometimes you just have to let it out. You can’t just push it away and pretend it’s not happening.

“There are some things you can’t change, baby girl. White folks are gonna do what white folks do, and the way I see it you can be resentful and angry all the time and let it eat away at you, which some people do, and how can you blame them? Or you can choose to control the one thing you can: your mind-set. You can decide, Nope, I’m not going to let them get to me. I won’t be bitter, I’m going to be better—and better doesn’t mean just working hard. It comes down to character, an ability to be defiant in your joy no matter what they do. That’s what your mom and I tried to teach you kids.”

It’s a privilege to never think about race.

real change comes when everyone pushes back against the status quo.

being a mother meant I would fail a little every day, and this was the first of many mistakes I would make even as I vowed to do my best, to keep him safe and protect him.