Posted on by Definitely Katie

Use Your Platform

Today’s blog post started very differently than what you’re about to read. I started a post about stress relief ideas, and I was so excited to share little ways to relieve stress in your life during such a stressful time. But, there’s a bigger and growing undercurrent of stress happening in our country right now that must be addressed.

We’ve known for years that we still live in a world full of racism. We know that there are inequities all around us but we take no action. We sit silently, placated and waiting for the next opportunity to superficially join hands and chant “Black Lives Matter” when the message never goes deeper than a social media post. Not this time. We cannot let another one of these opportunities to enact change slip by because we’re too busy living our unaffected lives. We can’t sit idly by while innocent men and women are still—after hundreds of years—being persecuted and killed because of the color of their skin.

I think back to when I was a child. I didn’t mind if my best friend was white or black or yellow or green or blue. What so abruptly changes as we get older that makes people recoil from the thought of their son or daughter dating a black, indigenous, person of color (BIPOC)? What teaches white ladies to cross the street at night when they see a black man on the sidewalk? What makes corporations instinctively go for the white candidate instead of the much more qualified and harder-working black one? It’s because we suffer from institutional racism.

Institutional racism is a phrase that we should all be familiar with. At its core, it is the systematic distribution of resources (power, opportunity, capital, etc) in favor of white people rather than BIPOC. It is not just one instance of injustice. It is the repeated discrimination against a group of people whose only difference is the pigmentation in their skin. It is ingrained in our bones. Our ancestors’ ancestors’ ancestors truly believed in this racial inequity and forcefully ingrained that rhetoric into our daily lives. It’s hard to fully comprehend how deep that racism is ingrained. I like to imagine it as taking a piece of glass and shattering it into millions of minuscule pieces, burying those pieces deep into sand and trying to distinguish between sand and glass. You can’t. That’s how deeply ingrained this is in our culture. One social media post, one good conversation, one week of outrage isn’t enough to eradicate the damage. We need continuous pursuit of equity. We need more outrage until we can confidently say that all people are not judged by the skin they were born with. We need constant conversations with friends and family and strangers alike, informing the misinformed and correcting actions.

Racism is not okay. Racism has never been okay. Racism will NEVER be okay.

I’ve been pretty concealed in white privilege my whole life. Yes, I am half Asian, but as someone who presents as white, I have never faced scrutiny for the color of my skin or where I came from. I have never and will never understand the injustice that my black peers have faced since the moment they were born. I grew up in a predominately white neighborhood with mostly white friends in a middle class area. How could I possibly begin to understand the basic fear that a black person faces when they see blue lights behind them as they’re driving? I can’t. I can only advocate for a better tomorrow where no one has to be afraid of the people who are supposed to be our protectors.

My goal here is to help people realize the truth–to help someone else realize that they too have been silently letting this phenomenon carry on, that they can and must do better. No one has any excuse to sit in silence while the president of our country shoots tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters just for the opportunity to take a photo in front of a church. No one can sit silently while he calls rightfully frustrated people “thugs and looters” just because they are black and not white. The racism in this country is troubling. The racism in our leader is frightening.

The world looked at us in 2016 and laughed. Everyone else seemed to see this day coming except our own people. When we refuse to listen to the facts, we further the racist agenda. When we refuse to acknowledge the blatantly racist things our leader says and does, we send a message to the world that we support racism. No wonder the world laughs at us. We are stubborn and slow-to-change people who can’t even respect our fellow Americans–let alone people from outside our country. No wonder the world wants nothing to do with us. I don’t want anything to do with us. Our country cannot be caught on the wrong side of change.

I know I’ve shared a lot of negative comments so far, but I want to end on a more positive note and a call to action. While we may not be the best we can be, we are fully capable of creating a world where institutional racism is left in the past. We, non-BIPOC, get to choose to be a part of the conversation. We weren’t born into this life automatically at a disadvantage, but we can ally with those who were. Yes, it will take time, and yes, it will be difficult, but it is possible.

We can do better. We must do better.

What can you do about it?

  1. Use your platform to inform people of the issue. Bring awareness to what’s going on, and use your voice to advocate for a better world.
  2. Challenge your own beliefs. Sit down and identify your own stereotypes. Once you are aware of your own issues, you can begin to change them.
  3. Ask your black community and friends how you can help.
  4. Donate to various organizations that are supporting the protest against racism. I’ve provided a list of a few that you can choose to support:

Leave a comment

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started