Keep your empathy, white girl. Do something.

People of color are tired of hearing that I’m heartbroken.

They’re tired of black murder resulting in a kind of Black People’s Spirit Week where we whites gush empathy and outrage and get distracted the minute the news cycle changes. Or by the gnat that flies in our peripheral.

Do something is what they say.

I have to DO SOMETHING. I get it. And probably more than clicking the box for recurring monthly donations to Black Lives Matter and Equal Justice Initiative. I hear you, POC.

I’ve been racking my tiny brain for the past week, working to land on an objective that I think is achievable but one that will also make a difference.

Where I land is lofty, but it feels right.

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Dear White Person

Dear White Person:

I want to have a conversation with you about what is going on across America right now.

In case you don’t know it, I’m a white girl. Woman. A white woman. And I see the world through a white woman’s lens, which is not necessarily a clean lens, but it’s all I have.

I am also not a race scholar, even though I have 2 advanced degrees in social work which exposed me to more information about race than most Americans.

Basically, I should know a hell of a lot more about race than I do, and although I didn’t absorb most of what I was taught about race in graduate school, I have done my best to make up for my deficit during the past 6 years.

Now that you’ve been forewarned that A) I’m white, B) I’m not a race scholar, and C) My brain was like Teflon in grad school as far as race is concerned, but I’ve done my best to catch up in recent years…

I want to talk to you, white person to white person.

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