I t’s 4:51 in the morning and I cannot sleep. I actually woke up around 3 AM from a buzzing sound near my ear, which lead me to freak out in a raging panic thinking that I had some creature squatting in my ear cavity, which then lead me to freaking out about the social construct of race in correlation with how the political climate is affecting my friendships and Facebook timeline. The two topics have nothing in common, but you can’t control where the brain takes you that early in the morning. Neither can you control your emotions. Soon I found myself crying and googling on both sleep depriving issues. For now, I will just focus on the later.

The biggest question that’s on my mind is, why am I not good enough for some of my friends? I am sure this may seem like an odd question. I see my friends as an extension of myself, people who I share the same things in common in this world. It would be silly of me to think that my friends would be exactly like me, but when I stop and look closely at the topic of racism, it gives me pause. This issue is one that runs so deep and wide within the fabric of my being. Racism is something that I think about at least once a day. I am certain that it may not cross some other’s minds as much as it does mine, but when it does I’d like to think that the response would be different than what I’ve seen. Which is why I ask, why am I not good enough for some of my friends? Why can’t the experiences I have shared, love, quality time, and conversation flow over into someone’s world

view to shape them differently?

Recently, I saw a friend post about a lesson she was teaching on the subject of empathy to her middle school students. She used the video below by Breńe Brown. It really got me thinking about what the world would be like if everyone used this means of understanding empathy to help heal each other on the issue of racism. An individual may never know what it is to be in a certain situation, yet embracing that person’s experience and narrative in such a way to show compassion means so much more than ignoring the problem, or making the person feel as if it is all in their head.

Often, I am told that the Black Lives Matter movement, a protest by a professional athlete, or a speech by a well known actor is deemed inappropriate, not patriotic, and racist. I’ve also been met with the flipping of a people’s struggle with another’s pseudo struggle (#alllivesmatter) that is not, has not, and won’t ever be oppressed by the majority, especially when they themselves are just that. People of color are constantly being reprimanded and offered ultimatums as to how they should get straight and fall in line, or leave. Hate always seems to find a seat at the table.

I don’t know what it is like to walk through life with a sense of being completely and utterly FREE. This feeling of wanting to be proud of the country I live in, is always met with being constantly let down, when the country I live in doesn’t want me to LIVE. 300 years of mass killings of native people, slavery, Jim Crow laws, Mexican Repatriation, Japanese internment camps, racial profiling, Islamophobia, and assimilation have sent a ripple effect with earthquake size damage. The core that built this country is a shattered mess that continues to be swept under the cover of an American flag.

I just want to be good enough. Good enough to make a crack in my friend’s mirror of a skewed viewpoint. I want to know that if something were to happen to me, there would be riot in the streets. No stone unturned until justice was brought. I want to know that when injustice happens to those they may never meet, love would be their reaction instead of hate and ignorance.