What now?

When George Floyd was murdered, I cried.  I cried to my husband and I sat down my kids and we all talked with sincerity about racism and power and using our voices.  For those of you who don’t know, I have a black daughter and a white trans son and a white, cis-hetero son.  And as I looked at them, my heart split wide open.  I thought about all of the ways in which two of them will be forever vulnerable, just by nature of who they are.  And I thought about that third child.  The one who will live a more privileged life, based on nothing but his gender and the color of his skin.  How do I help these children to be brave and use their voices to fight for each other’s humanity?  How do I help them to see all that is wrong with the world and still shine a light on the beauty and kindness that exists there? How do we equip them to fight a problem that has plagued us for centuries? 

And my husband and I, who mostly disagree on all things political, agreed that THIS, in fact, was NOT.  Valuing the life of a human being is NOT a political stance.  That first night, we were on the same page.  We denounced those police officers.  We denounced systemic racism.  We acknowledged our own white privilege.  We talked to our family from a place of privilege AND pain.  We owned our shit.  It was hard, but it was good.  

And then, it was time to do my own work.  I had done enough reading to know that white women’s tears are worthless to a black mother who has lost her child.  I dug a little deeper.  I went in search of the black and brown voices that needed to be elevated.  I listened to podcasts.  I ordered some books.  I dug into the painful rejoinder that “All Lives Matter” because OF COURSE they do.  And all lives will not matter until Black Lives Matter.  I admitted to myself that I have shied away from difficult conversations for far too long.  I vowed to do better.

***** 

And then I got a tearful phone call from a dear friend.  Her husband, a NYC police officer, was deployed into what he describes as a war zone.  The destruction and the riots and the protests quite literally put my friend’s life on the line and I choked.  He tells us that it’s so much worse than the media is reporting.  He tells us that it’s one of the worst things he’s ever seen, and he was a first responder on 9/11.  I love and respect this man.  I fear for him.  I admire his strength and his intelligence and his compassion.  I pray for him. I pray for his family.  And I cry again.  

And the see-saw begins in my brain.  

Is that how a black mother feels every time her son leaves the house?  

Of course there are riots.  Peaceful protests didn’t work. 

Do we value white people’s property over black people’s lives? 

How do we show respect for the men and women who serve and protect without diminishing the pain of those who have suffered a system that has denied their humanity for centuries?  

*****

Once again, it all becomes political.  For a few days, my husband and I retreat into our separate, angry, defensive corners.  We are afraid to bring up this topic, even with each other, because it is so charged and we have argued over far less important things.  

We slowly break away from our singularly sided news sources and definitively partisan news feeds and begin to sift through all the misinformation to find truth.  We share articles with each other.  We move toward each other.  We worry together.  We cry together.  

Because the underlying truth is that a fight for humanity is NOT partisan.  A respect for police is not partisan.  My husband and I love each other deeply.  We respect each other deeply.  And we sometimes disagree deeply.  But we keep showing up to have hard conversations.  We are able to do it because we reside on a foundation of love and respect.  

One of those podcasts I listened to helped me to see a trap we all fall into.  When we identify with someone or some group, we tend to attribute to them all of their best qualities.  When we don’t identify with them, we tend to attribute to them all of their worst qualities.  That’s how we come up with stereotypes of ignorant southerners or lazy black people or racist conservatives or snowflake liberals.   

In my house, those are the worst fights.  When he calls me a sheep and a snowflake and I call him ignorant and bigoted.  In our anger, we resort to stereotypes and name-calling.  Nuanced, complex, productive conversation is trampled.  Instead of searching for solutions and hearing each others’ voices, we are throwing firebombs at imaginary targets.  I am watching this happen on a global scale and it terrifies me. 

We are all so deeply afraid in this moment.  

And I don’t know how to handle it on a large scale. 

But all the years of this liberal living with a stubborn, passionate, loving, open-minded, funny, hard-working conservative have taught me how to handle it in my own home.  

We take a breath, but we don’t walk away.  We can’t afford to because there is too much at stake.  But the name-calling and firebombs won’t move us forward.  We cannot accomplish anything until we reset. We need to remember our shared humanity.  We need to acknowledge our shared fears.  We need to face difficult conversations and really, actually LISTEN to each other’s voices.  We need to get curious about what we don’t know instead of getting defensive about what we think we know.  We need to dig into a conversation that requires less responding and more learning.  

I don’t know what to do on a large scale.  I’m still planning to attend a rally this weekend.  I’m still praying for my friend in New York.  And I will continue doing the things in my own life that lay a foundation for my children to grow into adults who listen and learn and consider different perspectives.  I will continue to teach them that it is their sacred duty to stand in a place of love and use their voices to stand up for their brothers and sisters, both in this family and out there in the big, beautiful, scary, breathtaking world.  That’s all I know how to do.