Empathy

Empathy. As we look around the happenings in our nation, all the media coverage of the events, but also even reading the comments under the articles. I know, why read the comments knowing that people are getting the opportunity to be their worst selves behind a computer screen and they are seizing the opportunity to do so? But for me, reading the ignorant comments that people write just tells me that we are lacking in our ability to believe in experiences that we haven't had ourselves. It makes complete and total sense and this is why these comments don't discourage me. A snake, or serpent as I call them- call things as they are, will never get to know what it feels like to be a human because they are serpents. We can place them in our environments and feed them the food we like to eat, the whole nine, but they will never truly be able to experience what it's really like being a human. I can't help but to wonder and reflect on my upbringing and comparing that to the upbringing of others.

So, cat's out the bag, I'm black and was raised by black parents in a black family....and in America. Got it? Great. So I need not really elaborate on what life was like growing up black in America. Growing up as part of a community that has been historically and presently repressed, oppressed, depressed, all that (this is going to get Starr-Life-y in a moment, I promise) but we were taught how to act in public around people not like us which differed from how it was okay to act at home for the sake of others' perceptions. I don't know a life in which "everyone is treated equally and fairly" (note the quotation marks- some people seem to have been raised thinking this) because from just being born, I was already taught that that is far from true. Even in conversations with my other friends, I have found myself to get frustrated by a constant rebuttal that my experiences aren't valid because they've never had to experience them.

That leads me to why I wanted to write this post. I want to encourage both sides. I want to encourage you to continue being an educator. My hope is that this post is vague enough to transcend not just exclusively to race issues, but as much as we don't want to, we might be someone's only opportunity to hear first-hand about the experiences of others different from one selves. So often, we can get so caught up in ourselves and be so selfish that we forget that people cross our paths sometimes for a particular purpose. I recently heard an extremely powerful testimony from one of my friends who was the subject of blatantly racist jokes that even the offender's own relatives were ashamed. My friend decided to take the high road, be slow to take offense, and see this as an opportunity to help someone grow in their understanding of a culture different from their own.

To the other side folks, which sometimes and in some situation I'm also included in, but live life with an open heart and an open mind always. In order to learn anything, we have to want to learn, if you don't want to learn anything, then you won't. Woo, I sound like a teacher......but listen, hear people out, and seek out opportunities to understand the lives and experiences of others. Don't be so quick to shut people down when they've opened their heart up to you which has happened to me on multiple occasions. A lot of times, it's unintentional. Information overload is sometimes hard to take for some so sometimes our natural reaction is to jump to denial. Let's work together, learn from one another, and grow together.