I'm seeing my fellow non-Black friends make comments like, 'Why do I need to speak up when this doesn't have to do with me?' Let me tell you how this has everything to do with us. Who was forced to build the country *we* profit from living in physically on their backs? Who are the recipients of the wealth slave owners amassed by violently forced physical labor? If not you, how has your community been enriched by that level of generational wealth? Affluent neighborhoods are often populated by white families because of historic housing discrimination. The property taxes fund their children’s public school enrichment activities and green lawns. Meanwhile, in the inner city which is largely populated by the Black community and people of color, again due to historic policies of discrimination and segregation, cops are heavily present on schools and minor offenses heavily penalized. Black students are disproportionately more likely to be suspended than their white peers for the same behavior, which leads to them missing school, which leads to less education, which leads to having a harder time graduating and continuing on with higher education (MW). Whose children are going to be more prepared to go through higher education and whose are forced into the school to prison pipeline? This has everything to do with us. Black children are more likely to live near freeways or go to school for significant hours of the day near them. This directly impacts their quality of life as a myriad of health problems are directly tied to vehicular air toxicity. Are you healthy because you have the resources to eat well? Or do you simply have the privilege to live where the air is cleaner? White workers statistically earn tens of thousands of dollars more than black workers yearly in the same position, and studies have found that white workers with high school diplomas have been favored over black workers with college degrees. Do we have jobs because we're just super qualified? Or did race play into that decision? As a woman, know that black women who were enslaved were used as research subjects for medicine and surgery was performed on them without anesthesia because of the disgusting and still pervasive belief that thought black bodies don't suffer pain like white bodies do. Have we ever thought to thank the black women who came before us whose repeatedly agonizing, forceful pain is perhaps the reason for our saved lives when giving birth? That doesn’t impact us? Black individuals are 12x more likely to be wrongly convicted of drug crimes, and the arrest rate for the same possession is 15x higher than a white person in the exact same scenario (WP). Are you laughing as you tell me your white dad got caught for smoking marijuana in college but the officer told him not to do it again? Or are you hauntingly telling me about how you didn’t know your dad for your childhood because he was caught but had life altering and FAMILY altering consequences because he’s black? Dylan Roof murdered innocent black individuals worshipping IN A CHURCH and was described as polite, respectful, and taken to a burger king when he said he was hungry. George Floyd was murdered over $20. Botham Jean was murdered by a cop in his own living room while watching tv. Black individuals are 3x more likely to be killed by police than white individuals. Outside, inside, black children, teens, adults and the elderly are murdered for simply EXISTING. So when you say that you don’t understand why this has to be about you when you don't have anything to do with it, I invite you to ask instead: 'Why am I making this all about me and my fragility and not about the historic, systemic, institutionalized raw pain of black mothers and fathers who are consistently seeing their children stripped of opportunities, forced to live structural inequalities, murdered by the authorities who are sworn to protect ALL citizens WITH PROOF OF THE MURDER ON CAMERA OVER AND OVER AGAIN- and then not even simply charged for the murder of their babies?'

This has to do with us because God Himself calls us to stand as witnesses to justice even if it’s against ourselves-