This is my family

This is my family.

My husband experiences racism. My son has experienced racism. My family experience racism, yet I still live with white privilege.

I was taught to see racism in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group.

There will come a day when my husband and I have to sit our son down and tell him that despite anything he can do, there will always be people who don’t like him, who judge him, who aren’t kind to him because of his skin colour. The whole concept of this conversation is alien to me, yet not to my husband, not to his family and not to many of our friends.

At what age does my son stop being cute and become a threat?

I implore all my friends to listen to what the black community are telling us about racism. Just because it doesn’t effect you directly, doesn’t mean that others aren’t living in fear daily.

Enough is enough, change is due.

I will never truly understand the experiences of my family or other ethnicities but I will do all I can to be a good ally.

“If you are neutral in time of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor” - Desmund Tutu