I have said this before in different ways and I am saying it plainly now:

You do not love people of colour if you will not look at yourself and actively challenge the racism embedded in your psyche by generations of deliberate oppression. You do not truly love your husband, wife, bi-racial child, adopted child, friends, or friendly acquaintances of colour, because you are more willing to continue to cause us harm than you are willing to do the uncomfortable work of self-reflection and change.

You prefer to try to force us to suppress and mask our pain than to do your own work.

That is not love. That is selfish pride.

Meanwhile, people of colour either choose to do our work, to be able to bear the weight of conscious and unconscious racism, or we choose to pretend that conscious and unconscious racism does not exist, and so harm ourselves with unaddressed depression and anxiety that presents in both high and low functioning ways.

No flowery language.

You do not love us, you cannot see us, you do not know us, if you refuse to do the work of actively addressing the conscious and unconscious racism that is embedded in your psyche from generations of deliberately planned systemic oppression.

“What you resist will persist”. You either “name it and tame it”, or allow it to wildly wreak havoc. You choose. I choose. We choose.

And PSA: this applies to all areas of our life and history. We either look it in the face, and handle the truth of it, or we create a legacy of pain that bears fruit in a myriad war-ish ways.

Well, I guess I do need an umbrella. His banner over me is love. Love. Wild, barefoot, and free.

I think that if you have read this far you may feel frustrated, angry, accused, shame… if you do then it means that I, who also feel and have felt frustration, anger, sadness, accused, shame, in this relationship between us fellow human, might have missed the mark in communication. What I am saying, is that love is not seen and known when systemic poison continues to infect our relationships. That poison is killing us. We are losing each other. The only way to purge the system of poison is for each of us to acknowledge the poison and choose to purge it from us, because we are the system – together we are the system, and our life depends on us.

So please, aim that poison at the toilet, flush it, and stop pouring it on my head. In the meantime, I will shield myself as best I can with the umbrella of love, because I want to stay in relationship with you, who at the core are also wild, barefoot, and free. Innocent.