NOTE: I recorded an entire podcast episode on this topic. In it, I dove a lot deeper into the reality of pain and what I’ve been evaluating. This is the first episode I’ve published since taking an unintentional and unrelated break from recording, and while I’m hesitant and scared to talk about this, I’m also proud of the words I honestly and vulnerably am putting out into the world. If you want to hear my thoughts, listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or right here on this post.
Racial inequality is not a skin-deep issue.
It is simply the overarching umbrella we are standing under right now as humans as we attempt to find ways to talk about pain, identity, abuse, generations of dysfunction, and the far-reaching impact of it all.
The time is now for healing racial pain.
The Unfortunate Tipping Point
In early June, George Floyd was killed. For him, that day probably began as every other before it. No reason to suspect his life would end. Certainly, no reason to believe his death would cause the amount of movement it has.
His death was just like all the others. At least, that’s what I took it as. I believe that’s how most of America took it. Just another black person dying as the victim of police brutality or really any senseless act.
But that sentence, the one you just read, does in fact make the responses, reactions and collective outcry worth it—not only in the United States, but around the world.
However, I don’t think there’s another country where the response and the resultant conversations and discomfort are more needed than right here.
For centuries, one people group was the target of every form of hate. Taking on many forms throughout the 1700s and 1800s and creating new forms of hate at the turn of the 20th century, racism against black Americans went unnoticed for far too long.
The entire country reached its unfortunate tipping point when one man’s death suddenly made a difference.
There Is No Language
When it all happened, I didn’t know what to think or say or do.
One thing I can say with honesty is that I didn’t feel angry. I know a lot of people did for whatever reason they had, but I remember just feeling profoundly sad. As stories started being told and everyone’s ears tuned to listen, fully, for the first time, I couldn’t muster anything else but sadness.
Sadness for the lives senselessly taken and the pain never processed, grieved or healed.
Grief for the families who have buried loved ones.
Sadness for the way an entire people group has come to be only a small part of the huge tapestry of this country, even though they’ve contributed just as much as anyone else.
All because no one knew how to talk about race.
The Civil War ended in 1865. Slavery was abolished the same year. Yet people groups are still divided in huge ways. Still…after 150 years.
There was no time allotted for healing racial pain. Too many years. So much pain. What’s worse, there’s been no collective grieving, processing, acknowledging of the pain, or healing.
It’s Time to Empathize
On a personal level, most people know that pain must be processed. Emotional pain threatens the fabric of our identities, and when it goes so long without being checked—or worse, without us really knowing about it—the damage becomes extensive.
I was tempted to say the damage becomes “hard to come back from,” but I don’t think pain is something we come back from. Period. I think it’s something we get through, learn from and use to find greater purpose in life.
Pain is the primary visible thread in this whole movement right now. An entire people group was failed, not even by their own doing.
