To my sons, Bird and Deal,
America is still burning. Do not look away.
In less than a week’s time we lost a Supreme Court Justice and our sense of justice. We are ruth-less in a world without Ruth Bader Ginsburg and we are ruthless in a world that took Breonna Taylor’s innocent life with no recourse for the killers.
Whiteness prevails in America. Our friends are hurting today like no other day, and their pain is ours to bear too. Some people are out there never having loved a Black person, and it shows. But it shouldn’t even take that to care about someone’s damn humanity. So many people are even celebrating the police literally getting away with murder. It’s hard to breathe in a country where people actually cheer this grand jury verdict in Louisville. We are a lost and rudderless country with just a thread of a soul left. Everyday I’m gutted by a new low, and our very democracy is in tatters.
Your generation is burdened with repairing the fissures we have made in our country. Our founding fathers didn’t have it all right after all, and the reckoning is rightly upon us. I welcome it, but I worry the brunt is on you to resolve. We lay a heavy task at your feet, and inaction is not an option. To be silent is to be complicit. Look where it got us, after all.
America is still burning. Do not look away.
Keep protesting. We shall mask up, raise our fists, and march in solidarity.
Be intolerant of intolerance. Hate is reserved for my personal kryptonite, raisins and black licorice.
Turn your rage into empathy and that empathy into action. Don’t be a hobbyist activist. Live this life even when the world is not burning.
Be fierce in your resolve. Study history, read the news, learn from others, and be unapologetically loyal to your convictions, steadfast in your belief system, and open-hearted to what the world brings.
Do not be hardened. Find solace in each other, in like-minded friends, and share your sensibilities with those who yearn for acceptance and a place to be heard.
Write to your elected officials from the city level on up to national ranks. Ask them for their specific plans to achieve racial equity and hold them accountable.
Examine brands you support and see what their leadership and boards look like. Stop supporting majority white male led organizations. Support Black-owned businesses. Your dollar is your voice. Unlike casting your ballot, you can use that economic vote multiple times.
Don’t focus on just those in power; it’s those people in proximity to power who are the most sinister.
America is still burning. Do not look away.
You are my life’s greatest accomplishment and greatest reward. I pray the world gets the etch-a-sketch shake it so desperately needs so you have a clean canvas to create a place where everyone is safe and justice prevails. I hope you grow up to be someone’s Marty Ginsberg like Dad is mine.
I love you.
Mom