When the one black woman (a beautiful artist, a retired professional ballerina) in my book club spoke during our Tuesday Zoom, she'd been dealing with emotions and insomnia over the Amy Cooper video. Then she woke up on Tuesday and saw the video of George Floyd's death and lost it.
During our Zoom she kept looking away, struggling with emotion. At one point she said while she didn't have black kids of her own to worry about, it had made her fear for her brothers, all professional black men in their 60s whose skin was much darker than her own. I got a glimpse of her fear for them.
I could tell she was holding back some too lest we not accept her anger ("angry black woman"
and fear of a degree of white fragility on the part of some of us.
In trying to be part of a conversation around DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) in an organization I am part of, I couldn't get words out around the sobbing.
I know my pain is a fraction of what my black friend is experiencing. But to have a beautiful human being created in the image of God treated instead like despicable trash, hurts my soul. And it happens over and over again. The videos of those being arrested for sleeping or studying or playing a game at home while being black, or verbally abused in all kinds of situations, causes me to feel some degree of the anguish my friend feels.
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