“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” – Martin Luther King, Jr

 

(Thanks for staying with me as I mourned for the Charleston 9 through haikus, As I stated in Monday’s  preview. I am still sorting through my feelings so please bear with me.  We are in this together. )

 

A few days ago, I was weeping bitter tears of repentance during my morning prayers. Since the racially motivated shooting of 9 devout members of the Emanuel AME church in Charleston, I have cried every morning during my quiet time but this time was different. More on that later…

The Charleston shooting was personal to me.

I have dark brown skin. I am married to a man with cream-colored skin. I am a Christian. I attend Church regularly. And when I visit my family in Raleigh, NC, I attend an AME church with my uncle and aunt.  It could have been me or any other members of my family in that church.

Unsurprisingly,  I was gutted by this shooting incident. It felt completely devastating because of several things:  the betrayal of trust by the shooter after being welcomed and  spending an hour with them during the prayer meeting, the desecration of the institution of Sanctuary – historically,  a place anyone could claim for safety from the outside world and the idea that having dark skin meant that you were not safe, anywhere, not even church.

The shooting has huge implications for a person with dark brown skin. The psyche can handle many things but the complete lack of a safe space to be one’s self is devastating.

I HATE talking about race.

The recent escalation of racial incidents, police brutality and rise in hateful rhetoric has brought this topic front and center in my life. Being quite an empathetic and compassionate person, I can talk about love, forgiveness, inclusion. But race has always been a topic to avoid for me.

With Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Freddie Gray and the other incidents involving arrests and police brutality, I distanced myself emotionally because I couldn’t relate to those who were being beaten up. I am embarrassed to say that  in my mind I thought, “Well, they were all doing something they shouldn’t have been doing” ” they were in the wrong place at the wrong time” “They were resisting arrest” “They should have obeyed the police and nothing would have happened.” “Why do we always have everyone protesting on behalf of  wrongdoers .”  It sounds awful, I know. But it is the truth and I am not proud of it.

Freddie Gray was killed in Baltimore where I live. The riots happened 7 minutes away from my house. This case began to change how I saw things. I could sense the tide turning. It felt like the country was going through a catharsis… a racial reckoning… finally dealing with its past. And It was starting to get to me.

 

Then the Charleston shooting happened and completely wrecked me out. What excuse could I come up with this time? These people were in church not on the streets. They were pillars of society, God fearing people and good citizens not lawbreakers. The only problem they had was the color of their skin.

They had done NOTHING to deserve this.

Waves of frustration and despair have washed over me these past 7 days of mourning.

Even more stunning was the wall of silence I felt around me. No one was talking about it. Most of the people I loved and looked up to remained silent on the topic.

I began to obsess over Martin Luther King’s quote about the “Silence of Our Friends”.  I thought about the Holocaust and how I always wondered how the Nazis were able to get away with killing the Jews. It was partly because some friends of the Jews had remained silent. They looked away from the evil that was ravaging their neighbors and friends. And masses perished as a result.

That morning, during my quiet time, I wept bitter tears of repentance because I had been guilty of subconsciously condemning and judging all the other victims as “wrongdoers”.  I was wrong not them.

They did not deserve to be discriminated against.  They did not deserve to be mistreated and definitely not for the color of their skin. They did not deserve to die.

My empathy gap, our collective empathy gap is costing us.  We can not afford to stand by, stay silent in the face of injustice or look away from the atrocities inflicted on our neighbors and friends.

I know some of you, like me, hate talking about race. But, as one of my heroes Brene Brown says, “We can do hard things.”

We can have the hard conversations. Yes, we might feel overwhelmed, drained or even numbed by the constant barrage of news about more and more racially motivated incidents. But we can not allow our hearts to become hardened. We have to stay engaged.

Choose empathy not sympathy. Empathy implies staying engaged, feeling with, intimacy…  Sympathy implies distance,  feeling sorry for, pity…

And when all is said and felt, we must do something. We must back our compassion with action. Sentiment is cheap.

I have cried everyday, expressed my thoughts through haiku for 7 days, shared important articles with friends and strangers alike. But that is not even close to what needs to be done.

Take action.

Forgive others. Forgive yourself. I was extremely impressed by the expression of forgiveness by the family to the shooter. It inspired me to go beyond the frustration and view this with a lens of love.

Sign a petition. Support the victims’ families. (I will update this post with a list of resources.)

Speak up when you hear someone using a racial slur or making gross generalizations about a group. Talk to your friends about where you stand on this issue. Become an instrument of peace and reconciliation.

Reach out across your empathy gap. Say something. Do something. Be there for someone.

We are in this together.

God bless you.

 

Cultivating Empathy:

1. In what ways has the Charleston Shooting affected you?

2. What empathy gaps have you noticed in lieu of the recent racial incidents?

3. What  hard conversations do you need to have?

4. What organizations can you support?

5.  What changes do you need to make in your life to be more inclusive and tolerant of people  with different cultures from yours?

6. In what ways do you need to forgive yourself and others for past mistakes?

7, Whom can you enlist to support you in your quest to become more mindful of empathy gaps and taking compassionate action?

This land is ours. We are in this together. What happened in Charleston affects us all. Let this be the line in the sand. Let this time be different. It is time for a change. We can do hard things. See you next time!

 

 

 

Yvonne Whitelaw  writes for Yvonnewhitelaw.com where she blogs about her quest to grow into her ideals in her “Live Your Ideals Project”. By sharing her Daily Haikus (#HaikuRx – Prescriptions for inspired living) and lessons along the way (Mondays and Thursdays), she hopes to serve and inspire a tribe of wholehearted idealists like you, to “live your ideals, thrive in your calling and change the world.”