I just got finished watching the #SayHerName town hall for Breonna Taylor hosted by the Advancement Project and I needed to get some thoughts out of my head and on to paper.
I titled this post as "Dear White People (part 1)" because I will have more to say as I continue to listen and learn from and do my best to amplify black voices.
Opinion: Dear White People, the radical ideas of defunding the police or abolishing the police and completely rethinking the framework of "protecting and serving" our communities, are not going to feel right to you. When I first heard these ideas, they didn't feel right to me either. Our privilege is blinding. The reality is that we (white people) have historically felt protected and served by the police, which makes it difficult to imagine our communities without them. This is not the reality for BIPOC in our country. We need to be able to separate our personal truths from what is ultimately true. We need to recognize that it is not our place to question ideas proposed by black people when we do not have the knowledge and experience they have. Black people are the experts in what is needed to create real systematic change that is long overdue in our country. Their voices are the ones we need to be listening too and if what is being said doesn't feel "right" to you, that is normal. Keep listening until it does. Our privilege is blinding and recognizing that is a necessary step to change.
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