I have a friend here in Oakland whom I know from blogging around the way. Brandi of Mama Knows It All is smart, hard-working, accomplished, a relentlessly positive person. She has a seven-year-old daughter, and she’s now pregnant with #2. Poor thing – she has that wicked bad Kate-Middleton-level morning sickness that is less morning sickness, more all-day debilitating wretchedness. She’s even had to spend time in the hospital to deal with it. I can’t even imagine how she’s working full time and caring for her daughter and coping with this condition.
She’s also black.
Which I bring up, because the other day I logged into Facebook to see the sign that my friend had, out of fear and foresight, created to put in her car window on a day she absolutely had to drive somewhere. She knew there was a risk, with her pregnancy-related condition, that she might have to pull over suddenly and barf.
Here’s where we are, America. A pregnant, smart, hard-working, accomplished, relentlessly positive American mom is so scared that she is going to be misunderstood by police and, due to her skin color, not given a chance to explain, that she has to drive around with this sign in her car.
Sit with that for a moment. I know you, readers. You are good people. The best. I know this is not the world you want for yourself, for your children, for Brandi’s children.
If you are white like me, ask yourself – as I have been asking myself since I saw that Facebook post – what you can do to change the situation. To be an effective ally for your friends who have brown skin. How you can amplify the real-life, actual everyday worries of people who you know who have been reduced to posting a proactive request to be shown grace.
A good place to start: read I’m Judging You: The Do-Better Manual by my friend Luvvie Ajayi. I had planned to recommend this book of essays to you all because it’s funny and because within a week of its release it landed on the NYTimes bestseller list. But just like the author, this book contains multitudes. And there’s a whole section on race in America and what we can do now to help improve what has become a dire, difficult situation. It’s an important read. (PS Luvvie is coming to the Commonwealth Club on October 12th if you want to join me in seeing her read in person.)
Luvvie also wrote this extremely useful post for her blog:
9 Things White People Can Do to Fight Racism Now
Read it, absorb it, do it.
And if you see Brandi and her nausea and her car sign weaving around Oakland, do me a favor and keep a protective eye on her.
Of course, we shouldn’t have to think that way. And neither should she.
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I find myself thinking of this Frank Turner song a lot, because it applies in so many situations:
“Come on, let’s fix this mess. We can get better, because we’re not dead yet.”
