Now that you have checked on your Black friends…
What will you do next?
What will you do with the knowledge you have learned?
What will you do with the recent awareness you have discovered?
What will you do?
How will you wield your privilege?
How will you reconcile your past?
How will you handle your past complacencies?
What will you fight for?
What weapon will you choose?
What are you willing to stand for?
What conditions and exceptions will you overlook?
How long until you get weary from the battle?
How long until the flame dies in you?
How long will your concern for our lives remain private?
How long until something easier preoccupies your mind?
What are you willing to lose?
What ties are you willing to loosen?
What positions are you willing to walk away from?
What talks are you willing to have with your child?
With your parents or grandparents?
What stories did you hear growing up that now stir your gut in agony?
Are you willing to call out your racist cousins?
Are you willing to call out your white supremacist great aunt?
Are you willing to dismantle structures your ancestors fought for?
Are you willing to turn your back on confederate memorabilia that symbolizes the preservation of slavery?
Are you willing to acknowledge the history of this country?
Are you willing to acknowledge the backs on which it was built?
Are you willing to acknowledge the generations of policies and regulations put in place intentionally to keep minorities in America down?
Are you willing to divest from white supremacy and white nationalism?
Will you swallow your discomfort?
Will you choose to be uncomfortable over complacent?
Will you hold your elected officials responsible?
Are you willing to vote accordingly?
Would you trade places with a Black person?
Are you willing to put yourself on the back burner?
Would you take responsibility?
Are you willing to look yourself in the mirror and accept your responsibility?Would you distribute your power?
Are you willing to relinquish control?
Can you acknowledge this isn’t new?
Can you acknowledge your choice to ignore what has always been in front of you?
Can you acknowledge what you thought was history is a present day concern?
Now that you have had your “awakening”
Now that you have checked in with your Black friends and co-workers
Now that you have shed your empathy tears
The life you live and the way you are perceived are weighing on these very questions.
What will you prioritize?
Who will you become?
What will you do next?
“Well, if one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected — those, precisely, who need the law’s protection most! — and listens to their testimony. Ask any Mexican, any Puerto Rican, any black man, any poor person — ask the wretched how they fare in the halls of justice, and then you will know, not whether or not the country is just, but whether or not it has any love for justice, or any concept of it. It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”
— from No Name in the Street (1972) by James Baldwin
