Content warning: racial violence, confronting your own privilege
I am Filipino, a non-Black POC. I love a man who some would call a “white as Wonder Bread” man. He is truly amazing to me. We had a conversation yesterday about #BlackLivesMatter & why I’m so upset. I promised to send him resources to help him understand. I’m posting them here in hopes that they get shared and help others too. These can all be read/viewed/digested in 30-45 minutes. Please carve out the time.
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I am grateful that he acknowledges his White privilege & gives me a safe space to vent, grieve, & process what is happening. I am grateful that he lets me be angry & understands I have much to process. Here is how I started my email to him. 16 quick reads, photo stories and posts, and other easily accessible resources follow that.
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“Thank you for taking the time to talk to me and understand why what’s been happening in our country for decades, and most recently with George Floyd, has shaken me to my core and forced me to confront the anger I have against white people. Thank you for saying you’ll read and watch the following things…Please know that I do not resent you for being white, and that I am so grateful you are listening to learn right now. Like I said, when we have kids, I hope they can enjoy the privilege of being light-skinned, because the stuff I had to grow up going through – especially after coming to the mainland for school – I would wish on no one. And I’m not even Black.”
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1) Please start with a five-minute Ted Talk from Clint Smith on how to raise a black son in America. He speaks with eloquent and firsthand experience, and I don’t think anyone could have said this better: https://www.ted.com/talks/clint_smith_how_to_raise_a_black_son_in_america
2) Next, here is a less-than-one-minute clip from @mylifeaseva on Instagram of a young black girl speaking in front of people about how she feels. I wish I knew her name so that I could give her so much credit for speaking up: https://www.instagram.com/p/CAzLhl3FIFK/
3) To contrast that, but add to what she had to say, here is a speech by white anti-racism activist Jane Elliott, who speaks on white privilege. Her words to an all-white audience are powerful: https://www.instagram.com/p/CAzC6bmHaPg/
4) To continue Jane Elliott’s speech is a Twitter thread by @Dr Poorman, to all white people, but also to all non-black POC too. I read this and had to really let it sink in: https://twitter.com/DrPoorman/status/1266948581581131778
5) This is the longest article in this bunch of resources. It is on the racist roots of American policing, and it’s a 10 minute read. I think it’s important to learn this history: https://theconversation.com/the-racist-roots-of-american-policing-from-slave-patrols-to-traffic-stops-112816
6) I am a huge proponent of bottom-up change, as in, change starts in the homes. Here is an Instagram posts from a group of pediatric advocates and medical professionals (@theconsciouskid) about whether or not kids are too young to talk about race. It disturbed me: https://www.instagram.com/p/CAvmPPspkyd/
7) Thinking forward into our future, I think this is an important short piece to read. It’s called “The Conversation We Must Have With Our White Children” and was written by blogger Courtney Martin: https://onbeing.org/blog/the-conversation-we-must-have-with-our-white-children/
8) Moving on through the resources, posted by Bernie Sanders on Instagram, I think it’s important to be reminded of what these riots are about, by Martin Luther King Jr himself: https://www.instagram.com/p/CA1HgyqD_oK/
9) Here is a more recent testimony, less than 3 minutes, posted on Instagram by @therealdjericb – the passion in her voice cannot be missed: https://www.instagram.com/p/CAz30LUHx7p/
10) Speaking of riots, here is an Instagram post by @jenerous of a tweet by @brokeymcpoverty about rioting in this country: https://www.instagram.com/p/CAxkGcvJQZR/
11) I know that I myself, as a Filipino, am guilty too. This Instagram post by @jeanettelam, about how Asian-Americans are complicit in all of this and are the closest minority to White America so should be using our white-adjacent privilege better, really spoke to me: https://www.instagram.com/p/CAss36Mg_ET/
12) Circling back to the protest threads, here is a short photo article by LAist, featured on NPR, about how protests turn violent when police start shooting rubber bullets. This is not a unique case, nor are all police behaving wrongly in response to these protests, but this is good information to know when thinking about riots escalating: https://laist.com/2020/05/30/protest_photos_the_scene_on_las_streets_this_weekend.php?utm_campaign=npr&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_term=nprnews
13) You heard my friends and me talk about how disgusted we are about what Trump said (“when the looting starts, the shooting starts”). This is why: https://www.npr.org/2020/05/29/864818368/the-history-behind-when-the-looting-starts-the-shooting-starts
14) Almost finished! This was posted by @feminist.yes on Instagram and written by someone named Jeff Clegg. He is a white male and he is speaking to what he knows. It is a hard-hitting synopsis of all the injustice that’s happened: https://www.instagram.com/p/CAz3XuMhynm/
15) I know you really appreciated Chanel Miller’s words when she spoke out about the terrible things she endured. She does graphic representations of her thoughts on Instagram, and this is a recent post from her: https://www.instagram.com/p/CAyRgOxAXu7/
16) Finally, because this is all so draining, here is a poem that I keep going back to about Eric Garner, and it gives me a bit of hope: https://poets.org/poem/small-needful-fact
If these 16 works – both in word and art – have taught you, touched you, made you curious in any way, I would love to talk. Here are two additional resources about what we all can be doing to help concretely at this time:
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Resources for Racial Justice (for donations of both money and time) – I got this from a post my sister sent out: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OQ7X-Mqzax8gWpAWoyWxBkWZBmSVgIR4UKzzYFYMZrs/edit?usp=sharing
75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice, written by blogger Corinne Shutack: https://medium.com/equality-includes-you/what-white-people-can-do-for-racial-justice-f2d18b0e0234
Natasha Abadilla, MD 