Dear White Family Members...You are Contributing to My Oppression

Dear White Family Members,

As your oldest biracial family member, I’m terrified of showing up at Christmas dinner. Terrified.

I’m scared to hear why you support individuals who have murdered Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and too many others to name.

At Christmas, it’s horrifying for me to face a room full of people who make it so clear that they believe that some lives (white ones) are worth more than others (black ones).

I know that you don’t think that you participate in racism. In your post-racial worldview, the only racists left in America in 2014 are in the KKK, and as Christians you could never tolerate their level of violence. But the everyday acts of aggression that you have perpetrated repeatedly against me and against other people of color are indeed acts of racism.

When you tried to erase my identity as a black woman, that was anti-blackness.

When you have repeatedly silenced my opinions on the grounds that as a black person I was “overly sensitive”, that was anti-blackness.

When you “joked” that I was getting a Ph.D. in “ebonics”, that was anti-blackness.

When you mocked me for campaigning for Barack Obama, that was anti-blackness.

Now that you’re passionately defending Darren Wilson for murdering Michael Brown, that is anti-blackness.

You may think that our issues are political and not racial; I have to tell you that those things are inextricably linked. People of color are angry because the state-sanctioned murder of Michael Brown was just the latest example of the fact that we live in a system that was never designed to be equal. Slavery morphed into Jim Crow and Jim Crow morphed into the present-day prison-industrial complex. This country was literally built on a system that exploited black bodies for financial and political gain. The fact that you have trouble seeing that is also part of the system; racist policies are designed to encourage white communities to deny the very existence of the system itself.

When you refuse to recognize that we are living within a system designed to abuse and denigrate people like me, you are contributing to my oppression. When you defend George Zimmerman, Darren Wilson, Daniel Pantaleo and their ilk, you are contributing to my oppression. I’m mad as hell at the injustice that black people have been enduring for hundreds of years, and because you’re not, you’re directly contributing to my oppression.

I love you and I wish that you could try to understand why my heart is breaking.

I’m outraged because the reality that some lives are considered worth less than others was upheld in our so-called justice system.  I’m upset because I realize that maybe it will never be ethical for me to bring a black child into the world to live in a country that has made it so clear that their body would be property, to be disposed of as the powers that be see fit.

I’m devastated because we know that some racist police murder black women too, and if that fate ever befell me, I’m fairly certain you’d side with the police.

For years, I have endured Christmases, Thanksgivings, and all other manner of family gathering, all the while knowing that my presence as a black body was seen as disruptive and problematic.

And despite all of this, I’ll see you at Christmas dinner.

I’ll be there because I love you. For me, showing up to Christmas in this black body is a revolutionary act. Even if you forcibly silence me, my presence means that you’ll have to face blackness and the consequences of anti-black racism in your own family. I promise that this is an important step for both my liberation, and for your own.

I’ll see you at Christmas dinner.

-Nicole