When Will It End?
It is 2:00 pm on January 4, 2021.
As I await take off from Chicago O’hare International Airport to return to Nashville International, I’ve been reminded on several different occasions of the good and bad in people.
While skiing, experiencing Airbnb issues, changing hotels, visiting Walmart, leaving the hotel to return home, entering into TSA Pre-Check, and even preparing for take-off for this flight, I was reminded that there are people in this world who are extremely kindhearted and caring no matter who you are or what you look like and then there are people who utilize the color of their skin to treat people better, mistreat people who they do not identify with, or insert their entitlement or better yet, their privilege.
I once again do not know where this blog may land but as I sit with my jacket in my lap, taxiing down the landing strip, writing this blog in the notes on my cell phone, I felt the need to just get this out. Maybe I’ll post it, maybe I won’t, but nevertheless, my heart was disturbed, and I could not let this continue to rest there.
Moving along....
I pointed out the jacket in my lap because even as I prepare to return to life as usual, I was reminded that racism and white privilege exists even in the really, really simple things.
Something as simple as the flight attendant asking the Caucasian couple in front of me if they’d like to place their jackets in the overhead bin while walking past me to tend to them and looking directly at my lap when asking, but yet failed to offer that same courtesy to me.
It really blew my mind and reminded me that in just over 4 days, I had experienced a lot of unnecessary discrimination from those who did not look like me.
Maybe it was the Caucasian TSA Agent who stopped my party of 6 at the TSA Pre-Check entrance because she assumed, we were in the wrong place but allowed a Caucasian family of 4 to enter less than 0.5 seconds before us with no issues or hesitation.
Maybe it’s the older Caucasian lady in the Red Pontiac Grand Am in Walmart’s parking lot who blatantly ignored us attempting to park beside her, even after gently tapping the horn to get her attention. Who stated she thought we were Mexican because they like to “use that horn” but had she saw that we were Black, she would have moved. She repeated this statement to us twice.
Maybe it’s the young Caucasian lady who FAILED to leave for the airport in time for her flight at 8:15 am and attempted to insert her needs and privilege above the needs of a 7-month pregnant Black Woman when she was denied the front seat and expressed “I don’t know anybody”, when instructed to sit in the back of a hotel airport shuttle full of Black Americans who properly planned arrangements to the airport at the necessary time of 7:00 am for our flight at 9:45 am.
It’s in these things I am reminded of the little ways racism and white privilege exists. It’s disheartening, it’s sad, it’s sick. I often wonder if I’ll EVER see the day when things like this are NO longer a factor.
I wonder what the lives of my unborn children and the lives of my nieces and nephews will look like with all of the underlying hate, racism, and white privilege in the world. I find myself so troubled to see that even after 31 years on this Earth, with all that we as Black people have endured, that there are still people who have an extremely difficult time treating everyone equally.
Black Americans are discriminated against literally almost every day simply when just going about our daily lives. When will it end? Will it ever end? Will I be alive to see the day when we are all truly treated equally without underlying discrimination?
I am reminded of a blog I posted last year entitled, “Who Fights for Us?”
Although the circumstances are different, after the many experiences listed above, the question still remains....
Who Fights for Us?
My heart is heavy, but even in this, I just pray God allows me to see the day when further differences are made on behalf of Black People and MORE unity and LESS discrimination exists.
