Just pointing this out bc I’ve seen a trend happening on my fb wall.
I’ve been stopped before by police. Especially living in SB County, in an area where guys around my age are typically partying/drinking, I’ve had my car searched multiple times, ...

...and have had multiple field sobriety tests put on me.

Not once have I feared for my life, or feared that things would escalate, and I’ve never had to think about my skin color being perceived in a certain way in those cases...

...that’s the nature of privilege. You can relate this to any struggle I’ve had, even the stuff with ASD. My skin color has never been a factor to any suffering I’ve experienced, and I’ve never had to fear for my life bc of it...

...I can however tell you some stories of experiencing harsher retaliation for standing up for POC in the context of a Southern Baptist church I worked at. Retaliation that was a factor in me losing that job and literally getting excommunicated from it...

...So I’ve seen people who would rather banish people to hell, so to speak, than acknowledge systematic racism and work to better understand their communities and be an agent of reconciliation.
I think the main reason is bc these people would have to admit prior wrongdoings...

...essentially admitting that either their opinion, the system they grew up in, certain religious/political practices, etc, are flawed. The feeling of being wrong can sometimes be worse for people bc it means having to shift their identity in some way. That’s scary for people...

...but we need to in order to love others to the best of our abilities. One of the beauties of human consciousness is out ability to think outside of a singular mindset (what’s best for me) and into a communal one (what’s best for US)...

...and shifting into that communal focus means we have to talk about these hard topics. We have to acknowledge our privilege. We may even have to admit we were wrong. But these have to happen if we really want to love God and love others.
Here’s to striving to always do better.