Please remember that in order to have a society which truly protects and works for you, you must first cultivate a society which values the lives of all its citizens equally.

People with privilege and power will use this to their advantage to try to protect the status quo- "A//ll Lives M//atter" has traction because it feeds into that idea while refusing to acknowledge that in this system all lives are NOT equally protected or valued.

It is up to you to train yourself to care about recognizing these power imbalances, to listen to minority voices in times of crisis, or even in situations where you may feel personally accused of something, and to learn to see the truth.

Your emotional defensive response when you feel targeted by minorities can and will be weaponized by the privileged to push minorities down, and society is not going to change until those with a little privilege can learn to accept and confront that about themselves.

Those with a lot of privilege have been using this pa//ndemic to loot and pillage, and I have seen so much anger about it, but I still see so many people I otherwise know to be kind adopt a stance where anything more radical than what personally affects them is "S//JW shit"

As someone who has privilege in a lot of ways, and grew up in what was very much a monoculture, I know how hard it is to train yourself to listen, to accept that you are complicit in these systems of oppression, to learn to recognize them, but I urge you to try.

Without a culture that values EMPATHY, and not just sympathy with a dash of fear of being called out on so//cial medi//a, and without understanding, there will be no improvement in society. The good news is you can foster that empathy in yourself over time no matter who you are.