Dear White Friends,

I call you friends with no cynicism. Historically, the majority of my friends have always been white. This is circumstantial.

When you are the only Black kid in your school, the only Black man at your job, when you've broken as many "First Black To (fill in the blank) barriers as I have, statistically speaking you're going to be surrounded by white people.

Understand: these environments are inherently hostile to me. Still, I have always drawn out people of genuinely good intent.

The circumstances which so often made me the only non-white person in your circles were not accidental; they are so by design.

Generations of deliberate segregation and legal inequality needed to be penetrated in order for us to occupy the same space, drink the same water, piss in the same bathrooms, eat in the same cafeterias, live in the same neighborhoods, work at the same jobs.

It doesn't matter if you see me as equal; opportunity never has been.

I have walked among you in a way you have never had to walk among Black and Brown people. I know your customs and habits, I hear your jokes and your silence.

I SEE you.

Like a chained tiger, I know we can laugh and play and your affection is genuine. At the same time, I'm also acutely aware the manner to end my life at the slightest interpretation of aggression, real or perceived, is always close at hand.

Which brings me to my point:

We're living through a second Civil Rights movement.

It started with the death of Trayvon Martin, and hit fever pitch last year with the murder of George Floyd. This, despite the fact that we cross legal thresholds of personhood regularly.

It isn't enough. They. Keep. Killing. Us.

I've accepted the statistical possibility of dying in a hail of police gunfire, in a cop's chokehold, or with a cop's knee on my neck. Here's my ask, and it's a doozy:

In the event of my extrajudicial murder at the hands of the authorities, don't make me into a hashtag:

Change the culture.

The dehumanization of Black people was enshrined in the Constitution of this country.

While we've made significant legal progress, the predominant culture is still to see non-white people as other, and lesser-than.

Not quite as smart, not quite as trustworthy, not quite as capable, a looming danger.

Your feelings towards me and your other non-white friends are not reflective of the culture at large. We are perceived as threats, waiting to happen.

White friends, I solemnly charge you: change the hearts of your kin.

Make the treatment of any person of color as unpalatable to them as it would be if you found out it was me who'd just been shot, asphyxiated, murdered.

No law can truly protect Black and Brown people while the pervasive culture demonizes us.

It's within your collective power to change that.

Whatever it is you love about your Black and Brown friends. Whatever it is you love about me:

Amplify that shit.

Broadcast it across all your platforms. Break out your megaphones and crank up the volume.

Break the hate against us down to molecules, atomize the detritus, and reconstruct it into love. Remember, energy can't be created or destroyed; only transformed.

White friends, transform the hated by your kin of non-whites into love.

We don't need you to justify our humanity; instead help those who hate us find humanity in themselves.

Yes, protest. Yes, run for office. Yes, legislate change. Just don't stop there. Remember: justice is what love looks like in public.

However much you think you love us, love us more. Use your privilege to display that love. Then make your people love us like you love us.

Then enshrine that love into law.
Make Daunte White the last hashtag.