Toni V. Lee

If your birth sister or brother came to you and said, “I’m hurting.” Your concern and empathy would immediately engage, and you’d do whatever you could to stop their pain.   If they were in a vulnerable place, you’d try your best to protect them.   You’d sincerely and unceasingly pray about their plight so things would improve for them.   We are grafted into the same family by Christ.   I am your sister.   Where is your Christian empathy for me and my pain?   People of color are your brothers and sisters.   We’re sharing our pain with you and telling you that we have been hurting for a long time because of the way we’re treated and want things to change.   Instead of empathizing with us, you dismiss us and tell us to get over it.   Some have even said we shouldn’t think or feel the way we do and should be “like” a certain black young lady in the public eye who—for whatever reasons—has chosen not to say things to make them feel uncomfortab...

All three should be a given for all humanity, but they are not.   People of color have been in a painful struggle against racism for ages.   I have shopped with it, worked with it, dined with it.   I’ve even sat in church with it...it's everywhere.   Some folk are audacious enough to blatantly demonstrate their bigotry.   Others are not, but we still pick up on its presence in the smirks, slights, innuendos, exchanged looks, twisted interpretation of scripture, etc.   Yes, we see it all.   What’s happening now is the struggle has reached the point of ENOUGH...again.    When I see people of color being mistreated and brutalized, the pain cuts deep and my thoughts are that’s somebody’s baby and could very well have been my son, my grand baby, my brother, other relatives or even…me.   Anyone—and I don’t care who you are—who chooses to ignore this kind of wrongdoing, approve of it, or make excuses for it is complicit and is a part of the...