Have you checked on your black friends & colleagues?

Allies…

have you texted, called, emailed, sent a carrier pigeon to check on your black friends or colleagues?

My network is telling me no.

In fact, I know first hand. I know it seems that because some of us have learned to walk and talk in the smooth corporate way, that we have credentials up to our ears, that we are church-going people who wouldn’t dream of hurling a rock into the storefront of anyone’s business— fine people, fine cars, fine clothes—that we must be immune to what’s going on. But this is deeper.

WE CANT BREATHE.

I was six when my sister and my mom watched a state trooper stop us on the highway on the way to visit our grandmother in Arkansas. Asked my dad to exit the car and they pulled his gun on him. We still don’t know why he pulled him over. Perhaps it was the brand new Oldsmobile. It was just two generations ago that I was told my great grandfather went on a hunting trip in Tyler, Texas with white friends and “mysteriously” didn’t return. Just two generations since my Big Mama was born on a plantation. The men in our lives get pulled over all the time for absolutely nothing and sometimes because they’re told the car they are driving is too nice for them to be driving.

We are NOT OK.

This goes back generations. It didn’t just begin with George Floyd. And the same discrimination sweeps into the workplace in the form of bias, unconscious or not. Some of my friends plan to “call in black” tomorrow because they just don’t want to face the hypocrisy.

So what will you do? Now is your time to standup with the people you say you cared about just last week— show a little empathy. I’m not asking you to march. Just walk your talk and CARE. #empathy #allies#blacklivesmatter✊????✊????✊????