Here's Why My Heart is Breaking

Here's why my heart is breaking. It's not because of police violence against black Americans. It's because we've known this was happening all along. Whatever the justification, white people have been fine looking the other way from racism, sexism and hatred in their own country, communities and even their own homes.

So white people, we're supposed to believe you now? We're supposed to believe that you'll all change, now that the evidence of America's original and continuing sin is overwhelming? Forget belief, for a moment; here is what I know:

As a kid in the late 60's, I listened as a father of a friend angrily used the 'N' word when talking about Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley, at the dinner table.

Also as a kid, I listened as my Sunday school teacher at First Baptist Church in Fullerton said that Catholics and Mormons were evil.

In high school I listened as my fellow white students called the Latinx students spics, wetbacks, and worse.

I listened as a child when a young man (who later became an evangelical pastor) laugh when I used the phrase "Native American spirituality" because, he said, they weren't capable of spirituality.

When I worked at First Congregational Church, I watched as some people left that church, angry because they were going to make the church 'open and affirming' of gays and lesbians. The people they were insulting had sat beside them in the pews for years.

Have I done any of those things myself? I don't remember doing it, but likely so. I'll cop to it, even if I believe it would have been inadvertent. I do remember a time when I was a kid talking about the movie "Midway" I had just seen, and I was so excited about it, I blurted out "then they shot down that Jap's plane." I immediately realized that my aunt's partner, Tae Yaki, a survivor of the internment camps was sitting at the table. I'm sure she forgave me and I never mentioned it, but the horror I felt has stayed with me.

Where is your horror white people? Or more importantly, where has it been all these years?

And the horror now? We all watched as our fellow Americans voted for the worst human being on the planet for President, for whatever reason: Hillary, e-mails, immigration, health care, conservative ideals... blah blah blah. YOU are the horror. A woman I've known and loved my whole life said she did it because of health care. When I pressed her on his racism, she dropped the "my best friend is black" card. Another person said he did it because of conservative principles, even though Trump is the complete antithesis of conservatism. He lied to make you think he was a conservative, and now he's proven how gullible you all were. I cannot anymore pretend that I am OK with that. You owe the world an apology.

And now we watch as white militia morons storm state capitols and see no reprisal, but black women are killed in their own homes and black men are suffocated or shot by police officers in horrific numbers. And yet some of you white people STILL insist on defending the status quo, to the point that you'll swallow any conspiracy theory that comes around the bend because it's easier than recognizing that the only simple answer is that America is fucked up and has been most of its history.

I've been pretty silent through the last week, mostly because the floor needs to recognize the voices of the young and the people of color who are rightfully fed up with all of this: the racism, the ignorance, the corporate theft, ignoring science and what is happening to our planet, a President whose depravity knows no basement.

But this is my testament: I will not listen to the things I have listened to in my lifetime without shutting you up. You cannot ignore our past in my present or my presence any longer. Black Lives Matter.