Adapted from NakedPoppy Inner Circle email of 5/30/20

This was not what I was planning to write today. I had something pretty different teed up. I suddenly couldn’t share it.

In the midst of all that has been unfolding over this last week, it’s become urgent to talk about something different.

The endless list of black lives lost is haunting: George Floyd. Ahmaud Arbery. Breonna Taylor. Trayvon Martin. Emmett Till. And on and on, back through time.

I have an inkling of what it’s like. 

When I was just five years old, I was one of the darkest-skinned kids at school in our lily white neighborhood. One day, I was getting a drink at a water fountain when two boys came up — and taunted me with the N-word.

I’m actually Iranian, not black. I didn’t know then what the N-word meant. But I knew from their tone that they saw me as less than human — and it stung me deeply.

As an adult, it happened intermittently. After 9/11, for example, people of Middle Eastern ancestry became targets. When you’re part of the dominant culture, it’s easy to just miss it. Meanwhile, there’s this parallel experience when you look like the sort of person who is the “other.” 

It’s chilling to walk down the street and fear that somebody might hurt you because of your ethnicity. It’s somewhere between exhausting and stressful and terrifying.

My experience is of course not that of a black person. Racism hasn’t haunted me every day of my life.

But I have an inkling.

I know I need to understand better and to do more — and invite all of us to find ways to do more. Let’s acknowledge that racism has been built into the fabric of our country from the beginning. And that in order to move forward, we need to start by looking back. My thoughts:⁣⁣

  • If there’s one book that, for me, lays it all out, it’s the heart-stopping The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. It examines race and criminal justice in America. I was not the same after reading it. The 1619 Project by the New York Times chronicles how it all began, and how racism governs our society to this day.
  • I made a small donation to the George Floyd Memorial Fund. The fundraiser had already exceeded its goal but I felt a personal need to pay my respects to the family. A larger donation went to the Loveland Foundation in support of black women and girls and systemic change.
  • Let’s not forget where it starts: with the people who write the laws. There are some excellent candidates of color running for office this electoral season. They understand best what laws need to be re-examined and why. Your money and your time can help worthy members of the black community get elected, and in turn bend the arc of history towards justice.⁣⁣ 
  • I’m examining this uncomfortable topic out loud with my family — and with all of you here. What can we learn? What do we need to unlearn? What can we share so that we can collectively get better?

So that our journey forward gets us closer to a world where we judge each other (and ourselves) — in the words of the great Martin Luther King Junior — not by the color of our skin but by the content of our character.

Take good care,

Jaleh