Do you know what it’s like to be a man of African descent in America right now? Can you imagine? I don’t believe you can (though my Latinx brothers and sisters can come close). You do not know what it is like to want to take a mental health day every other week because you hear that another black man, woman, or child was shot by a police officer that will, statistically speaking, walk away a free man. You do not know how much I have to pray not to hate white people because Jesus, the savior that slave owners used as a tool of oppression instead of an example of love, says that we should show love. You do not know what it’s like to live in a nation that was founded as a haven for all people except yours, with specificity to that point made in numerous government documents on state and federal levels. Most importantly, as a black man, you do not know what it is like to potentially leave your family without the leadership you intended to have because of a crooked power system that lets adult villains run free after murdering 12 year olds. No one else could possibly know what such an existence is like.

Every day, I go to work with human beings. I like the humans I work with. From Melody, this funny, charismatic white woman who once, after going to a cultural competency conference, apologized to me for the nonsense we black people have to endure, to James, an older educated black man who developed at a time when, in order to be taken seriously as person of color, you needed letters both before and after your name. Working with people whose stories and points of view differ greatly from mine allows me to better understand the world around me but they also make me wonder, “Does the world truly care about understanding me? Is America over the black narrative of struggle? And, if it’s over that narrative, why does it fail to stop fueling the fires that cause the collective struggle.

Before I go any further, I love being black. I wouldn’t trade it for anything because being black means I can make it through everything. Those of you reading this who are not black couldn’t walk a day in my shoes or the shoes of the most educated and affluent black person in America. To be black, though joyous and full of beauty, is traumatic. Every. Single. Day. If I see red and blue lights behind me, I’m concerned that I won’t make it home again to tell my wife that I love her. If I tweet #BlackLivesMatter, I wonder if someone who partners with my organization will see it, assume me to be a “terrorist” and recommend that I lose my job (it has happened to me before but for some reason, I keep doing it). What if I cannot smile at a constituent who was considering investing in my organization because, the night before, I just saw an identical face carrying a Tiki torch on CNN? I wonder how many of those people I have one degree of separation from. Shoot, I wonder if any of my Facebook “friends” were there marching to make American great “again.”

This past Sunday, I was at church and one of my favorite people to see when I walk into worship, a brother who is always smiling and uplifting, looked stoic. I tried to get a laugh out of him by joking about a hectic moment from the community service we had done the day before. He acknowledged the humor but, still, he failed to smile. It was at that moment I realized he couldn’t smile because, as we were serving the community that Saturday afternoon and showing love to people of all races, white people were in Charlottesville, VA committing heinous acts of domestic terrorism. Acts that too many will never have to answer for. And, when he goes into the office, I’m sure the brother walked in with his mask on, doing what he had to to survive. But, at church, surrounded by a congregation that is 90% black and brown, he can be transparent. That is the only public place where we can just be.

I want to love everyone. I really do. But, just as I am enraged by those white people who are perpetrating these assaults against the black and brown communities, I am equally disappointed in people of all backgrounds who fail to speak out against the evils. How can you say you believe America is equal but you allow injustice to go unbridled on your timeline, in your country clubs, and in your churches? How are you content with letting people work for you whose beliefs are the antithesis of everything progressive people claim to be working toward? How do you let hate fester in America and say “Well, it doesn’t affect me so I’ll look the other way?” Well, now it does affect you liberal white America. Heather Heyer was a white woman who died at the hands of a white supremacist. Sadly, America cares more when a white person dies for black lives than when a black person does but, if it’ll get you out of your seat, so be it.

That last sentence is the problem. I know white death/pain evokes sympathy and I know black and brown death/pain has been the status quo for centuries. We were brought here to work and suffer. Like a car that is driven off the lot, every second that we exist outside our place of origin, we lose value in the eyes of America. Regardless of what we have done for this nation, from building it to sustaining it to progressing it, we will always be seen as less than. Knowing this, I have to pray every day and every night for love to take control of my heart. The first reason I pray for this love is because it’s best for my soul in the long run. The second reason I pray for love and not the seething hatred that America deserves is because it’s best for the nation. The day that black and brown people reciprocate the hatred that they have been shown by Western Society is the day that we stop caring and a community that no longer cares is a threat to everyone involved.

I just want to make sense of this world before I bring life into it. Because, once I do, I will die for the child that I father, just like I will die for the wife that I’ve married. I am a black man. I am strong. And, as a law-abiding tax payer, I don’t care if you don government uniform or a cowardly white sheet, I am not going down without a fight. I pray it doesn’t come to that but to be black in America is to believe that it could at any time.