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I don’t share this much publicly but it seems with everything that is going on it’s probably a good time to do so. I am a white guy in my 30s that comes from an upper middle class suburban upbringing. I wanted for nothing growing up and had married parents who were heavily
involved in my life. As an early teenager, I turned to drugs and alcohol as an escape to deal with some trauma. It ended up snowballing into a situation where I very nearly killed myself and many others on numerous occasions due to my lifestyle. My life was a wreck.
Thankfully, I had friends and family who never gave up on me and I was born white with money so I had the opportunity to receive the best care available. Through that, and more radically, a spiritual awakening, I was able to get free from all of that and continued to do so
for last 13+ years. I’ve always felt like I was alive when I shouldn’t have been to fulfill purposes that are greater than myself. I spent a lot of years trying to help people find freedom from various addictions. In the beginning, it was my white peers from similar backgrounds.
About 7 years ago, I got involved with organizations that served victims of human trafficking and also helped folks with addiction. I met my wife around that time and we used to go from the burbs to the hood in Atlanta about once or twice a week. We did various things
with the community, from just talking with them, playing sports, cooking out, praying, helping them write a resume, apply for jobs, just generally being present and getting to know people who were very opposite from us in just about every way possible.
That was a good thing, but for us, it wasn’t enough. We decided that if we really wanted to get to know people we needed to be a physical neighbor. So we bought a house in the poorest neighborhood of Atlanta on the number one drug corner in the state. That was over 5 years ago.
We were one of the first white families to move there in decades. We didn’t come in with an agenda other than to be good neighbors, be good listeners, and leverage our privilege and resources to a people group who had been victims of circumstance, being born black and poor in USA
I don’t have time to fully share the ups and downs & all the many heartbreaking and beautiful things that I’ve seen, learned and shared over the years. However, I do think I can share a few things that I’ve learned to my primarily white audience that may not have lived like this
One thing that is being consistently asked of whites by blacks right now is to be a good listener. Know enough to say that you don’t know what it’s like to be black in America. If you don’t think it’s significantly different than having white skin then you are just ill-informed.
If you think about a horizontal line and visualize it as a scale, if you are born white with money you start out on the far right side which represents high opportunity. If you are black and poor you’re on the far left which represents limited opportunity
As an affluent white kid, I nearly wrecked my life and the greatest consequences moved me back to the middle of the scale, perhaps shaded mid-left. My starting point, my privilege, afforded me way more opportunities to get second chances, to survive and ultimately advance.
If you are born poor and black, where selling drugs are the main economic opportunity and violence is the main way to be seen, heard, and respected, it’s a totally different way of life with a razor thin margin of error to stay out of prison and not be killed living that life.
The same way many of us saw our moms and dads work hard at blue or white collar jobs, young men in poverty rarely have a father in the home to teach them what being a man is really about. The role models are athletes and the guys on the corner with respect and money in pocket.
Really take time to think about that and understand the role the psychology plays in that regard and then think about what we are seeing play out in front of us right now. The system in the country inherently targets and oppresses people of color and the impoverished.
I look at the Lynn Bowden headline from this morning. We have no idea his role in any of the drug sales or guns found, but that’s a normal way of life for a lot of families in opportunity-poor-areas in this country. I’m not advocating for drug sales or having assault rifles,
Im simply trying to convey what I’ve learned that it’s not simply a basic matter of choice for many to live that lifestyle. It’s deeply ingrained and the path of least resistance for a person or a family that lives a life that is full of resistance from their first breath to last
This is hard medium for me to articulate everyhting that is on my heart on this subject. It’s been encouraging to see so many folks with upbringings that were similar to mine taking time to listen and try to better understand what our brothers and sisters of color are telling us
If you are white, don’t be ashamed or feel guilty. That’s nonsense as well. Instead, I would suggest using your platform, resources, skills, talents, voice, whatever that may be to help empower other people that are being jailed, beaten, and killed for reasons of their skin color
Anyway, I hope some of that made sense. I’ll try to be more open to share about experiences that I’ve had and I’ll continue to be a good neighbor, and would encourage everyone to do the same, no matter where you are planted.
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