Join Their Cries

Illustration by Jennifer Geldard

This morning I am tired. Not sleepy, but tired. It’s deeper than a physical exhaustion – more like an aching hopelessness in my soul. Instead of turning on the news like I usually do, I opened my bible for the first time in longer than I’d like to admit and read about love and strength and hope and all of the things our world seems to be lacking.

I read about a Savior who stood up for people who didn’t have the means to stand up for themselves. Who spoke the truth even when it was unpopular. Who listened to the hurting and showed up for them. Who called out injustice. Who made people uncomfortable. Who refused to just sit quietly in the background.

And I cried. I cried for the disgraceful mess that humanity has become. I cried because none of us look like the Jesus I read about. We have gotten to a point where we put politics over people, and we are so blinded by our stubbornness and insistence that we are right and everyone else is an idiot, that we can’t have a civil conversation about injustice without getting defensive. 

Our Black brothers and sisters are suffering. If you rolled your eyes when you read that, I beg you to consider why.

I may be feeling tired, but I cannot imagine the depth of their exasperation. For far too long they have been ignored, disrespected, and treated unfairly, especially in the part of the country where I live. And while we as their white sisters may have sympathized with them, we have not cried out with them. And for that, we have been wrong.

I don’t have a solution for systemic racism. That’s partly why it’s so frustrating, right? How do we even begin to untangle a knot this tightly woven? And I don’t think white people suddenly starting to talk about it will make everything better. But I do think by not talking about it, we are agreeing that it’s okay, even if that wasn’t the intention of our silence. By not calling out the injustice, we are allowing it to happen over and over and over again. By not lamenting with our Black brothers and sisters, we are communicating to them that we have chosen a side and it’s not theirs.

So we have to say something. Not because our white voices can make it better, but because our white silence is making it worse.

White people, let’s do a better job of speaking up. Call out injustice. Don’t tolerate hate. Listen to your Black sisters and brothers – really listen, and let them know you’re with them. That you love them and you are on their side. They have been using their voices for a long time now, and we shouldn’t have taken this long to join them.