As a middle-class white woman, who's spent her entire life in white suburbia, I spent many years being blind to a reality that families of color live with every day. As I grew older, I started to hear about it more, however the contradicting stories in the news media sent me on the hunt, not to answer "how can I help?" but "who should I believe??" So, instead of acknowledging that there was a problem, I chose to believe that, since I didn't see racism in my all-white family with our all-white friends in our all-white neighborhoods, it must not exist (which I now recognize was almost more about me guarding my own feelings/ego than anything). The initial turning-point conversation that I can recall having was with someone that was (and still is) a prominent figure in our local black community. While I didn't know him well, I knew enough to know he deserved my respect, so when he told me I was part of the problem, (well deserved after I told him that 'black people being so angry' was part of the problem), my poor, early 20's, ego was pretty damaged. However, instead of completely blowing him off, I decided to dig deeper. On one hand, I'll admit, I wanted to prove I was right, but, on the other, I also wanted to know if I was wrong. The only problem was, with my very few connections at the time, I didn't know how. 

A year or two later, however, I ended up spending an evening with a group of people, celebrating a mutual friend's birthday - and in the mix was one black man. Late that night, like any legit celebratory late-night gathering, a small group of us all ended up in a booth at Perkins for "breakfast" and I ended up sitting next to my new dark complected friend. I remember spending a good chunk of time arguing, in good humor, with him about which rock bands were better - (I don't think we ever did fully agree - haha!), talking to him was easy -- I assumed he was the guy who everybody wanted to be friends with. There's no way this man deals with 'racism'. So I decided to ask what HIS experience was as a black man in Cedar Falls, Iowa -- and what I learned broke my heart. Not only had my rose-colored perspective been wrong, I then had to admit that I WAS part of the problem purely for ignoring or dismissing that it was one. And so began my new journey of really paying attention to the subtle nuances of racism in my own day-to-day thinking.

I realized, from his story, as well as many others that I've heard since, that my biggest fault was subconsciously believing that everyone had a narrative like mine, and anyone who had a narrative different than mine was confused or just not paying attention. I couldn't grasp the idea that some of these emotions that people were feeling are entirely justified as they've spent years and years being pushed to the side and made to feel like they didn't matter. I thought "well everybody loves so and so (insert successful black name) -- so I don't think it has anything to do with skin color. The people complaining just must not be doing it right...maybe if they did 'this' instead, things would be better for them" - I completely missed the point. Much like becoming a parent, where you THINK you know how to be an amazing parent...until you are a parent and then realize that parenting is actually really hard, regardless of how great you are at it. I was, essentially, thinking that I could be a perfect black person...without ever having been black, nor would I ever be. So, with that, I've realized that sometimes you just have to take people's word for it and make the choice to say, "How can I help?" because just because we can't see the struggle, doesn't mean it's not there.