Thank you for writing this, there is so much I want to say about this and express how I feel. No one ever mentions this kind of stuff at work. I’m not the only black at my company, but I was for a really long time and these conversations never seem to come up.

One person at my church asked me how I felt about everything and I got chocked up. I almost couldn’t respond because I know he was just talking about recently but I wanted to tell him everything. I wanted to tell him about my friend Jessie who I knew since elementary school who was shot in the back and killed by the police, I wanted to tell him about the time they pulled me and my friends over and held us at gun point (we were in high school at the time). I wanted to tell him about the ridiculous amount of times I’ve been pulled over vs. the 3 times I’ve actually received a traffic violation in my 20+ years of driving.

I wanted to tell him that I have to have the same conversation with my kids as Jackie Robinsons coach had with him back in 1945 about how to deal with racism. Instead of just teaching my boys how to be good students and good citizens, I also have to teach them about these injustices that they’re going to encounter. While all his friends are going to get the “you can be anything” speech, I have to give the “watch what you do”, “don’t hang in large groups”, “don’t wear clothes too baggy or too suspicious” and “watch how you respond to police”, “don’t run from them” and “be respectful as possible if you have encounters with them” as well as the “oh but you can still be anything you want to be” speech. I’m getting chocked up right now just thinking about it all and I know a lot of this will go unread but it just feels really good to let this out.