Ezzine, while I can’t always agree with every point, I really appreciate your explanations. I’ve shared some reactions other white people and I have had to Black Lives Matter. I was hoping it came across not to invalidate the movement but say if you can’t manage to get on board you can still do something. Some of us are just stuck trying to reconcile what feels wrong about the movement before doing something. We don’t have to like it or its actions to appreciate what it’s accomplished. I openly struggle with my thoughts on it.

They say we can’t walk in each other’s shoes. The statement I’m responding to here is an example. I’ve seen it said before, but I think even with how often it’s been said you won’t be able to appreciate just how subconscious what’s going on is. It’s the other side of “I can read you every day and yet not come close to the experience of being black in America”.

White people coming to understand or care is a slow process because we can’t see what’s going on at all. I used to watch Hannity and Fox News regularly. It’s a nice, soothing way to pull the wool over your eyes and believe the world would be better if everyone else would just quit fucking it up.

For most of us, the structure of the system just appeared or was always there. We didn’t ask for it to be built, and we don’t explicitly endorse it. We’re just told it’s there for our own good, which is probably exactly the truth. To see it for what it is is very new to us. Even when we do, we’re probably just scratching the surface.

I don’t have to like Black Lives Matter to appreciate the results. Maybe in this case the ends do justify the means. I can’t think of what would have been a better way. It’s the least worst option, and I’m not going to try to tell anyone not to continue.

But, there’s another side. If you’re going to break a system, you need to know how it’s built. I’m telling you from the white side, we don’t know. The people who participate don’t understand what the whole does. They think they’re well-meaning people who are doing what they’re told, and they don’t even understand that they’re contributing to the problem. In many if not most cases, it’s not that we actively want to perpetuate the system. We just can’t see it. It’s like once when I saw a plane that was so big I thought it was a building until I got closer.

To get it to end, people do need to be able to see it. They need to be able to understand it. We need to seek answers to questions, and we’re not asking black America to answer them for us. We may just discuss it and what we struggle with here because we share the same Medium. I, for one, am not expecting solutions from black people.

I think to get at a solution, from our side, we need to know the answer to questions such as: are the individual cops racist or do they work for racists or do all the people running it think the will of the people is keeping black people from acting up? Maybe a lot more uncomfortable: is it the will of the people? If it is, the answer lies in changing the people. To do that, we need to communicate with them effectively.

Until we can answer questions such as those, everyone will be able to sit back and say “it’s not me”. We on the “white” side need to find a way to get others to see the problems, and we’re not there yet. We’re trying to find ways to talk about the problems where people will listen. Many white people think of Black Lives Matter as a nuisance and are waiting for it to go away.