How Can I Comfort the Black People in My Life Right Now?

I suspect a lot of people are wondering what to say to their black friends right now. The prime advice I can give on that is that there is no advice. Black people are each responding to current events differently, just as we have responded differently our entire lives. Some black people would like to hear you reach out and say something like, “Our country is having a moment right now that you may have been living with for years. I want to touch base and see how you’re doing on a personal level. I want to make sure you haven’t lost hope”. Some might appreciate something like, “your people are my people and I will stand for OUR people”. Others might be angry in such a way that they honestly don’t feel like hearing from you at all, not because they have any anger directed specifically at you, but because their anger is such that any words are meaningless and only meaningful action matters. Still others might be fluctuating through all of these and more.

Do be careful sympathizing/empathizing by saying things like, “I’m sorry that black people are and have been suffering.” Your intentions are good, but that has an unintentionally isolating undertone because it sounds like the perspective of someone who has had the luxury of being outside of it. Hearing that can sometimes be a reminder of how powerless black people have been and still are, even when hearing it from another minority. All of this is not to say you need to be terrified of saying something wrong because your friends will forgive you if they feel offended; I’m just saying that you don’t need to feel compelled to say anything at all. Sometimes, witnessing your response and actions in other contexts (especially political) is enough. We are indeed watching.

I will suggest that people stop saying, “I will never understand your pain/experience”. If you, someone who cares about us on a familiar level, believe that, what hope do we have for others unknown to us who truly believe that all lives currently matter? I’ve never experienced a whip on my back or a rope around my neck but I very much understand pain and death. So do you. You can become educated on how racism is integrated into this country. You can start here and here. That is how you will understand our pain and our experience.

I theorize that what you might actually be experiencing is an underlying cognitive dissonance in that you will never understand our response to our pain/experience. This is particularly true for white people. While it should be purely gratifying, it is a cruel irony to see how angry white people can be on our behalf because almost every black American subconsciously knows that if black people expressed their anger (individually or collectively) in a manner that white people have historically gotten away or succeeded with, we would be eradicated. No matter how hard we fought, we would eventually be outnumbered, outgunned, and overpowered. We are still slaves to the will of white people, the majority, as are all minorities in this country. With the way racism is ingrained into every aspect and institution of our society, white people: you too are slaves to it.

The sheer magnitude and scale of white hatred was uniquely beaten into our DNA by the transatlantic slave trade and the oft-overlooked culling of the black population that has transpired since its abolishment. From individual lynchings (that continue to this day) to outright genocides, there are too many examples of white terrorism against black people enjoying their same American (nay, human) rights to life, liberty, and the (successful) pursuit of happiness. All of that is to say nothing of the overseers who were given badges to continue “policing” our communities to this very day. I believe that if it came down to the abomination of a second civil war, it would not literally be exclusively black people alone against white people; but that is one of the true fears of being a black person in America. It’s not just that we could be killed alone at any time; it’s that we could all be killed together at any time. I expect other racial minorities have felt and do feel this as well.

Now this could all be wrong. I’m writing only from my own anecdotal and empirical evidence, combined with some self-education on these matters, refracted through my personal lens of perception and experience. I’m just one black man trying to monolithically analyze groups that are not monoliths. But I would take my bet to Vegas. So where am I going with this… The truth of the matter is that black people in America have been condemned between a rock and a hard place by racist white people from the past to the present who have been able to claim the power to do so.

Race as a categorizing term referring to human beings was first used in the English language in the late 16th century. Until the 18th century it had a generalized meaning similar to other classifying terms such as type, sort, or kind… By the 18th century, race was widely used for sorting and ranking the peoples in the English colonies — Europeans who saw themselves as free people, Amerindians who had been conquered, and Africans who were being brought in as slave labour — and this usage continues today.

Between 1660 and 1690, leaders of the Virginia colony began to pass laws and establish practices that provided or sanctioned differential treatment for freed servants whose origins were in Europe. They conscripted poor whites, with whom they had never had interests in common, into the category of free men and made land, tools, animals, and other resources available to them. African Americans and Africans, mulattoes, and American Indians, regardless of their cultural similarities or differences, were forced into categories separate from whites. Historical records show that the Virginia Assembly went to great extremes not only to purposely separate Europeans from Indians and Africans but to promote contempt on the part of whites against blacks. (source, for further reading)

To put that in perspective, white people literally made themselves racist (first taking a path through a hatred of the also-white Irish “savages” that neighbored 17th-century England to get there). Such white people then mentally conditioned and gaslit their own race into being unable to see the reality of race in America using manipulative and oppressive systems like classism, which we too have suffered in. Furthermore, they continue to use classism to perpetuate racism, and then use racism to perpetuate classism… The cycle continues ad infinitum. At this point who can say what the most powerful of these people are even motivated by? Racism, megalomania, narcissism, capitalistic greed, a combination?

Regardless, this has left black people to struggle against the paradox of ‘fight back, but don’t actually fight back because you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t’. We alone don’t have the numbers to get out of it by virtue of the exact fact that we are a minority. We may have been press-ganged into using our strength to build this nation, but even our strength cannot cleanse it alone and we shouldn’t have to because we didn’t create racism. This is especially true considering a lot of our strength was unknowingly invested by our ancestors in not raising us to hate white people. We have spent generations in pursuit of equality, not revenge. White people, you don’t need to feel white guilt for what past white people did; but recognize that you are in the unique position of being able to reconcile the imbalances that their atrocities created. Why you? Because you’re alive right now. Unfortunately, you reap what they sowed (as do we all).

Returning to how you can comfort your black friends right now… It all starts with just being a friend. If they’re on social media, see if they’ve posted anything that might be a clue to where their head is. Whether they have or haven’t, if you decide to reach out, don’t tiptoe around current events (or say “with everything going on…”). We have lived this for lifetimes; it’s too late for coddling. You can acknowledge racism, ask if we want to talk about it, and talk about other things if not. We know you don’t have all the answers. We don’t either; but we’re giving the nation as many as we can. So are many non-black people. Listen, learn, and take action at every opportunity in your life from this day forward.

Become the better you that we will grow with. Become the better you that educates yourself on systemic racism, votes out leaders in your communities who perpetuate it, calls out individuals who propagate it, shuts down or rebuilds the institutions that are constructed on it, and redistributes funds that are profited from it. The logical conclusion from analyzing American history up to this point is that we are all fighting a war of civilization that can’t be won. Be a person whose existence and friendship serves as a reason for black people (and all people of color) not to resign ourselves to nihilism or dissolve ourselves into the hatred we’ve endured. I promise you that it’s worth it. Why? Because just like yours, black lives matter. To quote Jermaine Lamarr Cole, “All we wanna do is be free. All we wanna do is take the chains off.”