Are you woke?

Are you woke?

I ask myself that question on a daily. Is what I am thinking, therefore acting, therefore influencing my children, representative of being woke?

Being woke, to me, is being aware of the oppression that others have faced. And being vocal with my wokeness. I remember as a child, looking through magazines and having a curiosity about why I saw so many white children and no children of color. I grew up in a small-ish town where I had possibly two students of color in my graduation class of 300-ish. White Christian was all I knew, but I still had this feeling of sadness when I saw all of the things of the world that were white-washed. I didn't ask to be born white. I didn't know that I was going to be raised in an environment where white people would get certain privileges just for being white. I just didn't think it was fair that I had, what it seemed, more options in life than that of people of color.

I've gone through many transformations in life in terms of being woke and awake to the world. I'd have to say that the beginning of my journey really didn't start until I was in graduate school. In graduate school, many programs are intense, student-focused learning environments. You get to know your cohort and especially in my program of study, you get to know just about everything about them. When practicing conducting individual and group counseling sessions, we practiced on ourselves. I'm afraid to admit that I was still a bit immature, even in grad school. But, I will never forget the one practice group counseling session where two women who were African American talked about instances in which they were victims of racial discrimination. They were smart, articulate, beautiful women and I could not believe that anyone would think otherwise just because of the color of their skin. I sat and listened and of course I knew racism existed, but I had never met or spoken to anyone who I knew personally who had experienced it. When it was my turn to share about any instances of discrimination, I just sat there and stared. I couldn't come up with one thing. Even if I did, I didn't feel like it would be worth sharing in the company which I was in, because it was so petty and it wouldn't have felt genuine. At that point in my life, I could not name one instance where I had been discriminated against (I wasn't yet aware of all of the systemic prejudices that were presented to a working woman or working mother). Again, I thought about how unfair that these classmates of mine, who were much smarter and wiser than me, had to face discrimination when I didn't.

However, the older I got and the more woke I became, the more I saw it everywhere. When you open up your mind and your heart to other people's circumstances and oppression, the more aware you are of every day racism. Even in your own community.

It was a hot day right after my oldest finished up an evening soccer game. We were in line at the local ice cream shop (which was a walk-up outside establishment). Standing in front of us were several children, along with a couple adults, who had looked like they spent the day at a pool or outdoor water play area. One of the children was begging his mom for an ice cream cone. She paid, gave him the cone, and within two minutes, he had passed out. After 5 seconds of seeing the mom panic and trying to wake up her son, I called 911. I remained on the phone with 911 until the paramedics arrived, which was about 5 minutes later. In that 5 minutes, two women came to the boy's side and were slapping his face and talking to him to try to get him to come to. When he finally came to, he passed out again. One woman stated that his pulse was very low. The mother was panicking and had called someone and was talking to them in Spanish (I recognized several of the words from my 2 years of Spanish in college). The boy and his mom both entered the ambulance and were taken away to the closest hospital. My family and I could not stop thinking about this family and had prayed for them for the rest of the day (and several days after). We had thanked Jesus for the two woman that came to this boys side to help him out.

It turns out, I knew one of the women.

When I saw this woman several days later, I thanked her for coming to his side. I told her what a selfless act that was. She shrugged her shoulders like it was nothing and I thought in my head, "how humbling." But, then she started talking. She talked about how she was sitting with a group of people, looking at them as they watched what was going on with the boy. She said to them, while taking a bite of her food, "I guess I should go help, huh?" She ran over to him and this is where I first noticed her coming valiantly to his side. As we were walking and she was telling me this story, I was smiling. I asked her if she knew what had happened to him. Then, it came. She said, "They're Mexicans. They probably rufied him." My smile immediately changed to confusion. I stopped walking and she continued on as I waved goodbye and said thanks again, still in shock.

I was unable to move, unable to respond or even thread a cohesive thought together.

Then a billion thoughts started pouring through my head. She's a medical personnel. Does she approach all patients like this? Does she make lewd and racist remarks behind their backs to coworkers? I would have never imagined this coming out of her mouth. Are there other people I think I know in this community that are just like her? Who are these people? How do I find them? How do I go on pretending that them saying and thinking these things are OK? What would she say if she heard my sister-in-law, who is Peruvian, speaking Spanish? Would she think her, a proud US Veteran, and my brother, a proud Navy serviceman, would rufie their children? What about my nieces and nephew who are Asian American? What remarks and thoughts would she have about them? The more I thought about it, the more frustrated I became.

If this was another time, I could chalk her up to being a one-off, just a wayward soul trying to make herself feel better by looking down upon others. But it's not a different time. We're living in a time where people are being detained by ICE for speaking Spanish even though they are American citizens living in the United States (which has no official language). We are living in a time where the POTUS  said that people on both sides of the Charlottesville riots were "very fine people" and that Mexicans are animals. We're living in a time where two African American men were handcuffed and brought into custody for sitting in a Starbucks waiting on a friend. And we're living in a time where children are being ripped from their parents at the border and then lost.

Of all the questions I asked myself, there was still one that stuck out to me. Why did she feel safe enough to say those remarks to me? What can I change about myself so people know that I will challenge them should they speak like that around me?

I have decided to use my privilege as being a white Christian in the USA to bring wokeness to others. This experience has encouraged me to pray to Jesus and the universe to help me gain confidence in standing up for those who aren't in a position to stand up for themselves. For those reading this, if you don't like to feel uncomfortable, then I would recommend treading very lightly around me when it comes to making discriminatory statements. For those reading this, I would encourage you to adopt the same mindset. Let people get uncomfortable. There's a safe way to do this. Saying something like, "Hmmm, that's concerning that you would say that." or "Wow. I didn't know you felt that way." or "I don't agree with that."  or "I think you've got that wrong." If they try to push you out of their lives because you stuck up for someone without a voice, then let them go. You're better off without them anyway.

And you can start having these conversations with your kids now. My older two saw me writing this particular post and were very curious as to what I was writing about. I told them I was writing about how some people have bad feelings for people who are a different color than them and it's up to us to let them know it's not right. We went through a couple scenarios. I asked the oldest what she would do if one of her friends said, "Omg. Look at that brown person. I bet she's homeless." She responded by saying she would tell that friend, "Don't judge other people." and then would go up to the person the friend was talking badly about and say "Hi." The middle stated, with a quizzical look on his face, "It's just skin color. Why would anyone say bad things about someone they didn't know because of their skin color?"

Kids are born woke. It's time for our adults to stop messing with kids' wokeness and become woke themselves.