This is from Confessions of a Fabric Addict and I like everything she said:

(https://confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com/2020/06/for-such-time-as-this.html)

As I listened to the news over the past week, I was struck by how many of the African-American newscasters were literally in tears over the events of that day.  They spoke through their tears of their fears for their children growing up in this world.  Of how little things had changed since the Civil Rights movement.  Of how tired they are. They said that they were tired of being angry, had moved beyond being angry because it did not good, and they were just exhausted.  They spoke of having to have “the talk” with their children - and no, that’s not “the talk” most of us had with our parents about sex.  It’s “the talk” about not wearing a hoodie because you might be considered a gang member or up to no good; about how to act if you are pulled over by a police officer; about how to act in a store so that you don’t get accused of shoplifting.

I have African-American friends with teen children.  I have white friends who have adopted black children.  I realize that they will have to have “the talk” with their children someday, or have already.  It hurts my heart that this is something they will have to do, and that they will worry for their children for reasons beyond what I ever had to.

When my daughter was little, she had a book called Imogene’s Antlers. She loved that book, and would request that I read it to her often.  In the book, Imogene woke up one morning with an enormous rack of antlers on her head that stretched from one side of her large bed to the other, and the story follows her through the day, showing all the funny things that happened to her because of her antlers.  For some reason, this story came to mind as I considered what I was hearing on the news, and I wondered what it would be like if I woke up one morning and a black face stared back at me from the mirror.  

Imagine shopping.  Would I be watched suspiciously in a store, with the clerk wondering if I was a shoplifter? Would the checkout girl at the grocery store expect me to pay with WIC?  As I loaded groceries in my big expensive SUV, would people wonder what I did to get the money for such a nice car?  Would I get pulled over by the police as I entered my neighborhood, with them wondering what I was doing there?  These are things that some of our fellow Americans face every day.

So how do we respond to today’s unrest and upheaval?  In my opinion we should first listen to our own inner monologue.  When you see a black man in a car pulled over by the police, does your inner voice say “drug dealer”? Or does it worry for that man’s safety as he tries to emerge from a routine traffic stop alive?  When you hear “black lives matter” do you immediately jump to “all lives matter”? I have been guilty of this, but after a week of thinking about these issues, I realize that although true, it dismisses the original speaker’s statement by superseding it.  It turns the focus of the problem from the speaker’s true meaning:  “I do not feel like my life is valued as highly as other people’s lives” and focuses instead on “I feel that you are placing black lives above all others, and my life matters too”.  In this case, we are not the story.  It’s not about us.  If we are to change, and affect change, we must look for the meaning behind the words, both our own and other’s.  We must listen and respond appropriately, leaving our selves out of the equation.

This. Is. Hard.  It goes against everything we are taught - do what feels right, put yourself first, etc.  But if we don’t stop, in this moment, and affect real change in our attitudes, I fear for our country.  Police your inner voice. Analyze what you are thinking, and why.