The Importance of Discomfort in the Face of Tyranny

Jasmine Arbery, sister of Ahmaud Arbery, and Wanda Cooper-Jones, Ahmaud’s mother, comfort one another while people gather in a Georgia park to honor Ahmaud. (Sean Rayford/Getty Image)

If you are white and the mention of #BlackLivesMatter makes you feel uncomfortable or even angry, consider that this visceral reaction is a direct product of your unwilling and unwitting conditioning by white supremacy to resist the liberation of black people. As white people, we need to confront these feelings and recognize that this feeling of discomfort is IMPERATIVE for us to contribute to building a better future for our children and our families and our neighbors and our friends. White supremacy harms black people, but it harms white people too and deprives us all of equality and justice.

“To avoid another sequel, we have to confront squarely that the precarity of Black life was never fully overcome.” — Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw

Instead of reading more of my words on this, you can benefit from the words of the brilliant Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw via her article, “The Unmattering of Black Lives: In the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, we see that the violence of the past is the violence of the present.”