Letter To White People

Dear White People,

I thought I would NEVER write a letter to you. NEVER. I don’t do politics, religion, and race here. I am a Black woman and if you’ve followed me from the beginning of my blogging journey, you may assume that I am a Christian and as well as a Democrat. However, I have not used this website as a platform to advocate for anything.

I’ve shared stories and experiences as they relate to my race because they are part of my history. They are my experiences. Somewhere along the writing way (as I’ve been here since 2010, during major elections, and major social injustices) I’ve felt this space should have been a platform to express my feelings about what was going on in our country. Sometimes I felt like it was expected. Instead, having this space kept me from writing at all. The social injustices felt bigger than anything I had to share and writing anything at all felt irrelevant. So I wrote safe and fun, and used writing prompts and memories to fill this space.

In this space, I didn’t want to feel the pain out loud and I didn’t want your empathy on my behalf because what is going on is so much bigger than me. So I stay silent. Your apologies to me are appreciated but they do not solve anything. They do not make the trouble go away.

One of my white friends tagged me and two other Black writer’s on facebook. The title of the post was, “Share Black Voices”. She asked her followers to listen to what we had to say. I thought, who am I? As I also thought, I have nothing to say. Why should I mention that I have a Black son and right now is the best I’ll ever feel about his safety because he’s a young teen, and doesn’t have a drivers license. He does not yet have the means to leave the comfort of our property without one of us.

Why mention the time we were in a local card store together and we were followed and asked over and over if there was something they could help us find, though no one else was being asked the same. It had been our tradition up until that point to pick out a Christmas ornament with the year on it. On that day, which was the last time I went in there, I wondered if it was me with my big coat on or if it was my little boy who was big for his age looking not so little and non-threatening anymore. That was 2013 and he was nine years old. He knows nothing about it, but it’s a scar on my memory.

I just want to tell you that what would mean more to me than your empathy is your prayers. I don’t know where along the line someone’s “thoughts and prayers” became meaningless words but I’m asking for them anyway. However you pray, be it down on your knees, in your head, for five minutes or two seconds as you drift off to sleep, pray for God to bring about a change. That’s all I want, because that’s what I believe will make a difference. I don’t know if we have prayed enough for justice and that’s why we haven’t gotten it. But I won’t give up. It’s all I have to hold on to. I won’t give into evil because evil is trying to take over. I will continue to fight as a Christian and pray for everyone.

This isn’t something I want to discuss. I just want it prayed for. Prayer changes things. I believe that we are in Spiritual Warfare and our numbers as Christians need to be greater than the enemy’s. It’s an ongoing battle and it’s not something we can take on without a physical fight unless we are prayed up, and ready to battle with the whole armor of God.

Sporadically Yours, Kenya

P.S. I watched a Gospel battle on Instagram this evening. You can’t even say it was between Kirk Franklin and Fred Hammond. It was WITH them. It was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

This week was one of the lowest and longest for me since the pandemic really changed our lives. This is the week my positivity shattered because, overnight the pandemic had become the least of our problems. Of all the days I teared up over this or that I was reading or seeing on the news, today was the day the dam broke and I cried like I have not cried in a long time.

The Instagram live went on a little over two hours and I was so high on the spirit and fulfilled, hoping that there were people in those 274K+ views who prayed along when offered to accept Christ as their Savior and Lord.

After the live ended I clicked over to another live, a comedian who I’d seen in the comments on the gospel battle. He was sharing how much he enjoyed it. He said he went in intending to clown in the comments section and before long the spirit took over. He actually started crying on his live talking about his Black son. In his words, “I’m sorry, I just folded like laundry” intending to lighten the moment and make his viewers laugh. He also said, he didn’t care about losing followers today, you should never be ashamed to be yourself on your platform.

That’s what inspired me to write this letter. Losing followers for me was not the issue. But being afraid to “not be neutral” is pretty much the same thing.

So here I am asking you to pray for us and with us. Your thoughts and prayers are needed for us all.