I'm White, You Are Black, but we are People first..

WHO WANTS TO HAVE AN AUTHENTIC CONVERSATION WITH ME 
ABOUT THE BLACK CULTURE AND THE WHITE CULTURE? 

I'll start.

I am afraid of all black people until I get to know them.

Why am I afraid of them?

Because my 'psyche' has been brainwashed by the media, where I live. I say without exaggeration that 80% of the bad news that is reported on our nightly local news centers around black men robbing, raping, murdering, doing drugs or acts of violence.

I didn't think the new affected me the way it did until I decided to do a Caribbean cruise with a Black group from my area. To get to the cruise ship we had to take a bus together to Baltimore, a 400 mile trip.

As the day approached to take the cruise, I noticed my mind had these 'irrational fears' of me boarding a bus where I would be the only white person among people who were carrying drugs and guns in their pockets and who would look at me with hatred and contempt in their eyes.

I realized these were 'irrational fears' but that didn't stop me from feeling them and that did not stop me from going on the cruise with my black brothers and sisters because, as irrational and as powerful as my fears were, fear does not rule my life, I do.

Once on the bus, I felt strange being the only white person among 57 black people. At first I felt fearful but my fear quickly dissolved as everyone on the bus greeted me with kind words and broad smiles. The people I was with on the bus with were the kindest, sweetest, most intelligence, classy group of people I ever spent time with. They were no longer black people, they were people just like me.

My experience of taking a cruise with black people was better than any cruise I had ever taken with white people. So why was I fearful in the beginning? Because of how the media in my area portrays black people.

After my cruise trip, I came to two conclusions, first black people need to start suing the hell out of media organizations because, whether they will admit it or not, news organizations are as racists as they come.

Secondly, black people need to get a new PR agent to show the world that black people aren't black first, they are people first, just like you and me.

Black people have the same hopes, dreams and desires as all people have. It is time to celebrate our skin color differences rather than try to destroy them. It is time we see that we are all in this together and that we all win or no one wins... Who is in this with me?

AUTHOR NOTE: I had fear of starting this conversation but after what has happened, I realized someone had to start it. Obama spoke for the black people on Television and I decided I would speak for the white people, who feel like me. I still feel fear, the fear of being criticized or made wrong for my honesty but as I said in the main part of this post, I feel fear but fear doesn't make my decisions for me and fear does not rule my life, love does. Love is way more powerful than fear will ever be.. 

Getting all of our fears out on the table (about each other and our personal fears) take power away from fear and begins the process of making fear disappear from our life naturally. Fear needs privacy to exist and when it is talked about publicly. it begins to unravel and dissolve of its own accord.  - Frederick Zappone, author of Love Is All I Know

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