Great...for the first time.

I fully know the realities of this country that we live in. This United States of America. I know the history. I know where it began and why. I know about the thirst for freedom and new lands. I know about the transition from oppressed to oppressors. It was so fast. 

I know about the enslaved and how long their wrists held chains. I know what happened when the chains were removed. I know about the reconstruction era and the Civil rights movement. I know the story of Japanese internment...I don’t know it all but I know. 

I am rarely surprised by the things that are birthed from these United States. I was not surprised when the Capitol was stormed but I was disturbed. I feel these things often in my body and I was visibly moved. My hands, shaking, not from fear or nerves but from anger. I was livid. I had to stop working and all I could do was watch the news. 

At some point I started to cry. At some point I stopped.

Today, one day later, I found myself sitting at a table playing Uno with my 5 year old nephew. I looked at his beautiful dark skin, the same shade as mine, and deep dark eyes, the same color as mine, and I was overwhelmed with joy and love. “This sweet, gentle, loving, hilarious, intelligent boy is my nephew,” I thought to myself. I’m so lucky to be his aunt. One day he is going to grow up and I want the world that he sees to be better than the world that we’re seeing right now. He deserves that. I deserve that.  

I fully know the realities of this place, this country that we live in. The evil that it spews. The injustice that it perpetuates. The privilege, that it lately, has tried to market as oppression. I know that it values whiteness. That it makes excuses for whiteness. That it measures all by their proximity to whiteness. I know this. 

I know that the “it” is whiteness. I know that the “we the people” is whiteness. I know that the “one nation under God” is whiteness. 

What I also know, is that my nephew deserves to grow up in a better world than what we’re seeing right now. When he’s old enough to fully comprehend history and the world, I hope that he looks back on yesterday and says “I can’t believe that’s how the country used to be.” 

If you are white and you’re reading this, it is your duty to do what you can, with all that you can, for as long as you can, to make this place better. Make it better and not better again but rather for the very first time. You want to live in a great place? Make it great and not great again, but for the first time.