Friends,
If you were in a relationship with someone you really cared
about—a partner, a parent, a child, a friend—and they said to you, calmly and
clearly, “When you say [X], it hurts me.” What would you do? Would you push
back, dismiss their feelings and their words, keep doing the thing that hurt
your loved one? Or would you say, “I’m sorry that hurts you. Out of respect for
your feelings, I will try to choose less hurtful words in the future.”
What if your friend said this?: “When you say [X], it hurts
me. And, [X] is bound up in our country’s racist past. It reminds me of
numerous other ways that my family and I are devalued because of how other
people perceive us, a devaluation whose effects are too legion and devastating
for me to recount for you now—and whose effects you are already aware of. When
you keep saying [X] despite the fact that I have told you how it hurts me, it
tells me that saying [X] is more important to you than our relationship.” Would
you persist in saying [X] because your need to say [X] was more important than
you need to heal your relationship?
If you went to high school with me, you probably see where
this is going. It hurts me—and it hurts you, and it hurts us—that our high
school was named after a man who gave his life to keep African Americans
enslaved, subject to brutality, families broken, women subjected to unpunishable
rape. Why is it more important to you to honor the name of a man who died a
century before you were born than it is to heal your relationship with your
friends, your classmates, your teachers, and the future students in that
school?
