So here’s what’s going down…
Some of you might know that I’ve been thinking about and writing about issues of race and equality for a long time. I’ve been vocal about my beliefs and vocal about my insistence that we all must repent and change.
A few months ago an online publication, Our Human Family, reached out to me to begin writing for them. They had been reading my work and were interested in what I was saying, and they considered my work to be helpful and healing for the conciliation of us all. As they put it in their mission statement, “OUR HUMAN FAMILY exists as a safe digital space for respectful and thoughtful conversations on the beliefs and actions that both inhibit and facilitate equality for all in America.”
It is an incredible honor to be chosen to be part of their writing staff (the position comes with a very minimal payment, to be clear), and OHF has already taken a few of my stories for consideration.
About a month ago the editor of OHF, Clay Rivers, reached out to me to come up with a piece that would tell my story. What is it that brought me to the place where I am now? How did I make the many decisions that I did to unwrap myself from whiteness and dive into understanding blackness?
I wrote a draft and submitted it. Clay and I have spent many hours on the phone nearly each night in the past four weeks, or in text communication, going over the story line by line, word by word, to shape it and sharpen it. He has provoked me, in good ways, to dig into the story and not to soften words or reactions–to be as open and honest as I could be. Often we were hammering out our ideas until past midnight. But he was holding me not just to high standards in writing, but also in honesty.
It is through his work that my words became this story. He has been an utterly ruthless and supportive editor, and someone I’ve come to know and love as a friend, even though he lives 3000 miles away from me and we’re likely never to meet.
This is the story that we ended up with, and it is the Editor’s Choice this month, a story with an intriguing title and subtitle, a story of opening up myself to examination, a story of discovering just how deep love and relationships can lead us to change.
The link to the story is here: https://medium.com/our-human-family/my-journey-into-blackness-d20a1c137983
“My Journey into Blackness: And the unraveling of my whiteness.”
The online publication is hosted by Medium, and the articles and writers for the publication “Our Human Family” can be found here: https://medium.com/our-human-family
Originally posted on Facebook.
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