Today at work I made light of being unprepared for an upcoming half marathon by attributing my hopefulness in the race towards, well, my race. I mentioned something along the lines about how black people are athletically inclined and that I’d be alright – the reactionary silence couldn’t have been any louder. I followed up with examples: the NFL, the NBA – and the clear exception of golf and tennis, both rooted in their own discriminatory history of “exclusive” country clubs that would cater to the rich and white. While I continued, there were no chuckles, only faces of white people that didn’t know how to react. We moved along with the meeting but I was dumbfounded at the discomfort that rang loud and clear the moment I brought up my race and obvious cultural impact that no one can deny.

More often than not, I find myself being the only black person in a room, specifically in work-related situations. If verbally bringing up my blackness resulted in awkwardness, it only made me wonder more about how my actual presence is received. At age 13 my family moved to a rural area in northern Washington State where I suddenly felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. The sense of displacement continued to college and to the professional workplace, as my fellow black friends dropped out of view – never making it college, instead becoming teen parents or accepting jobs that required little to no formal education. To be clear – no one in my workplace is racist, not even in the slightest. But racism isn’t dead and it’s a war that is far from over. How can change be implemented if we ignore the obvious? It’s as though someone has cancer, and everyone knows they have cancer, but a decision is made to ignore the cancer completely with the idea that ignoring it will make the cancer just “go away.” It won’t work with cancer and it sure as hell won’t work with racism.

The facts are there, and yes, they are incredibly uncomfortable. Slavery wasn’t made illegal in the United States until 1820. Meaning the child of a “former” slave born in 1820 could (maybe) have lived until about 1920, bearing children who would revolt against a culture rooted in hate toward black people. And boy, did they revolt. The child of a “former” slave in 1820 didn’t experience automatic freedom. The prejudice, hate and racism didn’t dissipate overnight. Instead, their children were forced to grow up in society feeling like a lesser class – if not a lesser human being. By the 1960’s, the wave of those who grew up in a society of hate pushed back, eventually leading to the creation of things like the Civil Rights Act. It was a step in the right direction, but we all know that Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Those who had children in the 1960s experienced some of the first days of equality in America. Schools were integrated, black people didn’t need to give up their seats to whites and even got to use the same water fountains. Within just the past 50 years, it was COMPLETELY ACCEPTABLE for a white person to get on a bus and a demand for a seated black person to move. Think about it. Let’s imagine a fictional racist American, who was perhaps 20 years old in the 1960s, old enough to be rooted in their ways – that same person is still alive and kicking today. Potentially sharing their ideals or, at the very least, not preaching a doctrine of acceptance towards all people to their own children.

I could rant on this topic for a while, but the main point is this: those whose skin isn’t white, specifically those who are black, experience a completely different society than those who are white. And that isn’t okay. We’ve elected a black president, sure, but what is one out of dozens of white men? Only progress, not an accomplishment of equality for everyone. I hope that if you find yourself reading this, you are motivated to open your mind to others, to think deeply about where someone is coming from, what their world view is and how it impacts every single thing they do, whether they want it to or not.