The [bracket] of racism

The unbelievable pain associated with watching an innocent person die should never leave us. Mathematically, it is unavoidable at 1 but creating a system of humanity built to stop our mistakes at 1 is not only in our power but the God of Abraham’s true call to action of loving thy neighbor.

I have experienced racism in various forms throughout my life. As child, as a professional, as a man of color in a varied and myriad of ways. Often subtle, sometimes overt, many times as a series of cultural events, like billboards on a highway. Destination career, destination love, destination professional conference, all pockmarked with billboards of very cartoonish scenes (somewhere between George Condo and Roy Lichtenstein) with the bubbles above the head for the thoughts and the solid lined clouds for speech. Large, engrossing and ever present.

We must never [bracket] hate or racism to be summed up by one event, a death, or one form of tyranny. It is something twisted and tribal within the deep recesses of the human physiology and thus it has been seen, less so in modern times than ancient, in the social structures we’ve built (or those built around us). It rests in our hardware, not the software. It is biological, not spiritual therefore, as beings we can fight, evolve and love our way out of it. This is an everyday, constant mission for humanity, regardless of color or social standing. We must everyday remove a layer between us and our neighbor. Each day getting closer instead of further away.  

I am a Man of Color…I exist in my form and love the culture I was born into.

I am a Catholic Man… I love God’s creatures, use Jesus as a guide and the Bible as a path.

I am an American…I am eternally grateful for the rights, opportunities and freedoms I’ve received as a citizen.

I have received help from all ages and shades of individuals…So I try to help everyone and anyone that I can regardless of race or social standing. I receive love so I give it. I live in Grace and Gratitude because the opposite is true hell on earth.

The universally immediately recognizable pain and hopelessness struck a note that echoed through bones globally. This proves there is global unity, the recognizable, the symphony of universal sorrow for the death of a man was at a moment, a place, a breath, there was no one on earth who could not feel themselves there. That is the bind of humanity. Those same dark primal resources that eschew differences as dangerous crowded around the light of the one resource that is eternally and wholly sacred, the innocent life.  

The rifle by the window is for the enemy that would do us harm…The divider, the taker of freedoms, the killer of innocents, not the broken, confused, or ignorant. Their hearts can be changed and shown right. The truly evil among us will be revealed. The growl will be easily heard as a rebuke of a loving gesture. To quote our former president, “If they can’t see the light, make sure they feel the heat.”    

United, a true enemy will never pass the doorstep.

Grateful,

Gardner Rivera