Anti-Racism Doesn’t Stop for Us
Black people are always fighting.
I wrote the following post 6 years ago on Facebook and yet the same challenges exist today.
Over the past year, I’ve begun to fully understand how racism is still very much present and alive in our country. When I first came to Pitt I could not really relate to what people were talking about when it came to racism. Here I was, a person of color, who could not even see what other PoC was speaking about. It made sense though.
I came from the suburbs of Philly. I lived in a predominately white area where no one attempted to challenge the status quo. Something changed when I came to Pittsburgh and lived in the city. Over the past year, I’ve become particularly alarmed at just how ingrained racism is in our society. Almost every day when I walk home I’ll notice that an individual or group of people will almost always become wary if they are walking by or near a person of color. It’s alarming. It’s like it is assumed that this person has to be dangerous and so it’s necessary to become wary.
Everyday conversations almost always start off with, “So this [person of color] was….” Often the individual’s color has no real substance to the conversation other than to point it was an interaction with “them”. This is frightening and needs to change! Racism isn’t just the…
