Your comfort is not priority.

As you sit around your family tables rubbing sleep from your newly-awakened eyes, remember your comfort is not priority. Speak up anyway.

You’re seeing your family and friends in a new light. No longer able to tolerate statements rooted in bias and hate. Your comfort, their comfort, is not priority. Speak up anyway.

High school friends no longer recognize your social media posts. They throw around “woke” and “social justice warrior” like insults that should cut deep to your soul, but they no longer have that effect.

Take a breath and speak up anyway.

The riots make you uncomfortable, but you ask, how uncomfortable have my Black friends, family, and neighbors been while screaming about a problem that no one believed?

How have they smiled and gone about their day while Black bodies were policed to death?

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When someone felt their hair was free to be touched and pulled? When people feel they have the right to demand knowledge of where they belong, because it’s sure not in their neighborhood?

I can tell you from experience, that’s a level beyond discomfort. It’s anger-inducing trauma on repeat for the entirety of their existence.

Your comfort is not priority.

You have been awakened and it’s time to go to work. Americans have been suffering for far too long as you and generations before you slept.

Now that you’ve seen the truth, closing your eyes is no longer an option, so you’ll study. You’ll ask questions, watch movies, documentaries, and become more protective of the Black people in your life.

You’ll challenge long-held views and your friendship circle may change, but your comfort is not priority. Not now.

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We must become comfortable with being uncomfortable. Discomfort is where growth occurs. Discomfort is the precursor to change. Discomfort can feel stifling, but freedom is on the other side.

So you’ll speak up, even when it’s uncomfortable. You’ll have to. You’re awake now and we’ve been waiting for you.

Originally published on Facebook