Have you ever had something happen to you that you didn’t want to face? It could have been a bill you weren’t ready to pay at the time. Perhaps you fell ill, and you were so scared that you didn’t go to see the doctor. Maybe you got word that a loved one was dying, and you didn’t want to be with them during their last moments. In all these situations, avoidance was the immediate remedy to an inevitable situation or circumstance, but it’s not.
Some people believe that if they ignore a problem, that it will go away; when in fact, it only gets worse. If you have a leaky pipe in your home, and you avoid taking care of it. The tube will not fix itself. If you leave the leaky pipe unattended for an extended period, it will either burst or cause a flood. If you are a homeowner and even if you rent, you understand the importance of getting the pipe repaired promptly before further and more expensive damages can occur. Just like ignoring the leaky pipe is terrible, so is ignoring the race problem that we have in this country.
The racial inequalities in these united states will not get better by ignoring the past and present evils. Whenever there is a conversation about race issues, the atmosphere tends to change, and people become uncomfortable and clam up. There is a demographic that believes that if you don’t talk about the race problem in America, that it doesn’t exist. Often when people bring up the race problems we have in this country in conversations, the people who are not/feel they are not affected by it will tell them they are the problem for constantly bring it up.
Talking about race issues isn’t going to be comfortable, but it needs to be addressed. We should engage in such dialogue whenever we can and as long as we must.
