George Floyd has a hashtag against his name.

I find it quite fascinating that the day before George Floyd gets killed brutally and publicly God starts teaching me about racism.

You’d think that I should and would naturally obviously know and know. 

I knew but have been so detached from the topic as a whole. 

I want to blame it on being a black person that grew up in Africa but maybe that’s no excuse.

I want to blame it on being christian and thinking that fighting for justice is unforgiving but the confessions of me, this black indifferent person are these;

I was putting forgiveness over wounding.

Healing over bleeding.

Idealism over reality.

And I see that I was wrong.

I read an 8 paged article by Karen Mains, a lovely old white lady that I have gotten to know over the past month titled 'Confessions of a recovering racist' and the timing was insanely perfect. A day before George loses his life.

The exposure the books she ,Karen, read that summer forcing her to write her article gave her a better understanding of how systemized racism is, how deep it runs and how real it is and coincidentally, her recollection of it all gave me a deep sense of hurt and made me more present in the reality of the war that is less because of the colours of our skins but more the shades of our hearts.

I don’t want to again make it a problem of evil but it in fact is.

There’s wickedness gripping us so insanely. It has from the very beginning.

As I told my friend, I’m no different from a policeman who kneels on a man’s neck to death. 

And I’m not saying we should not fight for justice, in fact, I have been learning that I must, but I am saying more that there’s a thick darkness over our hearts and it runs deep.

And change will and can only start once we all agree with that.

I feel such rage in my heart and I am not trying to say that I am the angriest, but I have no choice but to channel this anger into this blog world and into prayer.

(And again, I don’t mean to sound spiritual but as opposed to being bitter I’ll be not.)

Prayer that even in all this hopelessness we will see that there is hope.

That God will show us how to be woke,

how to do this,

how to tell our kids to be safe but not be filled with hate.

How to explain, do I have to explain? Will we explain?
I read an article about a refugees story,’’ There were birds but they didn’t sing.’’ I remember telling my cousin, who showed me the article that I watched myself stare at the fence in front of the open space of doubt and atheism, a space that I had been sauntering in very recently because I was thinking, how can God let that happen?

And in fact, how can He? Right? Why does he?

The refugee tells the interviewer of how she was raped by several men in front of her children, was forced to boil people and eat them and even at one point her one year old daughter. The story is too painful for me to go over but then again, life is painful.

We can’t shut that reality out.

For as long as we live maybe. Probably.

I watched a documentary of something that happened in Northern Uganda years ago and for several years. Men raping men and children. A massacre that even the grounds will tell you of because their deepest grains of dirt can tell you what blood tastes like. 

See. it’s not about white versus black. 

It’s about heart. Blackness of heart.

Should I use the word black? Probably not.

My mother told me to never use colour to describe someone. One of the most repeated advice she gave me right before I left. She’s always told me to not play around with the word nigga.

And again, I was detached from all of it.

Colour is an evident inescapable trait of each person.

I can’t shake off my black. My friends can’t add onto their white.

It’s sad that I can’t know if I’m next or not. I certainly could be.

And it kills me before they kill me.

I listened to a sermon last night and the preacher, Tim Keller, said, 

"Every morning, there’s a new orphan. A new mourning. A new widow. A new hurting, A new pain."

But as He said that I thought to myself, every morning there’s a new mercy.

Mercy from God that is better than life.

Mercy on me. Mercy that He extends to me to extend to others.

Mercy that he extends to me to break my heart with those hurting.

To fight for an attempt to correct what seems permanently bent.

That might be permanently bent.

It’s almost embarrassing that we are still here. After years. Crying tears our ancestors did.

But we are.

Eyes watery. Eyelids swollen.