What Can We Do? We Start with Ourselves.
We can’t rid the world of injustice, fear, and hatred. But we can look within and confront our own harmful beliefs about people who are different from us.
We pick up our biases from how we were raised, the people we hang out with, our own experiences, and the media we consume. While it is deeply human to notice differences, when we are taught that whole groups of people are dangerous, greedy, undeserving, to be feared and hated, we end up with the polarized world we all live in now.
Until we are individually willing to recognize and address our own biases – our own isms -- and the harm they do to other people, many of our country’s children, and their families, will continue to be oppressed by an inequitable society.
We all have the ability to educate ourselves about bigotry and oppression, and to begin to acknowledge our own personal biases. We all have the ability to speak out when we hear it.
Confronting our beliefs is uncomfortable and lifelong work. Real change requires being willing to learn and to be humble. Many of us must also come to understand that we have benefited from the oppression of others.
We cannot ask the people who have been oppressed to tell us how to stop doing harm. That is our own work to do. Luckily, there is a wealth of help available, and a good starting place is this resource list.