Rising Fist (Black Lives Matter)

I wish I could have been out in the streets protesting. My girlfriend is immunocompromised so it would have been unsafe. We have also been self-quarantining when I'm not forced to go to work which just started up recently. I knew I needed to do something. Art is my medium, so I got work. There's a piece of me that wishes I was a better artist because I don't think this does the movement justice.

"When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up. You have to say something; you have to do something."
-John Lewis

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One day in junior high my father stopped me dead in my tracks.
He turned to me he said "Alan you are so lucky, you don't even know how lucky you are." with a stern eye.
I turned back and in a sarcastic tone, "why?"
He said, "look at you, you were born in America, you're white, and your male."
I turned back to him and I am just looking very confused. I respond. "So?"
He said if any one of those 3 things was different you would not have the same opportunities that you do.
I again say "why?"
My dad stops. He's taken back. He asks me "who is in Congress? Who is in the Senate?"
I say "I don't know?" Looking more confused thinking this is some type of test on politics, my father being a 4th-grade teacher I wouldn't put it past him.
Then he said, "what do they look like?"
I say "A whole bunch of old white dudes."
He turns to me and he says "exactly! These people are making sure that you have more advantages than if you had a different color skin, then if you were female, then if you were from a different country."
I say "why? That's not fair! I don't want this!"
He turns to me and he said: "it doesn't matter."
Myself being a junior high kid, I responded "I never asked to be born dad." oozing with sarcasm and a bit of truth
He responded in a serious tone looking me dead in the eye "It doesn't matter what you want, it's happening!"
"The world is your oyster what are you going to do with it. . . . . . . "

I hated this conversation. It blew away whatever ignorance I could have previously claimed. It spoke to me and my privilege, not that things wouldn't be hard for me but just by being myself I somehow gained an advantage over other people. to be honest it felt gross. I was in Jr High. I didn't want to be seen or noticed by anyone. I wanted to skate by. Here it was, everything laid bare before my feet, and no one to talk to. I have replayed this conversation over and over in my head for years now, to figure out why it bothered me, why I felt gross.

I understand now that the gross feeling was the recognition of my own white privilege and unconscious bias, I was disgusted. Equality is this beautiful thing and yet while we say it is great on paper, but it is not practiced in the day to day lives of adults from the highest forms of office going all the way down. I have a loud voice due to my privilege, and as an empathetic person, I must use it. If the world is my really my oyster then listen up! Black Lives Matter and I won't stop until we have true equality in our country.