White People, We Have Apologizing, Listening, & Working to Do for Actual Restorative Reform

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/30/michael-brown-ferguson-america-george-floyd

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/eric-garner-george-floyd-protests-reveal-how-little-has-changed-n1220501

These are a couple good articles that make a generally fact-based point: progress has occurred, but white people have still failed. 

The Guardian article makes a good point: white people need to do the work to make the necessary improvements. It is hard, soul searching, history searching, society searching work, but white are the ones obligated to the work. 

One of the biggest steps: listen. Black people and other POC and Indigenous People are not obligated to tell us or teach us. Honestly, there's enough out there in literature, news stories, essays, recordings, already on social media for us white people to but just consume, but reflect upon and teach us how to be better individually as a social group. 

Reforming the police and The State is a big thing, but us white civilians must do hard work, too. We vote, we participate, we are the people, the government should be for all of us. I almost want to quote Obama's 2004 DNC Convention speech, but at this time, us white people are dividing this country in a way that shames the image Obama brought up there. And yes, Obama didn't meet that image, either, but that's also because politics, White Supremacy politics, got in the way. 

Anyway, last week, I got into a weird Twitter conservation where I said to someone: "If you ain't listening, you ain't apologizing." White America, we have a lot of apologizing to do, and the first step to that apologizing is to do a lot of listening and also to do a lot of work to make the world better for Black people and also POC and Indigenous people.

And if you you've listened and worked enough, you haven't. We will never listen enough. We will never work enough. But it's but the right thing to do and something that will feel good in your heart.