Since the Charleston attack on Wednesday of 9 innocent people by a screwed up young man, I’ve been struggling for the right words to articulate my emotions/thoughts/mindset around what happened.

Simply put, I don’t get it.

I don’t understand how in the year 2015, there are still so many people concerned about the color of skin. I don’t get it.

I don’t understand why this is still a thing.

I don’t understand why people feel that because they have less melanin than others they are better.

I don’t understand how anyone feels that they have a damn right to place judgement on others simply because they are a different color.

I don’t get it.

I don’t understand how we  STILL live in a society where peoples responses/actions are tied to the color of the skin of the person standing across from them.

I don’t understand how this culture is still even remotely acceptable. Ok, so people might say that this is NOT acceptable, but the behavior is still tolerated. I don’t get that.

I don’t understand why people give a SHIT about what color the person is. I don’t understand how in the year 2015 this is still a freaking conversation.

I don’t understand how people can believe that they are better than someone else because of race.

I don’t understand what causes a person to decide to wake up one morning and decide to play judge/jury/and executioner.

I don’t understand why this isn’t being taken more seriously on a national level.

I don’t understand why my Facebook newsfeed was not SLAMMED with conversations about this. This is a tough conversation, but one that needs to be had.

I don’t understand why people are STILL putting their heads in the sand and saying that the racial divide isn’t that big of a deal anymore. It still is a BIG DEAL.

GOOD GOD PEOPLE, wake up, turn off the pseudo reality television shows and turn on the news. Get informed. Get angry. HAVE A CONVERSATION.

Talk to someone about this. Talk to your friends, your children.  Take a stand. Do something.

How long are we going to tolerate this? How long are we going to put our heads down and say “oh, this was a one off event, racism is dead.”

No, racism is well and alive in this country and that grosses me out.

I don’t have an answer. I don’t have a solution. My heart breaks for those 9 families. My heart hurts for the girl in McKinney that was dropped to the ground last week after a cop lost his shit.

Hate is well and alive in this country and that is just heartbreaking.

What causes a person (people)  to be so hateful? Where are we failing in our education system that we aren’t instilling better ability to comprehend and understand that it’s not the color of one skin that makes a person, instead it’s their actions, words and behavior? How are we failing so completely as a community that allows us to tolerate this?

I am a 38 year old white woman who doesn’t understand this. I don’t understand what it must be like to genuinely be afraid to be targeted based on the color of my skin. I can’t put myself in a black womans shoes and try to understand how she feels when she gets pulled over. I can’t put myself in the place of a black man who has to deal with effed up preconceived notions of who they are simply because they have skin a different color than me.

I don’t get why in the year 2015, race is still an issue. My parents raised me to judge a person on their actions, not by the color of their skin.  Not to hate people. Not to think that I am better than anyone. We are all flawed human beings. What makes ANY of us better than the other?

Why are we having more conversations about the size of a pseudo-celebrities ass than the big glaring, festering racial issues that hang over our heads?

I’ll tell you- because it’s hard. It’s uncomfortable. By having the conversation, we are actually acknowledging that this is a problem. This is a problem. This is a HUGE problem.