Listen as a Black women graduate student recounts her thoughts upon seeing a single white person holding a Black Lives Matter sign outside her grocery store. Her initial reaction was wondering whether she should say thank you to this ally and how to navigate their action considering how hyper-visible she felt. This thought was immediately followed by the emotional realization that this person was standing to say her life mattered, a fact that society still didn’t acknowledge or accept.
This person is literally standing here to say my life matters and how is that not known at this point?
Throughout the movement over the summer during the pandemic she has had to process her Blackness in a whole new way. The onslaught of recorded police brutality reinforces the idea that Black lives continue to not matter and this young Black woman recognizes “that could be me.”
