Thoughts on an afternoon drive

I have been taking more afternoon drives lately. It’s not that I have anywhere to be, or someplace to go, I just get in my car and drive.

There is something so liberating about being behind the wheel of a car. It could be the afternoon sun that just pokes out from below the horizon as it paints the sky a bluish-orange. Or it’s the feeling of the road beneath me as the car twist and turn on its meandering path to nowhere. Or maybe, just maybe, its how alive I feel with the freedom the open road gives me.

It’s in this freedom that I came to the realization that a car is a wonderful place to think. See, driving is an action predicated on reaction. And eventually, much of its actions become muscle memory. This grants freedom to the mind to wander, possibly even getting a bit lost.

A right-hand turn on the road takes me to a time I made the right decision. A left-hand turn takes me to a moment where I went a different direction than everyone else. A u-turn reminds me that its ok to go back only if you mean to go forwards. My mind always roams with the road.

As my mind roams, a slew of good thoughts come with it: how to end world hunger, how to crack the code of human morality, how to understand people and relationships. All of which can take up more time than a single afternoon car ride has to offer.

Yet, lately, my mind hasn’t been on any of those things. Instead, it has been so captivated by America's racial tensions. I think of wealth inequality. I think of the education disparity. I think of the death rates for our young black brothers. I see the hopelessness. I see the despair. I see brother killing brother and kids killing kids.

I see the outrage because of white supremacy, and I also see us missing a key aspect of it. The racism and racial tensions we are fighting have left many in our communities with a sense of nihilism — a deep hopelessness.

We have been taught to hate ourselves. We proudly proclaim Black lives Matter, as we should. Yet, we forget to say Black love matters. I am not just speaking to romantic love; I am speaking to self-love and self-appreciation. To turn the tides of racism in this country it starts by shedding what they tried to make us, and that's done by telling ourselves what we really are. We are Black and beautiful. We are intelligent. We are capable. We are driven. We are thoughtful. We loved. And most of all we are hopeful.

Martin Luther King Jr once said, “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it always bends towards justice.” To see that truth realized, lets not only fight the external oppression, but the internal one too. The one that has affected our communities without white people even being there.