I am half white and half black. My name is Cassandra Pickrel. I am going on 31 years old with one husband and a four year old magical toddler. She is the best part of both him and I. I am a born-and-raised central valley California girl who transplanted to Gillette, Wyoming in 2011.
I wrestled for a few days with my decision to write this piece. Not out of fear, but from the heart of knowing that on an issue so vast as racism, I am but a drop in the ocean. As I am a mixed black woman, I acknowledge that I have privilege to an extent. Growing up in a home with a white mom, I didn't experience a level of discrimination that others have known to be usual.
The fact that racism even exists in 2020 America brings forth a fierceness in me. If we, as a nation, cannot come together and be united, then we are squandering the work of so many before us. To obtain healing, we on both sides have to take responsibility. It will cost us. It will take hard work. And most importantly it will take dying to ourselves. It has to happen without us tearing one another down to lift ourselves up or as some kind of revenge mission.
We as a people have to take on a different approach in this process. This approach would be to love. We can tend to put love and what love looks like in this box and say “this is love and anyone who isn't doing these things isn’t loving well”. Sometimes loving one another is listening despite how painful it may be to hear. To really hear them, to try and put ourselves in their place, to know where they are coming from, where they have been wounded. Not from a place of defense but to understand. To truly know their heart and journey.
Sometimes love looks like forgiving before anyone has even asked for forgiveness, maybe even knowing that they may never even ask. To come to the table not with our past and wounds in mind but our future and our children's futures in mind. In this time we will have to love even when the otherside is not. Regardless of what any of us have gone through, good or bad, if we cannot come together and love one another for the goodness of the world our children will indeed inhabit what we have sewn.
Racism is an evil that has been around since before Jesus and will be here until He returns. Not because HIS blood wasn't enough to cover it. It was more than enough to abolish discriminiation, stereotypes, and racism. No, racism will be here because we reside in a broken world. A world that we can try our very hardest to make perfect but we will fall short every time because only the creator of this place can do that. The truth is all the brokenness we encounter shouldnt be used as fuel for our anger and hurt, but instead should turn us to Jesus because He is always the answer.