Today a friend posted the notice above on her Facebook page. This friend is a communications and diversity specialist – a Chippewa/Cree woman nearing completion of her PhD as a scholar of decolonization.

Another friend, a white Texan in Denver, posted the runoff results in Georgia’s 58th District. Park Cannon, a health advocate, has earned this Congressional seat, filling the post left vacant when Simone Bell, the first Black lesbian to serve in any state legislature, left the Georgia House to take up leadership as the Southern regional director of the Lambda Legal.

A third friend, a musician of Inupiaq and Swinomish ancestory, posted this with the comment, “Oh you know, just a fellow native woman killin iiittttt.” The ‘this’ is an article about the strength of a potential nominee for the recent supreme court vacancy: Diane Humetewa. Humetewa, a member of the Hopi tribe, began her legal career in 1986 as a victim advocate in Arizona. In the meantime, she has served as an appellate court judge, as U.S. Attorney for the district of Arizona (appointed in 2007 by President GW Bush) and as a federal judge (appointed in 2014 by President Obama and approved by the Republican-controlled Senate).

I love these stories. They are, for me, quite heartening here amidst so much noise and celebration of discontent and disagreement. They signify great progress. Yet, they are also emblematic of the heroism required to move forward through systems of oppression still deeply integrated into our nation’s everyday culture and function. If you were not raised in one of the three ethnicities represented in this page – if you are not living from a minority sexual identity – would you know of these things? Even if you do fit one or more of these demographics, you may not have heard, since stories like these too rarely make headlines.

Today is the day, 74 years ago, that our federal government ordered internment of Japanese-Americans. And on this anniversary, most American citizens of Japanese descent have never skipped a day knowing they are looked upon as other. Today is a day in the month designated nationally for noting Black history. It’s also a day the Black voices behind Black Lives Matter continue – each of them fully aware of a lifetime being known first as Black – in classrooms, in shops, on city streets. And today is also another day since European contact – the time when people indigenous to our nation’s land first came into relationship with explorers and immigrants from Europe.  

These are simply facts. Their most powerful affects are on people taken by the dominant culture to be in-any-way other.

In this country, it is time to admit this. Especially those of us who have the option not to pay attention.

And it is about us. All of us.

Certainly American society is moving forward with brilliant opportunities for listening to one another. But listen we must – especially those of us raised White. We must listen and be willing to modify our stories of who others are – as individuals, as members of the groups with which they identify. Each of us sharing with everyone else the birthright to dignity.