Dear brown boy,

I can’t get your face out of my head — that image of you surrounded by whiteness, yet enfolded in it, being one of “them” to not have to deal with the reality of what it might mean for you to be you.

I was just like you — a speck of color at my mostly white Christian school. I came in proud of who I was — black, poured into by brown-faced women, shaped by black authors and their histories — and left insecure about that which I should’ve been most proud.

God made me black. He made you black. Your color has purpose and deserves to be treated with dignity, honor and respect — just as Nathan Phillips deserved to be treated.

I watched and wondered if, back in high school, that would’ve been me in that situation, fearing it might’ve been. I so deeply lost myself during those years that there’s a picture of me out there posing in a Confederate flag tank top. I thought it was harmless, but now I think about the black men, women, and children who were traumatized at the expense of what that flag represents.

I get it, brown boy. Sometimes it’s easier to become one of them instead of feeling like you have to constantly defend your worthiness against micro-aggressions disguised in, “It was just a joke.” But it’s a pit, and it takes coming face-to-face with who you really are to make it out. That reckoning is not fun; it truly brought me to the end of myself.

You are beautiful. The Indigenous men and women you mocked are your brothers and sisters. Stop dancing for those white people, man. If they can’t accept you in the fullness of your blackness, they don’t deserve to have you in the package that best suits them.