This Mother’s Day, Sit Down and Weep

What I hadn’t done for racial justice.

“Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word “love” here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being or a state of grace — not in the sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (digital art, S. Stribling 2019)

I went to bed the other night unsettled. I had just read my friend author and activist Tamara Lucas Copeland’s post entitled “White People: Step It Up.” It is a response to the killing of Ahmaud Arbery and in it she envisions a million-person March for Black Lives on the Washington Mall — led by white allies. She imagines our signs: “I am marching for Ahmaud…