From a Grandmother’s Porch

Never have the words white privilege rung more true than the day I saw helicopters circle a Black neighborhood and drop agents on Brown backs. All this, seen from a video tucked deep into a social media post. They were tearing families apart, but not mine. My grandchildren were safe in school, my door unknocked.

But the knock still came — not of agents, but of realization. My skin separates me from another human’s loss. Little children, targeted for nothing more than where they live and the circumstance they were born into, are now scared of the very government meant to protect them. They will carry that terror like a scar.

And even this — my writing, my grieving aloud — is privilege. For many with darker flesh, words are not safe. To speak up is to risk being marked, to risk being torn further from belonging. Their silence is not consent, but survival. So I write with the knowledge that my pen is borrowed fire, a voice I carry not just for me, but for the ones forced quiet.

That’s the rub of privilege — it’s not a crown you ask for, it’s the absence of a boot on your neck. It’s being able to look away, or to look on and not be taken. And it’s as uncomfortable as it is undeniable.

For every 3 White babies born, nearly 3 babies of color are born. What are we doing to our children? That’s half the children being born in this country. Half the future, marked from birth to carry fear instead of freedom.

I am a mother. I am a grandmother. My heart hurts watching skin tone decide a child’s future.

So what’s a woman to do with that? I can either wear it like blinders, or turn it into a lantern. If I am safer by skin, then let my porch be shelter. If my words travel farther, let them carry witness. If my children are spared, then may they use their freedom to loosen chains, not fasten them tighter.

Silence is a choice too, and it always sides with the boot. Better to be noisy, better to be the red cloak in the crowd, better to be a thorn under the heel of power, than to sit pretty while neighbors bleed.

My Prayer:

May every shade of skin be seen as holy light.
May no door close to their laughter,
no law crush their joy.
May they grow side by side in freedom, learning that difference is not danger but the rainbow fabric of belonging.
And may we, the keepers of today,
be brave enough to make a softer world for the ones just beginning.