A few weeks ago I had a friend experience racism. I was very upset. She is an activist. I was angry and didn’t know what to do. I don’t understand that. She is a black woman and she is with a white woman. She stood up when Floyd was murdered and did what she could to make a change. She had to close her coffee shop. In the group where I met her, we were all upset for her. A few days later she told us she had gotten her TEDx talk. I was excited for her. It was like those who were saying we are going to silence her were not going to win.

What is sad is that even today in certain parts of our world some things are still accepted and ok.

I was visiting a state. I and the person I was with asked the female server if we should walk back to our hotel which was less than a 15-minute walk. She said no. You are both females, it is too dangerous, management here won’t even walk us to our cars and we have the highest rape rate in the US and crime rate. We deal with sexual harassment all the time and no one listens to us.

My mouth hit the floor.

So here is the real issue, silencing the voice of another and that we are not uniting against harming the other.

I have my masters in psychology and one of the ethics is Do No Harm. In both these cases, harm is being done. When we don’t unite against harm doing, the pattern continues and it makes it challenging to heal the wounds of the past. I don’t know about you, but for me, I take that ethical statement very seriously of doing no harm. I took it seriously before I even got a psychology degree and I wish more people did.

What do you think would happen if we all took that approach?