"We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." -Elie Wiesel

Another Odyssey content creator, Andrea Huebner, wrote an opinion article about the current black lives matter, white privilege and police issue. She brought up the biblical principle that a house divided will fall, and then (paraphrased here) she asked the striking question: "Why are we being forced to pick sides? Can't I, a middle-class white human, be both pro-black and pro-police? If we can't figure out how to look past our skin color then we are headed towards a civil war."

So, what the what is this conflict really about? In Debra Leigh's 28 Common Racist Attitudes and Beliefs that indicate a detour or wrong turn into white guilt, denial, and defensiveness, white privilege is dethroned and given no excuse to discriminate. Debra makes these important claims: whites cannot be color blind, we can't become the victims of blame, we can't blame the victim for the privilege they don't have, we can't diminish how the disinherited have suffered under white privilege, we can't deny the current issue, or disassociate with it, or excuse it because it was only a joke or an isolated event, we can't romanticize their culture and ignore their suffering, we can't try and become them and above all we cannot try to be white missionaries. No, we must take anti-racist action.

Back to Andrea's question, yes, we can be both, we should be. We are both American, but even more importantly we are all human on this earth. That being said, even though we are all put into different classes, cultures, stereotypes and generally given a symbolic label so that people can simply understand the basic aspects of you and me, we need to recognize when our fellow brothers and sisters in other categories are being discriminated against, then we need to stand up for them even when it doesn't benefit your category of existence, because that is respect, understanding and love. Those are the ingredients of peace.

Lastly, we need to recognize that society cannot function without these symbolic labels - our intelligence cannot escape symbols. Seriously, take a day to recognize how everything is a symbol: language, signs, colors, names, titles, prices, songs, stories - everything is a symbol of something real because we can't directly describe the objective realness of anything or anyone, it's crazy! So, take responsibility for your human family, and stand up for them, stand up for our relationships with them; please stand up for us. #blacklivesmatter