My legal name is Emily Anne Cooke. Piper Otis is an alias I created, shamefully, to hide behind in instances where I dont have the guts to attach my name to my writing — that will not be the case today.

I am a White American female of great privilege and I’m here to admit to my implicit racial biases. I, further, am not ashamed to tell you that I very much so see color; Black moreso than any other. It is not a brief and passing observance, but something I notice in such great contrast that I often see Black before I see person.

Do I take pride in this? HELL NO.

Do I so badly wish it weren’t the case? HELL YES.

But it IS the case, and if being brutally honest with myself, and ourselves, it is the case for almost all, if not the entirety, of the White American population.

This is a letter to all White people, all of us who inherently possess privelege in all facets of life because we are not Black— my wording may appear strange, with “…because we are White” a seemingly more succinct way to put it, but there is a reason for it. We are privileged because we are not Black acts to ensure specificity to the fact that it is Black Americans whose lives suffer through the effects of covert and institutionalized racial oppression. Not to say that this nation isn’t rampant with prejudice and unjust hatred of and contempt for other minorities (e.g. LGBTQ+, immigrant, and Muslim populations to name only a few among many), nor is it to say that such is not a problem — it certainly is — just not one of institutionalized oppression.

“We are turning a blind eye, dismissing Black suffering at the hands of institutional oppression as invalid and illusory”

The claim to colorblindness is one of the most commonly used proclamations by White Americans aiming to reject or deny personal participation in racism. It is the most dangerous and, arguably, one of the biggest threats to racial equality. In an attempt to proclaim to ourselves and others that skin color (i.e. race) is not influential to our perceptions of and actions toward others, we are implying race as insignificant and racism as non-existent. In other words, we are sending this message to Black folk:

Racism doesn’t exist, your experience isn’t real, and if it is real, it cannot be due to your race and must be you.

We are turning a blind eye, dismissing Black suffering at the hands of institutional oppression as invalid and illusory. The problem with the colorblind narrative is that it is, frankly, ill-informed and nonsensical. Black Americans are oppressed at the institutional, or governmental, level. A devastating lack of opportunity in all facets of life, be it in the judicial, financial, academic, housing, or healthcare systems, keeps them at an oppressive disadvantage that requires them to fight for their lives and well-being every second of every day.

It doesn’t matter if Mrs. White and her husband claim they “don’t see color and only see human”. You see, even if true, Mrs. White and her husband’s claimed lack of individual racial bias and discrimination doesn’t change the system that threatens Black lives at all times and in all ways. The entire idea behind individual colorblindness focuses on the problem of covert racism in the wrong way. It’s useless, unproductive, and damaging to the progressive movement(s) toward racial equality.

I don’t care if you see color or not, although I’ll laugh at you if you tell me you don’t, because it’s the racially oppressive White institution, the one that governs all our lives and holds all power, that is behind this. It is the institution we need so desperately to be “colorblind”. We are, though, the perpetrators, the ones who make it possible for institutionalized racism to slide by in our modern world — in this sense, we are no better.

So, then, the colorblind narrative is two things:

1. Bullshit
2. A dismissal of the very real Black experience of oppression at the hands of the White power structure.
3. A perpetuation of institutional racism through ignorance of race as not significant — it is very much so significant.

“I am NOT colorblind and I am NOT free of implicit racial biases”

Some claim that the way to racial equality in modern America is to quit talking about it; that constantly bringing it up only highlights and strengthens racial divide and inequality. I, again, call bullshit. Silence is a dismissal. I am here to highlight the racial divide AS BIG AND AS LOUD AS I CAN.

I am the product of an oppressive, racist societal structure that has [in some ways without my consent ; in others, with it through ignorance] subliminally and overtly drilled into my head that Black people are violent, barbaric, and uncivilized; that they are drug addicts, rapists, and a threat to my White well-being.

I was fed lethal lies from the second I was born.

A vulnerable, White newborn baby ready and willing to absorb what I was fed from my environment because my only default was trust.

I am not a White newborn baby anymore, and neither are you reading this — the point where we are no longer non-consenting but instead ignorant — and so we now have a choice. I call it a responsibility.

I choose to reject being led into contribution of racism through perpetuation. I am NOT colorblind and I am NOT free of implicit racial biases. I admit this because I refuse to live in blind ignorance while an entire race of human beings are SCREAMING in the background to be heard, believed, and treated as equal persons. Statistics overwhelmingly support institutionalized racism in the United States; look them up before you refuse to believe it. Black people are exhausted and we are refusing to listen to their cries anyway. Educate yourself, please, I beg you.

“I no longer let these experiences simply come and go as experiences without highlighting the racial bias I possess behind it”

Unfortunately, I still sometimes catch myself feeling unjustifiably threatened on the basis of race. Instances where I know that, if it were a White person in the same exact scenario, I wouldn’t think twice — I might not have even noticed their White existence. But, in these moments, I acknowledge the irrationality and prejudice and I fight it. I no longer let these experiences of unjust discrimination simply come and go as experiences without highlighting to myself the racial bias behind it. I make sure to see color and fight myself to rationality and equality.

I have to be:

• Willing to face a hard truth that a part of who I am, in a fault of character, is racially bias.
• Willing to change the way I operate in the world by being more actively conscious and aware.
• Willing to have hard conversations with Black people, asking what THEY need from me — a white privileged female.

Slowly but surely, in addressing these moments of irrational racial discrimination, I have come to genuinely chip away at my existing discriminatory and prejudiced attitudes.

Dear White people,

Let’s be open and honest with ourselves and share it with the world — as I have here. Only when we strip the shame we attach to admitting our own racial biases, defining them instead as a result of our institutionally and covertly racist societal structure, can we begin a journey to racial equality. Any other action is active ignorance and dismissal.

Journaled entry — June 24th, 2014

Feeling this forever? I couldn’t imagine. Saying ‘I Do’, bearing your children while you remind me how worthless I am as you throw shit all over the fucking place in a rage of anger. Having our hypothetical children look into the eyes of you, their father, a man that has belittled and degraded me more than any one person ever has, taking your advice on how to be a good person in this world. Hypocrisy is not what I’ll teach my offspring.
The reason I am here has nothing to do with you; it has everything to do with my own personal struggle with dependence, my fear of being alone, and of change. You could be anyone in the world, because who you are to me is not why I’m here.

You are right about a few things. About my being an absolute idiot. Only an absolute fucking idiot spends four years of their life washing their self-worth down the drain depleting all remnants of self-respect. I often wonder if every time you belittle my intelligence you know the only thing worth deeming me unintelligent for is being with someone like you; And if every time you call me a worthless joke of a person, the only thing categorizing me as such is falling surrender to four years of your abuse.

I may have become worthless, but it is not something I am without you.

For years I doubted myself, I have questioned, and still do question, why you have never respected me. Why you have never taken my hurt seriously. I’ve come to the conclusion that I am, in fact, not worthy of an ounce of respect from you. You have witnessed me, every single shitty day for the past four years, throw my self-worth and respect out the door, repeatedly, to let you get away with treating me like the wounded pitiful little bitch I’ve only showed you I am. How could any one person have respect for someone who has not one iota of respect for themselves? I get it. I think.

I am your vessel, your punching bag, for the projection of your own problems. I am your method of distraction from yourself, your painfully wounded self. A mask for you to put on that hides your own issues and the overwhelming truths you can’t win the battle with. The possibility and opportunity for you to survive in denial exists because of me: the human blood to your vampire. You’re feeding viciously off of me to keep yourself up. You’ve transformed me into someone beneath you, a carbon copy of the image you have of your own true self so you can live above me. Reality has you standing in a world that you feel so painfully, too painfully, small in. You have always felt so small.

So, you robbed me. You took a self-worthy, confident, ambitious girl, with a heart knowing no boundaries, and stole every single one of those things from her; her self-worth and her confidence in herself, in her life, and her beauty. You made her ugly. You emptied her soul and took its contents, leaving behind a lost soul with no purpose.

It was a trade with a blind person who trusted you in entirety. A cheap trade with someone’s open, bottomless, heart. Taking complete advantage, leaving it empty. Taking for yourself what you need.

Yourself. Yourself. Yourself. You. You. You.

You took it all and left me with what you had. I was deceived, you see, in this tradeoff; all you turned out to have, all I was able to get, was an overflowing cup of self-hatred, filled by the past that turned you bitter, with a heaping side of hate for the world. Your past surrounded the entirety of you, of who you were, with walls so high they can never come down. Mine now.

You don’t know, I don’t think. The hardest part of it all is that fact. It’s so deeply masked that it’s dust. I’m hurt for you. I am also sad for you. Both sad and hurt in the least condescending way possible because, let’s not forget, what you left me with leaves no room to be condescending because I have taken your place — gaining myself a new position in my perception of the world — one below everything in existence; a view from the smallest vantage point there is.

I can’t be truly or authentically condescending from all the way down here.

I will not be here for much longer, much less forever, and you have no idea. You have no idea why. No idea that I fully understand, that I’m not oblivious. You think you’ve got me, that I’m situated where you want me to be: in love with you and successfully gaslighted.

You have no idea how wrong you are. No fucking idea that I know exactly what you’ve done, continue to do, will do, and why. That I know I am not crazy in the slightest, and that you are abusive. That you are hurt. Abandoned. That you are incapable of love right now. You cannot love yourself because you were unloved. You were erased. Left. By the one man who’s love you thought was unconditional but instead proved to be conditional. You don’t know that I am still here solely because I fear change and independence in my life’s routine. No idea I’ve been so long gone that you’re now a mere object in my presence just like I’ve always been in yours. No idea that I see the hurt, the fear, the damage, done to your heart and that I know that the damage is to blame.

But also know that my sympathy and understanding is fading. It is disappearing. Soon, it will be gone. And soon, the mere comfort of our relationship, keeping me from experiencing the freedom I so greatly fear, will not be enough to keep me. The sympathy and the hurt I not only see in you but can feel in you, the empathy keeping me, will not be enough. Soon.

Wait. I am a liar.

I will wake up tomorrow and I will love you. By then, I will have lied to myself over and over until I can bullshit a reason as to why I only wrote this out of anger. Reminding myself that, like being drunk, it’s best to wait until I am neutral in emotion, “stable” as you would so condescendingly word it, until I judge the situation and corresponding behavior.

He wasn’t serious when he told me I was a joke of a person. I don’t think.

Or when he spit in my face and told me I was psychotic. When he told me I was so unintelligent that he felt bad for me. When he threw books at me. When he threw that deodorant at me. Or when he told me he could fucking punch me, throwing a pretend one that halted just in time in front of my face.

Even when he took a baseball bat to my car.

He was just hurt. and angry.

By then, this will have been buried deep into the overflowing recycle bin of my brain only to resurface the next time you remind me why I wrote this shit to begin with. Even then, that next time, nothing will change. It will just be a continuance of the never-ending cycle.

And soon, the mere comfort of our relationship will most certainly be enough to keep me. You will be the human blood to my vampire. I will feed off of you to keep me higher, to make my nonexistent self-worth and place in this world feel existent.

I will need you, because I will have become just like you.

And then there were two.