Last week I talked about the divide between those who have found the Covid 19 lockdown okay and those who struggle with it because of lack of space and lack of resources. I spoke of how privilged I am to have a big house and a lonely rural road to walk down. I live so far from the dilemmas of a family crowded into an apartment on a busy city street.

But as I wrote that piece, a black man was held by police, kept down by a knee on the neck that killed him.

I am not afraid of police. I am white. I have only ever been pulled over when I was speeding. I've never been carded. I've never had police hassle me on the street because they were looking for a blond, white woman who had robbed a store. Blond, white women shoplift. Blond, white women get into fights. But the colour of my skin does not get the attention of security guards and police.

The death of George Floyd was terrible for him and his family, and it is terrible for all of us that his death is not an isolated event. It happened because of systemic racism.

Another reminder of my privileged protected position hit me when I saw a lament from Michelle Obama that spoke of mourning "George, and Breonna and Ahmaud, before that it was Eric and Sandra and Michael."

I knew something of George's story. I had missed the others.  

Breonna Taylor. She was a black emergency medical technician in Louisville. She was shot eight times when police served a search warrant at her home. She did not have a gun. Among the allegations in the story are, on one side, that her boyfriend fired at police, and, on the other side, that the suspect the police were looking for had already been arrested. What ever the details, eight times? In an apartment? This happened in mid March.

Ahmaud Arbery. This mid-twenties black man was jogging. Two white men, one a former police officer, thought he looked like a man they thought might be responsible for a series of break ins. They got their guns and chased him. In a scuffle he was shot three times. One of the reports said that one of the guns, in the middle of town, was a shot gun. This was late February.

I should have known these stories. No wonder the protests are fierce. George Floyd's death is not an isolated tragedy. His death is directly connected to racism.

Another story. Christian Cooper. Walking in Central Park, trying to protect an area with sensitive plants from an off-leash dog, the dog's owner, a white woman, tells him to back off, says she will call the police, and threatens to tell them that an African American man has threatened her life. How would that have gone?

Yes these events happened south of the border, but racism runs deep in Canadians and right here in Grey-Bruce.

In the story of Regis Korchinski-Paquet, racism and mental health intersect in the story of how she fell from a 24th story balcony when police were called for a domestic dispute.  

When given space, indigenous people of Canada tell their stories of hurtful, damaging racism right here.

I hear people say that this community was traditionally white, but that ignores the First Nation and Metis peoples who were here before settlers, the strong African Canadian community that was here, the Chinese Canadians.

I've been preoccupied and asleep. What has happened to the recommendations of the inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women? I should know the answer to that question. I don't.

I know how little has been done on the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential schools. I have done a little bit of work on one recommendation that falls in my realm of responsibility, but even that I let slide lately.

Not living every day with the reality of racism in our country comes to me courtesy of white privilege. I can choose to show up or not. I can choose to speak out or stay silent. I may listen to racialized voices speaking outrage or turn back to the reassuring stats on how few cases of Covid 19 there have been in our area.

Right now I will not be silent.  I will acknowledge the racism I grew up with, that I absorbed. I will seek to show up for the fight against racism here because it's my responsibility to work to deconstruct the system that privileges being white.

Cathy Hird lives on the traditional territory of the Saugeen Ojibway