I see you. I feel your fear. Hold my hand.

It has taken me a few days to process all my feelings about what happened on Saturday in Buffalo. I decided that putting it in writing…

It has taken me a few days to process all my feelings about what happened on Saturday in Buffalo. I decided that putting it in writing could help me work through it.

What does this Latino guy have to say about this that hasn’t already been said, you ask? Please bear with me for a moment.

Most of my network -except for those that are also friends in the real world, or with whom the topic has randomly come out in conversation- doesn’t know it, but my wife and I have been foster parents -for the past 4.5 years- to a 6-year-old Black kid (soon to be 7, he would quickly point out).

As we’re getting near the adoption hearing (just 3 weeks off!), I look back at the experience and it was at the same time exhilarating, grueling, intriguing, and extremely rewarding. It has been truly life-changing for us.

We got each other through the pandemic, and used the extra time we had to spend together (with him not going to daycare or school for almost a year) to build a special bond. We had dance parties to classics of the 80s and 90s, when we could not go out (he got hooked on Michael Jackson and he’s trying to steal some of his dance moves). We built tons of LEGO projects (mostly school buses, airplanes and garbage trucks, TBH) . We recorded a cover of “Space Oddity” with our 2-people rock band, named “Starship Rocket Moon”. And when the weather (and “the sickness” as he calls it) got better, we started going to Cub Scouts. And music lessons. And soccer.

We built memories and a common history together, knowing that our history is rather uncommon. We built a sense of family, learning to navigate our differences and embrace our similarities.

He has been the driving force for my diving into the DEI field, making me take interest in things that I had seldomly given serious thought to (to be fair, he has deepened that interest, because I had already started a path of ushering more women to the IT field a few years before deciding to become a foster parent).

Thanks to him, I got more involved in mentoring, particularly through ADPList.org and OBSIDI. I joined the Diversity Council of our school district. I joined a board that promotes Latinx Professionals and I will soon be taking a board position with a local youth social services organization

I figured that, since I can’t teach him what it is like to grow as a Black man in the US, I should at the very least try to make his experience of growing up Black a little bit better than what it was for prior generations.

Unfortunately, this past weekend hit me like a punch in the gut. A few weeks ago, our little family visited Buffalo for the weekend. We went to several attractions like the Buffalo Museum of Science (3 minutes away from the supermarket where the attack happened), and restaurants, staying at an apartment (12 minutes away from where the attack happened) and visiting other supermarkets that might as well have been the targets of such a heinous act.

Recently it was discussed in the news that the shooter may have targeted Rochester as well. And that he allegedly published a manifesto in which he considers Argentina (the country where I was born and raised) to be “a white country” as if it was some kind of badge of honor. For the record: it is not, and it’s a myth that has been fed by the same white fragility that gave birth to this atrocity and many others that have happened in recent history. In fact, what is arguably the most transcendental cultural product of Argentina in the 20th Century -tango music- has clear African roots.

Yesterday, I was visiting a mall with my son, and I found myself plotting imaginary escape routes in case of an attack. Today, I found myself hesitant to take my son to some concerts we were looking forward to, after 2 years of almost no live music.

We love to go out, we love festivals and live music, but the thought of him being at risk with one of these random racially motivated attacks frankly terrifies me. Especially when it could be with something as trivial as going to the supermarket for some groceries.

I can’t even begin to imagine what it’s like for Black members of our community to live with that fear constantly. I reached out to a colleague to see how she and her family were feeling, and she confessed that they were at a festival on Sunday, and they decided to move to a different sector when someone with a helmet and camo jacket sat close to them.

Acts like these deepen the existing wounds in our society and make them even more difficult to heal. And all the “thoughts and prayers” performance can distract us from the fact that nobody is really safe until we are all safe. We really need to do better than that.

We need to show each other that we’re there to support each other. Lending a hand, lending an ear, offering your shoulder, opening your heart. These are never easy topics to bring up, and they are not meant to be comfortable conversations, because they can’t be. But if they at least allow us to experience even a fraction of what it is like to live under such pressure, and if they help our friends feel cared for, they are worth the time and the discomfort, I promise.

And we need to speak up, and rise up to the occasion when needed, as difficult as it may be. Small, consistent actions result in cumulative, persistent change. From the bottom of my heart to all my Buffalonian friends, I feel your pain. And to all the friends who live in fear of being attacked due to the color of their skin, I see you, and I feel your fear.

Sorry for the rant and for the stream of consciousness writing. I just needed to put it out there.