Hello, KourtneyNicole! I'm black, and I'm pretty sure that I live fully in the present, though, I am aware, of course, of insults that have happened to me, in my own past, and to people of color in our collective past. The problem is, as Leo yells out, they are still doing evil things! Even if acts of racism were absent and the present SYSTEMIC RACISM were no longer in effect (that'll be the day) the EFFECTS of racism are not limited to the past, but affect our present.

When you speak of "We" having learned to be the victim for so long, I do not know of whom you speak. Who is the "we," and how does being a "victim" make us feel understood - and being "understood" by whom? Every descendant of enslaved people is a present-day artifact of this country's history of slavery, and there is no "present" in which we exist that is free of both active and systemic racism.

I like pointing out to readers, especially white ones, that I don't live my life searching for racism. I'm a particularly fortunate person; my life has more privilege than most Americans of any hue. However, there are things that happen to me, and I know they happen to me because of my black skin. There is no REASON for them to happen except that someone else wants for them to. I can still be surprised by these incidents! My surprise is my proof that I wasn't "looking." I was merely being, and someone else decided to interfere with my being because of what I look like. There's no explaining it as anything other than what is is. I just tell people what the deal is, and they can choose either to be honest about it or not.

P.S. I'm having Earl Grey with cherry babka.