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Black Dad Shares Why He’s Never Walked Through His Own Neighborhood Without His Dog or His Daughter By His Side

Black Dad Shares Why He’s Never Walked Through His Own Neighborhood Without His Dog or His Daughter By His Side

Shola Richards/Facebook

Shola Richards is a father. He has two daughters and a dog named Ace. And as he revealed on Facebook, he walks Ace around their neighborhood twice a day.

However, he’s been holding on to a secret that he no longer feel the need to keep inside anymore. The secret is that he “would be scared to death to take these walks without my girls and my dog. In fact, in the four years living in my house, I have never taken a walk around my neighborhood alone, and probably never will.”

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Richards admitted that he knows some people who will read his post will think he’s being “melodramatic.” And some may even think that he’s just “playing the race card,” even though he has no idea what that means.

“But this is my reality,” Richards writes.

“When I’m walking down the street holding my young daughter’s hand and walking my sweet fluffy dog, I’m just a loving dad and pet owner taking a break from the joylessness of crisis homeschooling. But without them by my side, almost instantly, I morph into a threat in the eyes of some white folks.”

Richards continues, saying that when he’s alone, people don’t see him as a “loving dad of two little girls.” No, sadly, “all that some people can see is a 6’2” athletically-built black man in a cloth mask, who is walking around in a place where he doesn’t belong.” The dad admitted that it is “equal parts exhausting and depressing to feel like I can’t walk around outside alone, for fear of being targeted.”

“If you’re surprised by this, don’t be.”

Richards then addressed the people who don’t believe racism is a thing and who think white privilege is just some “made-up fantasy to be politically correct. “Yes, even despite George Floyd, Christian Cooper, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor (and countless other examples before them, and many to come afterward), some people still don’t seem to get it.”

That’s when Richards began to explain what white privilege is:

As Richards concluded, he will still be enjoying his walks with his dog while holding the hand of his 8-year-old daughter in the neighborhood where he belongs “in hopes that she’ll continue to keep her daddy safe from harm. I know that sounds backward,” the dad of two wrote, “but that’s the world that we’re living in these days. #BlackLivesMatter.”

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The photo and Richards’ words have been shared over 40,000 times. And many of his followers understanding where he is coming from. “This is so real,” one commenter wrote. “My husband told me yesterday, “”m gonna go for a walk around the block’ and my first thought was, take one of the kids with you. For this same reason, with the kids, he is seen as a loving dad, without them he is seen as a threat. It’s just not fair.” And even more people thanked him for his honesty.

He later told Today that speaking up was something he needed to do for himself.

“The recent news stories of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Christian Cooper, and George Floyd broke me, emotionally. As a black man, hearing about these stories over and over again, it felt like ‘death by a thousand paper cuts.’ It honestly felt soul-destroying. I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping well, and I was losing significant weight. Many of my very well-meaning white friends were unable to understand the depths of my grief, so I wanted to put my own experiences in writing in hopes that it could be useful to them, and cathartic for me.”

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