Nobody should be forced to live in fear of walking around their neighborhood alone. However, that’s exactly what best-selling author and TEDx speaker Shola Richards’ life is like.
In a viral Facebook post, the father of two shared how he’s “scared to death” to go outside without taking his girls or his dog with him. And that’s even after having spent the last 4 years living in his house in Los Angeles.
Richards shared how he believes that he would become targeted and seen as a threat in the eyes of his neighbors because of the color of his skin, his height, and his athletic body if he’s walking alone. Scroll down to read Richards’ story in his own words.
More info: Facebook | Twitter | SholaRichards.com
Shola Richards is scared to walk alone in his neighborhood, so he takes one or both of his daughters and his dog
Image credits: Shola MRichards
Richards’ post went viral and got a lot of people’s attention
According to Richards, people shouldn’t be surprised to read this. He feels exhausted and depressed that he has to make himself seem less threatening to walk around his own neighborhood.
Richards’ Facebook rant and list of his insights about how the world works got a lot of attention. It got more than 494k reactions, was shared over 596k times, and was widely covered in the news.
Here’s a photo of best-selling author Richards and his dog, Ace
Image credits: Shola MRichards
Richards told Today that he wrote the Facebook post because he was completely exasperated. “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.”
He added: “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.”
Some people call Richards a cheerleader and Brother Teresa while he sees himself as a champion of those who value integrity. He has written two books (Go Together and Making Work Work) and he speaks to organizations all over the US about creating safe, collaborative, and bully-free work environments. Oh, and Richards is an ENFP in the Myers-Briggs Personality Test, so he has that in common with yours truly.
This is how social media users reacted to Richards’ post
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