Sunday Introspection

I Will Not Be Quiet for Your Comfort: A story about pugs, privilege, and the quiet revolution of speaking up.

Art3mis, giving the exact look she gave me before the pug-couple incident — that “who the hell is this?” energy.

Whiteness has always carried with it a kind of self-appointed immunity — a belief that rules are recommendations, that consequences are optional, that accountability is for other people. I see it show up in design trends, too: minimalism becoming synonymous with “taste,” the color of the year declared as “Cloud Dancer,” which is really just another shade of absence, another elevation of blankness masquerading as purity. We’re told it invokes serenity. And yet serenity has never been part of the behavior of the people most committed to wearing white as an identity.

Privilege is not neutral. It expresses itself in the small moments — where entitlement meets habit.

A woman online shared a video recently where a man left a racist comment beneath her post. Instead of arguing with him in the comment section like most people would, she drove three hours to his job. She didn’t threaten him. She didn’t doxx him. She simply introduced herself, face-to-face, and explained that his words had consequences. She wanted him to know how easy it was to find him. She wanted him to understand the cost of casual hatred.

I appreciate that energy.
Not the spectacle of confrontation — the clarity.

That resonance comes back to me in my own neighborhood. A couple once taped a garage-sale sign to my fence so strangers could find their home more easily. When I removed the sign and returned it, they stared at me in disbelief, as if the audacity was mine. The shock was not about the sign. It was about being corrected by a Black woman — someone they did not expect to have boundaries, let alone enforce them.

That expectation is the first layer of privilege:
the assumption that your comfort supersedes someone else’s consent.

The second layer is the absence of consequence.
The third is the myth that mediocrity, when wrapped in whiteness, is still excellence.

This belief erodes community. It creates people who assume the world is a self-cleaning oven — that whatever mess they make will be handled quietly by someone else, someone unseen.

And that brings me to the pugs.

On weekends, my wife and I trade morning duty with Art3mis. My turn means the early walk, the feeding, the gentle settling into the day. It’s also when I take stock — of tasks, of time, of myself.

Art3mis alerts whenever someone passes the patio, but that morning, her energy shifted. Twice she signaled. On the second time, I looked. Of course — the pug couple. They walk their six pugs past our home regularly. And just as regularly, the dogs relieve themselves and the humans keep walking.

Privilege is not always loud. Often, it is a shrug.

I stood at a crossroads: do I let it go again?
Letting it go is the easy choice — silence dressed up as peace.
But silence has a cost, and that cost has become unbearable.

I grabbed a bag, walked to the corner, and found what I expected: fresh, steaming evidence. I picked it up. I tossed it out. And again, the crossroads: do I leave it there, let the moment dissolve, convince myself the issue is resolved because the ground is clean?

But where is the accountability in that?
Where is the teaching?
Where is the boundary?

I got in my car, drove to the park trash can, passed them along the way, and turned back. My heart was doing its own drumline — a familiar rhythm born from childhood, where speaking up was met with discipline, not dialogue. Silence had been safety once. Silence had also been a slow poison.

So I rolled down my window.

I introduced myself. I named the behavior. I explained the condition of what I found — warm, fresh, undeniable. I told them it had been happening for nearly two years. I asked them to stop.

Deflection arrived instantly.
Denial, a close second.
Excuses trailing behind like the loose leashes of the dogs they wouldn’t stoop for.

But clarity held me steady.
My voice did not waver.

The truth is simple:
You do not get to litter your entitlement on my property — not through signs, not through silence, not through your dogs.

Either they will clean up after themselves from now on, or they will choose a different route — one that doesn’t pass the home of the “scary” Black woman on the corner.

Either way, that is a win.

Because the real shift isn’t in them — it’s in me.
It’s in choosing not to swallow the small violences.
It’s in refusing the inherited silence of my childhood.
It’s in honoring the part of me that knows better, that demands better, that is better.

Sometimes resistance is high-stakes and history-making.
Sometimes it’s a quiet morning, a warm bag in your hand,
and a decision to speak anyway.