Validation

Do not invalidate someone else's experience just because you have not experienced the same. Or even if you feel you have experienced similar, do not invalidate the pain that it has caused them, just because you handled it differently. Maybe you cannot fix it, but the willingness to try or even just to listen and allow them to be heard can make all the difference. Empathy and understanding.

I remember my Gr. 11 Algebra teacher, Mr. Manning. Every time after an exam he would hand out our papers, go over the answers and then have the rest of the class to talk about life.
He opened up the topic to us to choose or whatever was happening in the news at that time.

I liked these conversations a lot because we got to know each other on a different level. In Highschool you had your cliques and you had stereotypes and assumptions of the classmates due to these cliques.
Like "Oh he is just a dumb jock and does not think too much about anything else but sports" or "she is the quiet nerd and had nothing else to say about life issues other than talking about the books" or whatever else we assume because we do not know them personally.
Well these conversations often got us thinking about the bigger picture in society and allowed people to open up about the variety of opinions on a topic without being judged and allowed us to be heard.
Mind you some of the people in class thought it was waste of time, or a silly distraction, or they focused on why are we talking about Seinfeld again? There was always a bonus question about Seinfeld at the end of each exam paper.

One particular topic was that of racism.

 With all that was said among classmates on every different angle Mr Manning said this which somehow stuck in my head. I believe it was after a classmate said "yea I understand what they are going through, but.."

"No matter how anti-racist you feel you are or how much you try to understand and empathize with someone who is black, no matter how many good friends you have that are black or people you know that are black , even if we could somehow change the colour of our skin for a day or more and live in their shoes,  no matter how hard we try to understand or even say we understand.... we will never  ever understand how it feels like to be black. Or any other race which can be targeted for racism. You will never understand how to it is be be born black and grow up black. The best we can do is try to understand and be more conscious about it. But we can never say we fully understand what black people go through."

Listen so people can be heard.