My Own Words is an occasional blog series where Sunrise Banks employees share the life experiences that have shaped their beliefs and values. This month, we are hearing from Bishop Ofei, VP – Director, Enterprise Project Management Office.
As a Ghanaian immigrant who has lived in the United States for close to three decades, I have come to understand Black history not only as something to study, but as something that continues to shape daily life. Over time, this country became home to me, to my wife, and to our children. And with that sense of home came a deeper awareness of how history, policy, and perception intersect.
Black history has never followed a straight line. It moves like a river — bending, diverted underground, dammed in places and, at times, overflowing its banks, yet always pressing forward. Though my roots are Ghanaian, living in America has taught me that Blackness here carries a shared and interconnected history — one that transcends origin, language, and background.
To reflect on Black struggle is to sit with endurance under constant pressure — from the holds of slave ships to Jim Crow, from redlining to mass incarceration, from surveillance to detention. And yet, within that history, there is also the enduring truth that hope persists, often taking root in the most unlikely places.
Painful parallels
Over generations, stories have been passed down that document suffering, names reduced to numbers, families separated by policy, lives paused by paperwork and power. There are painful parallels in the forced removal and detention of Asian Americans during World War II, a reminder that fear can be made into law, and that law can be turned against people mark as “other.” History shows us, again and again, that injustice often arrives wrapped in the language of legality.
Today, as Black and Brown communities experience heightened scrutiny, raids, and detention under immigration enforcement, the echoes are unmistakable. Fear moves faster than facts. Neighborhoods grow quieter. Parents rehearse plans their children should never have to learn. Paperwork becomes a threat. Skin tone, accent, and zip code are read as suspicion. And the language of “order” often forgets the humanity it claims to protect.
Watch the video to see members of the Sunrise Banks People of Color Employee Resource Group read Bishop’s essay.
Not the end of the story
But Black history also reminds us of something just as real — persecution has never been the end of the story.
People before us faced systems that were vast, violent, and seemingly immovable. Yet they still organized, sang, taught, sued, voted, wrote, marched, prayed and persisted. They carved out dignity where none was offered. They turned survival into culture, resistance into joy, and memory into movement. In camps, in fields, in factories, churches, and kitchens, people insisted on their humanity even when the world tried to deny it.
Black History Month is not only a remembrance of pain — it is a record of possibility. It reminds us that policies change because people push them to change. That fear weakens when communities refuse isolation. That progress is not accidental – it is built slowly, collectively, by ordinary people choosing to show up.
“We are still here”
There is room for optimism, even now. It lives in the coalitions forming across lines once meant to divide us. It lives in the conviction that children deserve care, families deserve humanity, and histories deserve to be seen. It lives in neighbors protecting one another, in educators telling fuller truths, in artists naming what is happening and imagining what could be. It lives in the quiet confidence that we have faced moments like this before – and we are still here.
Remembering Black history is to remember that the future is not fixed. The same forces that seek to detain and disappear have always been met by forces that document and defend, that heal and rebuild. We inherit not only the wounds of the past, but the courage and tools shaped to mend them.
This month, we honor the struggle by refusing despair. We remember that justice is not a single event but a daily practice. And we commit, patiently, collectively to a vision belonging wide enough to hold us all.
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