I’m sooo tired.
Recently a friend of a friend made a comment to the effect
that they “didn’t like to do the racial stuff.”
I may not have the words exact, but believe I’ve captured the gist of
the statement. A bunch of us went back
and forth with her, and while I believe her intentions were good, the reality
is that she, as a white person, has an option that I as a person of color,
simply don’t have.
White folk can claim they “don’t see color” (a lie from the pit
of hell if there ever was one) or refuse to engage in “racial stuff” or wonder
why black people “have to make everything about race;” white folk can invoke any
number of ways or coping mechanisms to not have to deal with the detritus of the
legalized elevation of white people and subordination of all others in this
country. One of the reasons we still
have to deal with all the detritus is that as a nation we’ve never dealt with
the ugly, nasty, messy, hateful, dehumanizing reality upon which this nation
was built. Americans captured people, treated
them as if they were not human, used their labor to create wealth and build
their country, propagated laws that kept them economically and physically
oppressed, and then, when they could no longer continue that system, repealed
some of those laws and pretended everything was alright.
Saying black people should just “get over” that horrid past
is like saying America should just “get over” 9/11. Instead of “getting over it” or “moving on,”
America has created a new governmental department and new protocols in numerous
industries, all to ensure that such a heinous act never occurs again. Additionally, there has been an unprecedented
resurgence of xenophobia, islamophobia, and a growing isolationist nationalism,
all of which seem to have some sort of genesis in those horrible acts on that
Tuesday morning 17 years ago.
But black people (maybe because we really are magical
negroes) are supposed to just “get over” centuries of legalized, institutionalized
oppression which, while reluctantly legislated away, has clearly never been
removed from the hearts and minds of many of our fellow Americans. If we are
spozed to “get over” racism, then how come y’all still got young people in the
Klan? Why, instead of telling black folk
not to “be racial” are you not telling young white nationalists not to be
racist? How does a Charlottesville
happen? How come you were never taught
about the Tulsa Massacre? What about the
massacres of Native people and Asian people and Black people ALL OVER this
country, since its inception? Get over
it? Isn’t it the American tradition to
remember those who lay down their lives for their brothers and sisters? Did we not just celebrate Memorial Day to
commemorate those who sacrificed their lives for this country? Is the memory of those who were murdered
during the growth of this country any less sacred? Yet their memories are systematically erased
from our national consciousness and those of us who attempt to truth tellers are
too often labelled troublemakers.
And while it takes a phenomenal amount of spiritual and
psychic energy to live in an environment that’s so toxic, most black people in
America grow up learning to navigate that world. Whereas white folk have the option to
summarily dismiss all black people as threatening, black people have to learn,
very early on, the difference between the white person who could be your ally and
the one who could be your assassin. I
grew up in the South, at a time where the end of public segregation was forced
upon the population. Always among the
first or the few to integrate formerly white institutions, I learned early on
that you can make rules and regulations, but you cannot legislate human
hearts. I could claim a statutory right
to an equal education with white kids, but nothing would make them play with me
at recess, and only learning to fight boys (well) got them to stop harassing
me. (I guess the teachers were inside
not being racial or something). And I
could dominate them physically and intellectually, and I was luckier than many:
some of my earliest memories are of friendships with people of different races
and cultures, many of which have endured over half a century. For that I’m grateful, even as I realize that
so many people did not have it that way.
So many more people had experiences similar to those mine when I moved
out of the progressive college-town cocoons of my youth. So many more people learned, as I would
later, that if you’re with a mixed race group at, say, Tiffany (or even Macy’s),
and it’s crowded, just get the black kid to go stand by the register or by the
jewelry. A sales clerk would instantly
appear! You learn as a black adolescent
that you can’t do grunge in public – your white friends might be able to do it
as a fashion statement, but with you, grunge brought out a whole host of ugly
stereotypes. People of color, people who
must navigate the dominant culture but who are “othered” by that culture must
of necessity be (at least) bicultural.
We must develop an awareness and sensitivity to people whose ways,
standards, and reasoning are not like ours, but upon knowledge of which our survival
often depends. So by the time you’re an
adult of color, you’ve developed these chops for navigating other cultures.
And that’s when you see the narrowness and the oft-
malicious myopia that is engulfing our nation.
It’s not just islamophobia, it’s not just nationalism, it’s a paucity or
meanness of spirit that seems to have infected us. Its latest manifestation comes in the revival
of a caustic, divisive, unamusing harpy who has shown her true colors using the
preferred medium of a failed reality tv star with similar characteristics. It’s hard for me to believe that Americans
willingly embrace these deviants; I believe their prominence is simply the
manifestation of a demonic spirit that’s overtaken the land. How else do you explain an assault on
decency, the normalization of hatred, the unrest, the lack of tolerance, the
meanness, the lack of fidelity, the harshness, and the lack of self-control
which now characterize this nation? When
there’s a demon in charge, then what is manifest is the opposite of the Fruit
of the Spirit, and that’s what we are seeing now.
I’ve sort of wandered, mostly because I’m tired and am not
taking the time to write. But this is
all related. The racial tension in our
nation is but a manifestation of this demonic influence we’re under. The unwillingness of people to confront the
enemy in front of us is evidence that the enemy is roaming and devouring those
who were perhaps not as vigilant as they thought, or who, in choosing to call
wrong right, inadvertently made a deal with the devil, let it in, and now can’t
get rid of it. I don’t know. I just know I’m tired of grown people
sticking their heads in the sand (or somewhere darker) acting like everything
is ok, when the reality is that we are living in a tinderbox. We’ve seen eruptions here and there, but we
cannot continue the systematic oppression of people without consequence.
Every day it takes more and more effort to not be angry, to
not want to seek retribution, to not want to hurt those who hurt me. It takes effort, and I’m just sooooo tired.
