BLACK.
I rarely venture out to talk about anything other than art, but today as my fingers hit the keyboard, I can’t help but talk about what is in my heart. George Floyd. George Floyd. George Floyd.
I grew up in South Central Los Angeles and proudly mark myself as a ‘little black girl from So Central’ and I come from a legacy of proud Black Democrats who fought for human rights and equality. My dad was a college man who protested by sitting at the all-white lunch counters on the South Side of Chicago around 1950 and he continued to inform his daughters about the political landscape of the 60’s and on. I come from a legacy of knowledge about what it means to be Black in America.
I am fully aware of my skin color. I am a light-skinned Black woman who looks like I might have come from any country, except perhaps Asia. I am keenly aware that my light complexion affords me some privilege that my other Black brothers and sisters don’t experience; and because of this in-between-ism, I have witnessed more than one shocking situation when white people didn’t know that I was Black.
I am still nervous to walk into mom and pop shops, like boutiques, where I feel as if they are watching me. I have been followed around stores by white people many times when it was clear I wasn’t welcome or they thought I was stealing. For most of my life I have been afraid when pulled over by police for a routine traffic stop mostly because of some real time bad experiences in Los Angeles and San Diego. The pain and insanity of racism permeates our Black spirits in ways that are deeply hurtful and we unwillingly pass generational DNA onto our children marked by a society that kills our bodies and spirits repeatedly.
As we view the current state of America, the vomit rises up in my consciousness and makes me so weak I can’t breathe. George Floyd’s death cry, “I Can’t Breathe” is a metaphor for how we feel all the time.
Black people collectively have already said everything we need to say. We have already created every organization we could create. And we have already spoken from our hearts for what seems like an eternity. We have lived through slavery, lynchings, rapes, riots, murders, Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement, the reaction to Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling on a football field, Trayvon Martin, The NBA Clippers fiasco, the stealing of our black likeness through commercials, the media, Jim Crow, Rodney King and systemic racism in our financial institutions and in our neighborhoods.
We don’t have any more to say. Absoulutely nothing.
If you are white, and don’t know what I’m talking about, then you have to pick up the mantle now and look deep into your heart.
Let me be clear. As Black people, we can’t explain this to you. As I already have said, we have done that work already. We can’t explain to you why you feel bad, or racially guilty or lost. Instead, you must ask yourself why you don’t have any black friends and shun the idea of looking directly at this subject of racism in your own life. Why you might believe that people who take unemployment are inherently lazy and are usually Black people anyway; and why you lock your car doors when Black people are crossing the street in front of you.
Please don’t ask me about it either. I don’t have any more words for you, or energy, to help you know yourself better in this respect.
But I will offer a small thing. A place to begin. A small opening to jump through.
The Covid crisis is perhaps a blessing in some ways. Of course, not for those who are sick or who have lost loved ones. That is a horrible. But this quadruple social trauma – Covid, economic crisis, closed campuses and social unrest - has driven us back into our homes and into ourselves so that we might consider a few new things.
o How this moment allows us to re-think what we call America and how we call for deep change
o. How slowing down everything has contributed to the healing of our planet
o How being at home allows us time to rest and heal and visit with our families in new ways
o How this moment allows us to re-think our life-work options as we consider new possibilities
o How this moment allows us to follow SpaceX up into the atmosphere where we can look down upon our blue and green planet from high above and see, with our own eyes, that we are one humanity and one race.
Wake Up and Learn Resources
Social Commentary: Ted Talk: How to Deconstruct Racism. Jane Elliot.
Music: Conscious Playlist | June 2020
Books: Choke Hold by Paul Butler Healing the Soul of America by Marianne Williamson