Thoughts from the center of my Black self

People are clucking over how awful all the looting and rioting is, as if the looters and rioters aren't white supremacist militia members infiltrating peaceful protests to give the protests a bad name. Also, why aren't those people so disturbed by the looting and rioting equally as disturbed by police shooting and gassing and brutalizing innocent men and women?

 

I am trying with everything I am to hold on to love. I remember when my daughter was five years old and a girl on the school bus who had watched Mississippi Burning with her family the night before, told my girl about the KKK for the first time. My daughter came home from school that afternoon and stood in front of me, her sweet face serious. She urgently wanted me to know something. "Mommy," she said, "do you know there is a group of white people and they hate black people and they kill them? They're called the KKK. Chelsea told me." This was the face that looked up at me, except the dancing innocence was gone from her eyes.

 

 

Oh we had a conversation that day, even though I had naively thought I'd have more years before we had to have this particular talk. "Yes," I told her. "I know about the KKK." When I assured her that her dad and I would keep her and her brother safe, I quickly saw that her greater concern was whether we would be safe. Makes sense, right? How could we keep her safe if we couldn't keep ourselves safe? I said something like "We cannot allow other people's hate to stop us from living our lives. We simply have to be careful about who we choose to be around, and if it becomes clear that someone means you harm, get the hell away from them. But never let another person's hate cause you to be hateful, too, because hate is corrosive to the body." "What's corrosive?" she wanted to know. "Poison," I said. "Hate poisons the hater. Don't let other people do that to you. You hold on to your loving heart, even when you're fighting against hate." She nodded. "Okay, Mommy," she said. I was glad, then, to have sent her to a school that didn't shy away from social justice conversations, a school that was instead actively raising children who would grow up to change the world simply by the way they live their lives. 

 

A friend sent me this photo of the window of Shakespeare and Company at 68th Street and Broadway. There's the book I co-wrote with Linda Sarsour on the lower right. The mask is a nice touch. The book's title, a quote from Linda, is a whole mood. We Are Not Here to be Bystanders.

That's Linda in her Until Freedom shirt. She looks like a freakin super hero cause she is. She and her Until Freedom cohorts have moved from New York City to Louisville, Kentucky to fight for justice for Breonna Taylor. That's commitment. May she be safe.

By now you've heard about the 17-year-old baby Trumper who drove from Illinois to Kenosha with a long rifle and began shooting into the crowd of protestors in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where unarmed Jacob Black was shot seven times in his back, in front of his three sons. People tried to tackle the teen with the assault rifle when he started shooting, but he ran. He tripped and fell and from the ground shot some more. He hit three people. Two are dead. Yet the murderer got up, walked away, waved at police as they rolled by and police waved back, offered him water, even though people were yelling "He's shooting people!" The shooter went home and slept the night in his bed before being arrested gently the next morning. His white privilege was a goddamned bullet proof shield. As Hannah Jones says, "No greater summary of America exists."

 

One of my friends posted this yesterday. It resonated so hard for me that tears spilled from my eyes. Rage and sadness. Anger and exhaustion. I imagine this is how LeBron James and Doc Rivers and all the other Black men in professional basketball were feeling when they walked out on Game Five of the playoffs on Wednesday night. Their white teammates stood in solidarity, and soon, so did the rest of the NBA, the WNBA, Major League baseball and the NFL. It was the fourth anniversary of the day Colin Kaepernick first took a knee during the national anthem as the former 49ers quarterback, for which he was drummed out of football. Movement leaders are always ahead of their time, and are too often met with hostility and violence. We must protect them, mentally surround them with our love if that is all we can do. I pray the world is catching up to Colin and Linda and all the other warriors out here fighting for our very souls.