Estimated reading time: 6 minutes, 3 seconds.
•••
My husband and I spend
a lot of time talking about race and how it affects us both. He, a haitian
american and visibly black. I, a white-passing woman from ten minutes outside
of Ferguson, MO.
When it first happened-
when the media and white America first decided it happened- I was already
living in Boston, watching wide eyed as news reports and tweets and status
updates flooded my timelines and my thoughts with stories of the injustice.
An armed cop, an
unarmed, black, young man. Six bullets, and more than four hours on the scalding asphalt of the
road underneath them.
When I say I watched
everything, I do mean that literally.
I was in-between jobs
at the time, and had taken two weeks off to "relax, reset, recharge".
I had no idea I'd spend my free time during that period scrutinizing
every news report I could find for inconsistencies and prejudicial language,
for character assassination peppering each broadcast. I even recorded some of
the more important
broadcasts on my phone so that if Facebook deleted it, I could repost and
ensure the truth was known.
I was monitoring TV
like the FCC and I frequently stayed awake for hours into the night because I
wanted to be sure I was up to date on all the newest information. Since I
couldn't march with my friends and community in Ferguson, I took this on as my
"work" to make sure the truth could be told, even if it was horrific.
I ache to be there and I fear for the people who are.
•••
Dousing myself in
gruesome information and others' emotions, I am able to avoid processing much
of the shock, helplessness, anxiety, and confusion I feel. Survival; whatever
works.
I watch helplessly as
my already racially segregated city has its frail bonds torn apart by ideology
and tear gas. Stores are (infamously) looted. A QuickTrip gas station
associated with the event in August is completely torched.
My white cousin posts
messages via Facebook confirming that her husband (who works at QuickTrip) is
safe and has made it home unscathed by the chaos from those protests.
The police
respond by bringing in forces decked in riot gear and line local
streets with armored cars.
My friends post Black
Lives Matter articles and upcoming events with calls to action and
opportunities for peaceful resistance. They post pictures of themselves with
their hands up, shouting "Don't shoot!"
The same day, another
white cousin posts a picture of a sign on a browning Missouri lawn saying
"You Loot; I shoot!". They don't realize they are talking to me.
Growing up, my father
was obsessed with history, especially the civil war. In all of the many
documentaries I sat through with him, distinctly I remember each made note of
how the war pitted brother against brother as one would choose the Confederacy
over the Union or vice versa. I always wondered how that could be, how values could vary so wildly within one home. Unfortunately, I became intimately aware of this process of division after it smothered my once-close relationship with my white sister.
•••
I start my new job
where I am one of two "people of color", and one could argue we are both white-passing. Apparently I don't pass as well as I think because my boss and then-CEO seems to be on a personal witch hunt
to figure out "what" I am, as he asks me about this on multiple
occasions.
I walk past one of the
three T.V.'s in the lobby, all vividly flashing with images and scrolling
banners regarding a potential indictment, over to my desk where one of the
senior partners is speaking with aforementioned CEO about the case: "What
was he supposed to do? I mean, he charged at him like some kind of
monster."
I clack away on my
keyboard pretending not to hear them, an eyebrow raise sneaking its way onto my
face.
After work, I
facilitate weekly meetings for women of color in Boston. I also spend about
seven hours a week reading for and facilitating a three hour class for women
called "Femsex". The long hours start to wear on me and my partner
expresses concern about me taking on too much
Months later, after we
all realized the indictment had never had any potential at all, protesters flood
the streets, cardboard signs the only things discernable in the sea of people
visible from the TV station helicopters.
Another secretary
ponders loudly to us all: "Why are they even protesting?"
"I think they're
protesting about the police" another replies.
"Well, I think
it's dumb. I just don't see why they need to protest."
I look at my computer
screen and try to unforrow my brow and unpurse my lips- let my mouth be as
loose and careless as that of my colleague.
I quit.
Everything.
I pull out of all
activities, even the ones I care about. I quit facilitating first, then quit my
job, then Femsex ends (as it's 16 weeks long).
I take nearly three
weeks off this time, so fatigued from the long work days and the silent, but
mutual disdain that had hung between myself and the other secretaries by the
end of my tenure there.
This time happens to
fall over Christmas break and I spend most it trying to quiet my guilt about my
new inability to peel myself out of my bed, or even leave my apartment.
•••
Two months after the
non-indictment, protesters chained themselves to concrete barrels spanning
across a major highway in Boston, blocking traffic for miles.
I'm sitting in a
work-related onboarding meeting and my new supervisor is late.
The administrator
facilitating the meeting asks us to forgive the lateness of our boss as she's
stuck in traffic due to "the protest".
Another new employee
asks quizzically, "What are they protesting?".
It is nearly six
months since the demonstrations first started.
Countless videos and
news of further police injustice have surfaced during this time as well. Men
who can't breathe, men shopping at Walmart, boys with toy guns, women with
broken tail lights. They all have two things in common: they are black and they
are dead.
The thought that
Bryant is vulnerable to these same types of injustices lies as quietly as
alligator eyes, just under the surface of my reality. So to combat the threat
of a nervous breakdown, I love him even more fiercely, more publicly.
"He is loved and he is a person!"
Yet the
fact remains: his personhood could be violated in public and by a public
servant at any time, and there’s really nothing I can do about it.
The only thing dangerous about my husband is that killer smile.
How could anyone see
him as a legitimate threat?
Powerful, yes, but
dangerous?
But powerful black men
have always been marked "dangerous".
•••
My mother (who is
white) called me last night to apologize. She was sorry that as a white-passing
black woman, I have to carry this weight- the grief for those we had lost, the
anxiety and fear for those still alive in our community.
She apologized for not
calling sooner because she didn’t know what to say.
And then she
apologized because I look so much like her.
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