I am so sick and tired of being sick and tired. As a middle class African American woman who has successfully straddled both worlds, living the double conscious life W.E.B. Dubois wrote about in The Souls of Black Folk, I am personally offended and mentally and emotionally sick and tired of the constant, perpetual victimization and brutalization of African American CITIZENS in this country that I love. But now it is more than that. The grief and sometimes rage that I feel has turned to fear. Fear that I too will become a victim of hate. Hate given and received. I don’t want to hate. We should all love and look out for each other regardless of our skin color and despite and in spite of our flawed characters.
The post racial lie was always faux and a foe, the false illusion of racial harmony hiding the white sheets of hatred, deeply tucked in the corners of our country’s distant but not so distant memories. Even after the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil Rights Movement, African Americans have never been really free to move around in a country built on the blood, sweat, and tears of our ancestors. And after the election and presidency of America’s first African American president the scab of America’s sordid past of white supremacy and hatred was ripped wide open for the world to see. Live and in living color. 365 days a week, 24 hours a day around the world thanks to 24 hour news and social media.
I’ve been called the N word twice in my life. Once in the late ’80s in junior high and once in the last year by a homeless or drugged out White woman who clearly thought her skin color granted her privilege to do so because of the present sociopolitical climate. But even that I was able to shake off, but what I can’t shake is the increased trauma and grief I face as a person of color in this country and the post traumatic stress disorder we have to endure individually and collectively.
On many days I. CAN’T. BREATHE.
I can’t breathe when I scroll my social media timelines and have to endure reading and watching another African American CITIZEN being victimized and brutalized for merely BEING WHILE BLACK.
Being at Waffle House.
Being at Starbucks.
Being at Yale.
Being in Nordstrom.
Being at an AirB&B
Being in a car.
Being on a plane.
Being at a golf club.
Being at school.
Standing.
Sitting.
In distress.
Stranded on the side of a road in a broken car.
Walking across the parking lot.
Walking in the neighborhood.
Wearing a hoodie.
Living.
Breathing.
Just BEING.
Remember, just as all cops are not bad and all white people are not bad, the same applies to Black people. There is no excuse for the excessive force and brutalization of African Americans. NO excuse. Stop blaming the victim and perpetuating the cycle of hate towards people of color that are embedded within the social and institutional foundations of this country that I love in spite of its flaws.
We have to get it right, America. Come together just as bitter torn families have to. If not, our country will not be able to withstand the test of time.