Because of current events, I have to REMEMBER I matter. At first, it’s just absurd. Then people are killed in front of everyone and it becomes an essential, and you scream angrily while being called absurd for screaming.
I’m impatiently frustrated with complacent suggestions on how I should respond or feel about all that has been illuminated (because, let’s face it, it’s always been happening) around black Americans since March of 2020.
No one white should ever, EVER tell me how to respond to results of a system they don’t feel, a system they are protected by. Step back and let me be.
I’m over the niceties. I get the attraction of social progress with conversation around the issues. I call things out now in a way I never did before. There was never a reason not to, but now…NOW?
Now, I’m too raw to play with.
I am organically of as good-a-nature as any other human with my circumstances. I like good things and happiness and feeling cared about, like others do. I make the same human errors as well. But I have fears integrated into my life that you never will.
Over and over again, black people in America are brought to their knees facing the collective trauma of open, overt, obvious racism from police and politics, all while we deal with being covertly, professionally and intelligently discriminated against within the financial, educational and secular systems on the daily.
And don’t be queer too, or a single parent, or dismissed from popular religions and family traditions - because that’s a whole extra bourgeoisie bag of bullshit happening to you that you’re not supposed to believe is real.
I have less patience for explaining and defending when I am able to find solace, community and a little bit of joy and I don’t give a damn HOW I find any of it. As long as I have. You keep gas-lighting me saying liberty and justice and prosperity for all Americans includes me, right? Because you have proof that I can have the same American experience that you can, right?
Amidst what we face in any given day and what people, specifically white people with flex in this country, could do to help shift things into change, hell yes, I will try to enjoy any bit of privilege I see I can have.
I am no longer answering your questions on the topics about the obvious. Truly, just engaging in a full life takes so much from us, having to explain what we see to you is, in my view, a further act of hate and terror towards me.
Why?
Because you’re basically asking me ‘Tasha, how is this system around the both of us, that enhances my life and erodes yours feeling for you today?’
And you ask this as you see it eroding me and everyone like me.
And you ask it while you explain away your fault and guilt and specific involvement in slavery.
And you ask me how do I work or learn or function in the system that tries to disregard and remove me because in other ways, it breaks you too, due to sexism, classism, etc.
And simultaneous with this conversation, around us, people who look like you do things and live. And people who look like me can do the exact same things and are murdered in the street…again, in front of us both.
I hate to sound like a typical-pop-psycho, but have you ever read anything on how a narcissist gaslights and when the person affected finally breaks free, the narcissist becomes unhinged in their efforts to deal with the changed person. They might keep trying, but they flail and fail.
If you’re white, you may not even know how to have a conversation with a black person in America right now. You are a part of a narcissistic collective consciousness that controls the direction of American society and all the parts it takes to live within it.
That narcissistic collective is flailing right now. That is part of the uneasiness you feel inside when you see me. It’s the part that makes you feel like you have the right to say what you want and you should, but if you hear me being louder in the moment, you shut up.
You know what? For some of you, that’s for the best.
For others of you, it’s not.
You have to do the hard part now.
I’m not just tired. I’m done.
I’m done because I deserve the joy I find in my life - and unfortunately it took me reminding myself that I matter to hold the joys I see.
You get to make choices about your futures not tainted by your skin color. I’m not talking about just goals and dreams and creativity. I’m talking about jogging and biking and taking a walk and going to places alone in casual, comfortable clothing while you are off from work, with the limited free time of typical American Adult life (which in itself is a whole other discussion).
There are still, STILL, in 2021, things I have to think about before I do ANYTHING that you never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever have to even consider.
I have to think:
‘How am I PRESENTING right now as I do_____ or go _____?’
‘Could what I am doing be mistaken for _______?’
‘Will I take the time to dress like ______ before doing ______ so that I am not bothered? And what’s the quality quotient of the activity after that - before I even begin - will it be worth it - do I have extra time to….sigh….never mind. F*&k it.’
Oh and by the way - even being at home and putting out the trash is a thing I have to over prepare for, depending on who’s new around my home and watching ‘for neighborhood safety’. Black people’s existence has to be explained by white people to other white people so that all the white people around those black people feel comfortable enough to exist alongside them…sort of like the classism enmeshed in academics who are given grants to study the poor, giving the poor people and their experience more veracity, if you will.
Such a privilege to be educated, working and living in America, am I right?
You can believe this.
I do.
I just realize that the privileges I do enjoy here compared to ones I would have anywhere else could include being able to have attempts at my dreams, if I’m ready to defend the demand with every step toward them that I deserve them, and if I assert the rights to be seen as other humans around me are seen.
Lots of my joys are normal days that go unscathed with hate and making it home alive. The mass shootings combined with the hate for POCs in America don’t make it easy, but, here we are. We notice these small joys when we’re left alone just long enough and can laugh and reach for prosperity, humanely or from a traditional capitalist bent - you pick. Either gets us a smidgen of the life we are told we have the same opportunity to have, just not along the same route…whatever that means. Oh that’s right. It means we’re all equal, living within that liberty and justice for all American philosophy. Right?
Okay, well…
Let me think it might be true for me. Let me have whatever moment I can to get through the day without all the extra effort around my color and hair causing fear or worse, automatic social dismissal.
Let me walk through one day at work not having to over-explain my right to exist. Let me say what I need and confirm I’m heard.
Let me not have the extra job of emancipating whites from social guilt after a bad news week, and from their passive aggressive mentioning of my freedoms to make mistakes and have opportunities, and their assuming what my level of imposed gratitude should be for corporate diversity workshops.
Let me have the same debts and traffic tickets and limited savings and degrees and paychecks and move into your neighborhood. Then, let me jog when I have time without being leered at or questioned. Let me not have to smile through my discrimination to earn your release.
Sigh. Just let me breathe.
Let me be included in the liberty and justice for all, for once. It’s your philosophy anyway, right?
I shouldn’t have to ask for a right. You assert yours and walk a life daily expecting them. Why can’t I ask?
Just let me matter.