Never Forget.... January 6th 2021

During the last quarter of 2020, I took a break from social media. I realized that I could not maintain my mental health and exist for hours at a time in that environment.  As I began to become more aware of people perpetuating harm in many spaces, I realized that I was not just observing the harm, I was encountering it.  Reading problematic statements from “friends,” being unfriended by people I had tried to educate, seeing racist vitriol at every click… when I finally examined myself closely, I realized that each encounter had drawn blood and that I didn’t like the bloodied and battered version of myself. It was impossible for me to actually distance myself when the subject matter was usually some part of my most personal intersections.  In the moment, I could “win” an argument or state a flawless case in the face of bull$&!+, but at what cost? ​

I realized I was fighting to defeat an opponent that would never acknowledge my victory.  The most I could hope for was silence in the conversation, thus proving I was right. I had a realization that I had lied to myself.  I felt at one time that it was a good use of my time to do this.  “People need to know my perspective,” I thought.  But the truth has been revealed to me.  Throwing my words into spaces where they’ll be disregarded is like tossing money in a wishing well.. Or worse, casting my pearls before swine.  That being said, once I learned of the events taking place in the nation’s capital, I allowed myself to take to social media to get an idea of what folks’ reactions were to the news.

I have seen a lot of folks share sentiments of sincere surprise that this is the course our nation has taken.  Most of the people whose words I’ve read are shaken. They have made statements that show their disapproval and often their total confusion about the entire situation.  I have also seen statements that have said things like, “If I feel this way, I can’t begin to imagine what my Black and brown friends are feeling.” This is the reason for my post.  I think it is important to remember that POC are not a monolith and me sharing my experience in no way means that this is everyone's experience, but I will share how I’ve been feeling, and it might surprise you. 

Honestly, I haven’t felt anything.  Nothing in the vein of grief or sadness anyway.

At first, I thought it was a trauma response.  When I get bad news, it takes some time for it to sink in, and I may be a day or so behind others in arriving to sadness or grief.  But enough time has passed that I’m sure that’s not it.  Not only that, I’m being brutally honest here… I’ve been hard-pressed to find empathy within myself.  The hypocrisy of this situation is so deep.. So thick and overwhelming that it tears down any attempts to build a bridge to common ground.  More than anything, there has been a sense of validation as I watch other Americans’ vision come into focus with the America I always knew was a reality. 

Almost every Black or brown person has in their memory a time that marked the beginning of their knowledge of what it meant to be a person of color in America.  I am no different.  One of my earliest memories is of learning that Santa Claus wasn’t real at the ripe ol’ age of 5.  When I asked my father how he was certain, he replied with words that have helped to form my world, “Because no white man will ever give you anything for free.”  My father has always had a matter-of-fact approach to sharing his truth whether the audience is a superior, his spouse or in this case, his 5-year-old daughter.  The words stuck with me so much that when I was interviewed for a local periodical and asked whether or not I believed in Santa, my answer was “no” and my reasoning was a direct quote from my dad.   

When I was a kid, my mother became obsessed with those Magic Eye books.  I believe my brother brought one home from school and before you know it, we had a few of them.  If you have no idea what I’m talking about, Magic Eye books were compiled of pictures that appeared to have repeating patterns in them.  However, if you held the book close to your face and slowly moved it further and further away, eventually you might catch a 3-D image that seemingly jumped off of the page and into your face.  The hidden images might have easily recognizable shapes such as an elephant or a tree and once you became adept at finding the images, you could find them easily.  

I remember seeing my mother’s excitement as the images jumped off the page and wanting to experience it for myself.  But all I saw was patterns and could not find the 3-D images.  My mother began coaching me.  “Bring the book all the way up to your face… now keep looking..”  I still couldn’t see the images.  My brother chimed in, “try crossing your eyes.  That can help!”  And finally, I was able to see the images jump off the page.  It was so exciting. 

I tell this story for a reason.  Just because I was initially unable to see the images, I did not deny their existence.  I didn’t throw the book and call it a “fake book,” I didn’t demand anything from the publisher, and I most certainly didn’t storm the facility where the books were printed.  I knew the images existed and the onus was on me to find a way to access them.  It feels like many people are mourning the death of America when my dad and family showed me where her bones were buried ages ago. Her bones are buried alongside the bones of those that built her, namely my ancestors.  Their graves are shallow in ground saturated with the blood of natives whom the land was stolen from years ago.  It’s all a lot.

Most of my life has been spent enduring the burden of seeing a reality that others can’t (or won’t).  There have been moments of finding community with those who share this ability, but mostly, life has felt like consecutive days and years full of gaslighting due to denial or lack of shared vision.  There have also been moments of excitement when a friend or associate adjusts their vision and acknowledges the truth.  The storming of the Capitol was not even remotely close to a surprise to me.  The lack of response from authorities did not shock me in the least.  In fact, I have not felt this seen or validated in my 37 years.  Black and brown folks are in the long game.  We have never been able to travel without checking the safety of the places they plan to visit.  We have never been able to have a bad day without it affecting our job security or at least our reputation in the eyes of our colleagues.  We have never been able to have kids who have a hard time without them being labeled as problematic or pathologized.  So you better believe that we definitely walked out of the 2016 election with a list of possible worst-case-scenarios. Was a bunch of deranged Trump supporters storming the Capitol on my original bingo card?  Nope, but I guarantee, many Black folks called this ending and saw it coming the second we heard there were “protests” planned for the 6th. 

I am aware that grief looks different for everyone, and I try to keep this in mind as I consume others’ reactions to our current state of affairs.  One reaction that I see that I believe is problematic (and is triggering af) is watching white people distance themselves from those folks at the Capitol in a number of ways. 

• Embracing and leaning into the sentiment that, “this is NOT who we are!!”  I’m gonna need y’all to read the room and be sure to make eye contact with a person of color or two as our faces likely say, “Yes it is!!” White supremacy is the literal foundation of this nation. Denying this and embracing the deeply flawed and fictitious (yet comfortable) history we were taught as children is not getting any of us closer to fixing our nation.
• Finding some way to separate themselves from the white people at the Capitol.  Exercising white exceptionalism in believing that they are somehow above the folks that stormed the Capitol. By using statements like, “not all Republicans,” they show that somehow, they think of themselves as absolved from being associated with the worst parts of the party. 
• Probably the most infuriating for me is watching white people abandon their whiteness to adopt a purely Christian identity.  I’ve seen statements like, “I don’t have any answers, all I can do is throw myself at the feet of my Lord and Savior Jesus.  In a world that doesn’t make sense, we must seek understanding from above.” It must be awfully convenient to abandon one’s intersections in order to focus on identities that seem blameless in the wake of current events.  Not only is this privilege of breaking ties with one’s race unavailable to other ethnic groups, it’s problematic because much of issues with American Christianity is that it mixes religious doctrine with white supremacist ideals.  “Good, wholesome Christianity” is a large part of what got us into this mess in the first place. 

The long and short of it is that for us to move forward, we need accountability.  We need it as a nation on so many levels.  People (namely white people) need to be accountable for what they say.  It is not okay to spew inflammatory rhetoric and fan the flames of an unstable political base, then somehow absolve yourself of responsibility for your words. White people need to be accountable for their thoughts.  It has become taboo to use racial slurs or use deeply offensive racial language, but it is clear what many Americans think of POC.  Watching the display of shock, surprise, denial and worst, justification in the face of the PURE HYPOCRISY of the treatment received by radical white terrorists in comparison to BLM protestors was almost too much to bear.  It became obvious what many white folks think of Black and brown folks as well as what they think of themselves. 

Perhaps I haven’t had super strong feelings about the insurrection attempt because those feelings aren’t mine to feel.  As a Black woman and an empath, rest assured, I’m feeling a lot all the time. I can only hope that we treat this experience like all other American tragedies and memorialize it.  Let’s never forget. Even the embarrassing things.  I know I’ll do my part to make sure we never do!

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