This is going to be uncomfortable

This is not a post about being happier. If anything, it marks an uncomfortable journey I’m on as I examine my part to play in the wider world, and particularly as an ally to the Black Lives Matter movement.

What I’ve done: I’ve read up on some of the lesser known parts of US history, such as the Kirk-Holden war (which is really WTF territory – thank you to Michael Harriot of The Root for the heads up). I’ve donated to several bail funds and charities supporting the movement. I donated to the GoFundMe for Breonna Taylor’s family on what would have been her 27th birthday. I watched footage of protester after protester getting their first amendment rights trampled on: a grandmother shot between the eyes with a bean bag pellet (she may lose an eye). A 20-year-old student shot in the head when police shot the wrong person (he faces a long recovery and brain damage). A 75-year-old man’s skull cracking, heard from across the street, when police push him and walk past. A community organiser shot in the groin with rubber bullets when he tried to de-escalate a protest (he and his wife don’t know if they’ll be able to have children now). And many others, from journalists, to medics, to children being tear-gassed. You’ve probably seen them, too.

And I read.

I read about George Stinney, Jr, who was executed in 1944 when he was just 14 years old, for murders he may well have had nothing to do with. Don’t google his name unless you are ready to see the photos of him tearfully pleading his innocence as they strap him into the electric chair. He was the only black person in the courtroom when he was convicted. Even him mother couldn’t sit behind him or hug him after the guilty verdict.

I read about Kalief Browder, held at a detention centre at Riker’s for nearly three years (2010-2013) awaiting trial for a burglary he again may well have had nothing to do with. He was assaulted by officers and other inmates (there is footage of these assaults; I cannot watch). He attempted suicide while being held there and finally succeeded two years after his release. He was 22 years old when he died. His mother visited him every week, bringing him fresh clothes as the prisoners had to wash their own clothes in buckets that left rust marks on them.

I watched a video of a young man lying prone in his own front yard while police officers held him at gunpoint (May 2020). He had allegedly run a stop sign. His grandmother came to stand beside him to to deescalate a situation where her grandson might be shot. Women’s voices can be heard screaming for the police to lower their guns as the young man is clearly terrified. The fear in his own voice, and his family’s voices, is chilling.

And I am filled with shame that as a mother, I haven’t done more to help the Black Lives Matter movement. Because I can relate to each of these women, and the anguish they’ve gone through, not because I’ve ever been treated so detestably for the colour of my skin, but as a mother who knows what it is to love your children.

Sure, I have tried to eradicate racism in my own life. I had vaguely, notionally supported Black Lives Matter. But I had hesitated too much, too long, when I heard of a black person’s life taken by the police. I assumed another side to the story. I believed, even partially, in the police statements.

Sadly, it took watching the police issue statements that were shown to be bald-faced lies by video footage from other protesters to make me realise how readily I had trusted the establishment to tell the truth. It took seeing these atrocities happen in just about every state, in many different cities, to truly show me the ‘few bad apples’ defense was not nearly good enough, and that people would be suffering intolerably as we shrugged and held up our hands, as if to say, “What could we do?”

I was listening to a podcast just now, an interview between Krista Tippett and therapist and trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem as they discussed race (incidentally, in Minneapolis, just before lockdown). Among the many, many things he said that struck me, he said:

“…this idea of being able to land this race question in a way where white people are uncomfortable is a fallacy. It’s performance art.”

Resmaa Menakem
(in the On Being podcast here.)

So sharing my reflections, my reading from the past few days, and writing this raw post now, is part of moving into that zone that is distinctly uncomfortable. I need to ask why I haven’t done more. I need to reflect on that connection I feel to these mothers who have had to train their black sons to play the game so they don’t die in a stop-and-search. I need to go beyond book clubs and performative gestures that make me feel better about being a white woman in a white man’s world. I feel I owe it to those mothers, who could be me, and those boys, who could be my boys, but for the fact of our skin, and our histories.

Black Lives Matter.