Rage

I was raised in mixed company. Really mixed company. A military brat, my rearing was in more than simply black and white. More than other ethnicities, we were mixes of those ethnicities. So I grew up with a myriad of friends that looked a myriad of ways. In that group were white friends…in the truest sense of the word. I grew up with white friends both before and after I recognized their whiteness in the highly racialized world we inhabit, before they recognized my blackness.

Even so, I went through a super militant phase in the seventh or eighth grade- I consider it an American rite of passage, learning our unedited history, and railing against it.  I don’t remember what triggered my rite, but I remember explaining to my classmate why he couldn’t call me colored. And I remember walking out of Mr. Evan’s class after I asked him to stop using the word negro and he responded, “negroes, darkies, whatever you want to call ‘em.”

I had another, more nuanced militant…or maybe conscious is a better word…phase in college…after I read A Taste of Power. It was all mixed up with realization about misogyny and power dynamics.

All said and done, I settled on the mostly moderate side of life. My friends remain multi-culti, my outlook tends to lean towards trying to understand things…especially if everyone is telling me my logic is flawed. I want to understand. 

Still, I’m at my limit. 

My sister maintains people like us are the canaries in the coal mine. We are nothing that Fox News assumes about people of color who rail against being victimized, people of color who do not suspend reality to avoid calling racism what it is. We are not "conspiracy theorists". We are not segregated in small pockets of blackness at the exclusion of the rest of the world (by our doing or other's). Our white friends are not mythical -they come to dinner, we travel together, we sleep at each other’s houses, we know each other’s families. We defy all the excuses put forth to undermine and ignore justified rage. 

And I am enraged.

I usually have staid conversations about race, tempering my fatigue and distaste for having to explain why carrying a bag of skittles is not punishable by death for other people. I am the person who shares how my high school student council advisor asked me if there would be a lot of black people at the rodeo, because if there were “too many” he wouldn’t feel comfortable taking his wife. The same man who assured me he “taught” another black student how to be black. I’ve had people touch my hair, reaching out through the buffered space that strangers generally keep, and feeling perfectly at home invading my personal space. I’ve explained that, “no, I don’t use car grease in my hair.” I’ve had teachers accuse me of plagiarism because they didn’t believe I could have written my essay, hell, I had teachers attempt to put me in remedial classes despite having my test scores and previous school’s records on hand.

But I’ve managed to remain calm. I’ve managed to keep my fits of anger and frustration, mostly, to myself. But now I’m tired. This canary is flapping its wings. 

I am tired of recycling conversations that end up laying blame at the riggored foot of another black victim. I am tired of excuses and the benefit of the doubt given in every situation except the ones that involve people who look like me.

I know exactly where the racial load that America is intent on thrusting upon colored people, bent to breaking. It wasn’t Mckinney or Eric Garner. It wasn’t my dad being held up by police in our neighborhood or my college boyfriend being scarred from where the police smashed his face into the hood of the police car. I broke when Zimmerman was acquitted. 

That was my moment. That was the moment that I looked America in the eye, and, without blinking, America assured me that what I had feared all along was true…black lives don’t matter. 

And so today was another day. Another horrible day confirming what I already know…that when black lives lay in pools of blood, the perpetrator was “sick” or “unstable” or “a loner”. When I hear those words I know the outcome of any case that might be brought to trial, any conversation that might be had in social media.

 

I know how it will end. Confederate flag flying or not…it will end with the expectation that black people should forgive all slights, no matter how egregious. It will end with the media calling for peace and gentle conversations. It will end with another mother crying, another father, another child. And…more likely than not…it will end with justice as elusive as the post-racial world folks keep assuring me we live in right now. 

My wings are tired.