This is my blog to attempt to make sense of what I'm feeling.
I am angry.
I am sad.
I am ashamed.
All of these feelings stem from the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
And they stem from the arrest of Omar Jimenez while trying to do his job.
And the video of Christian Cooper and Amy Cooper and her call to the police.
And the non-arrests or delayed arrests of Arbery's killers and Floyd's killers, as well as no-knock entries of police in the middle of the night.
But the cherry on top of the aforementioned shit sundae is the white people I know living in their white, upper-middle-class world and having not a clue that they don't have a clue.
I say this as a white person who knows damn good and well that I cannot possibly wrap my head around the POC experience.
Whatever I might think I know, I'm 100 percent sure I don't have even the slightest grasp.
"Violence doesn't solve anything" is the white person's lament that would be better said as, "I don't understand why black people protest and riot even though I did not say this same thing when armed white men went to the state capitol and screamed at law enforcement."
Unarmed POC are tear-gassed while white men with weapons that could reduce a crowd to dust are allowed to just hang out in the state rotunda.
"I don't understand why they're destroying their community" is another common refrain I've heard and seen. What this screams to me is, "I live on the other side of town than those people, and as a person who has been able to utilize business and economics to my advantage, I cannot imagine destroying something that provides me entertainment and a way to spend my disposable income."
How many freaking memes are about white women shopping at Target for fun while their husbands tailgate in the parking lot?
In the upper-middle-class white world, destroying a Target might get you a one-way ticket to hell assuming there is a hereafter. I like Target, but I know it screams "white person shopping place."
And just the fact that these statements say "their community" implies that you, as a white person, aren't a part of the person of color's community.
Even if shit is happening across your town, it is still your community.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention white people who do live all the way across town, some 15 miles from where protests happened in my city, commenting about gunshots at 3:30 in the morning near us.
I don't know how this appears to them; perhaps as concerned citizens of our little niche.
But in my frustration, all I hear is: "OMG, the chaos of the blacks is coming to our secluded little nugget of nirvana in the east end."
The comments of "This is horrendous" and chiming in on what you think you heard is the verbal equivalent of clutching your pearls.
Imagine hearing gunshots every night and not just on the night that a protest ended up in shootings?
Imagine being woken up at 3:30 in the morning because the police are ramming your front door down during a no-knock warrant? And then actually being shot?
Did you say "This is horrendous" when you saw the officer kneeling on George Floyd's neck?
What I want to say is "Will you PUHLEASE check your damn privilege at the door and quit freaking out about a non-event? You can walk down our street any time and rest assured that you are not going to be shot by anyone, and especially not a police officer."
Quit thinking about yourself when you have so many privileges you can't even begin to understand them all.
There are the white people who post a photo of an uplifting story about a friendship between whites and blacks and think this means they don't have a bias, implicit or otherwise.
Or because they have a black friend it means they don't have prejudices and don't have to do any internal wrangling and work about what racism is and how it impacts all of us.
If you have moved outside the school district or to another neighborhood in order to keep your kids at the "good" middle school, maybe you aren't as color-blind as you like to think you are?
(The whole notion of "Colorblindness" being part of white-people idiot-speak.)
Ahem, is the "good" middle school where there are more white kids?
Because while I'm pretty sure I don't understand the POC experience, I know white code when I hear it.
I have people in my family who stopped shopping at "dirty" Kroger even though it went through an extensive makeover and expansion.
I know what they meant by "dirty" Kroger.
This blog post was me reacting out of anger and frustration, and it is a terrible mess of lashing out and perhaps hurting the feelings of my white counterparts who read it.
Is it any wonder that the anger and frustration of POC has resulted in fires and looting.
Or does it explode?
(White folks, this is code. Go Google it.)
I am angry.
I am sad.
I am ashamed.
All of these feelings stem from the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
And they stem from the arrest of Omar Jimenez while trying to do his job.
And the video of Christian Cooper and Amy Cooper and her call to the police.
And the non-arrests or delayed arrests of Arbery's killers and Floyd's killers, as well as no-knock entries of police in the middle of the night.
But the cherry on top of the aforementioned shit sundae is the white people I know living in their white, upper-middle-class world and having not a clue that they don't have a clue.
I say this as a white person who knows damn good and well that I cannot possibly wrap my head around the POC experience.
Whatever I might think I know, I'm 100 percent sure I don't have even the slightest grasp.
"Violence doesn't solve anything" is the white person's lament that would be better said as, "I don't understand why black people protest and riot even though I did not say this same thing when armed white men went to the state capitol and screamed at law enforcement."
Unarmed POC are tear-gassed while white men with weapons that could reduce a crowd to dust are allowed to just hang out in the state rotunda.
"I don't understand why they're destroying their community" is another common refrain I've heard and seen. What this screams to me is, "I live on the other side of town than those people, and as a person who has been able to utilize business and economics to my advantage, I cannot imagine destroying something that provides me entertainment and a way to spend my disposable income."
How many freaking memes are about white women shopping at Target for fun while their husbands tailgate in the parking lot?
In the upper-middle-class white world, destroying a Target might get you a one-way ticket to hell assuming there is a hereafter. I like Target, but I know it screams "white person shopping place."
And just the fact that these statements say "their community" implies that you, as a white person, aren't a part of the person of color's community.
Even if shit is happening across your town, it is still your community.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention white people who do live all the way across town, some 15 miles from where protests happened in my city, commenting about gunshots at 3:30 in the morning near us.
I don't know how this appears to them; perhaps as concerned citizens of our little niche.
But in my frustration, all I hear is: "OMG, the chaos of the blacks is coming to our secluded little nugget of nirvana in the east end."
The comments of "This is horrendous" and chiming in on what you think you heard is the verbal equivalent of clutching your pearls.
Imagine hearing gunshots every night and not just on the night that a protest ended up in shootings?
Imagine being woken up at 3:30 in the morning because the police are ramming your front door down during a no-knock warrant? And then actually being shot?
Did you say "This is horrendous" when you saw the officer kneeling on George Floyd's neck?
What I want to say is "Will you PUHLEASE check your damn privilege at the door and quit freaking out about a non-event? You can walk down our street any time and rest assured that you are not going to be shot by anyone, and especially not a police officer."
Quit thinking about yourself when you have so many privileges you can't even begin to understand them all.
There are the white people who post a photo of an uplifting story about a friendship between whites and blacks and think this means they don't have a bias, implicit or otherwise.
Or because they have a black friend it means they don't have prejudices and don't have to do any internal wrangling and work about what racism is and how it impacts all of us.
If you have moved outside the school district or to another neighborhood in order to keep your kids at the "good" middle school, maybe you aren't as color-blind as you like to think you are?
(The whole notion of "Colorblindness" being part of white-people idiot-speak.)
Ahem, is the "good" middle school where there are more white kids?
Because while I'm pretty sure I don't understand the POC experience, I know white code when I hear it.
I have people in my family who stopped shopping at "dirty" Kroger even though it went through an extensive makeover and expansion.
I know what they meant by "dirty" Kroger.
This blog post was me reacting out of anger and frustration, and it is a terrible mess of lashing out and perhaps hurting the feelings of my white counterparts who read it.
Is it any wonder that the anger and frustration of POC has resulted in fires and looting.
Or does it explode?
(White folks, this is code. Go Google it.)
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