This meme suggesting that Black folks too are fragile, was posted for discussion on a Facebook page. The question is quite provocative and necessary for Black folks to ask ourselves. While our personal fortitude and resilience may be stronger and more enduring than others, it does not minimize the hurt and trauma of being Black in America. It does not excuse or minimize our need to address it.
I learned earlier this week that here has been an update re: the murder of George Floyd. The judge decided there will be two trials instead of one; one for the actual murderer and another joint trial for the three accomplices who were actually on site because we know that his biggest accomplice is a system that supports him from arrest to conviction to incarceration of Black faces. They call it justice but that's just a buzzword absent substance and meaning for the Black community.
Last week I also saw that the NYPD cop who did the unthinkable and sodomized Haitian arrestee, Abner Louima, with a plunger handle following an arrest for a fight at a party, wants leniency after 21 years in prison. He wants to come home to his Family because of COVID. Ain't that special??? My guess is that the loved ones of so many murdered by police officers across this nation want for their loved ones to come home. Leave him in there! Abner does not object to his early release...
Yesterday NY AG Letitia James filed a civil suit against NYPD demanding that NYC address and be held accountable for the brutality committed by its officers. Public hearings were comprised of countless heartbreaking stories from citizens. Thank God for AG James! Let the officer remain in prison.
I hear about the complicity by elected officials and officers of the law in the attempted coup of the US Government last week. I didn't watch but am now seeing pieces of absolute mayhem and anarchy that would never be tolerated by non-white men or females of any hue and I am reminded of the brutal on camera beating of Rodney King specifically, but others as well, and all the times we were told not to believe our lying eyes in the face of police brutality and how mainstream, aka white, America has been duped into believing the narrative of the "do-gooder" cop just doing his or her job but who felt fearful and intimidated into shooting to kill the unarmed "scary" Black person, man, woman and even child. Was that fear we saw of armed violent, militant and angry white folks last week? I can't tell...
I wonder in light of all of that was made crystal clear on January 6, what are white folks telling themselves about themselves this time. Their people are captured on film. There are no non-whites to blame it on. 2020 like no other year in recent times, has forced white America to assess her own pathologies where her usual M-O is to create, assess and then employ herself "fixing" pathologies in others. Not this time. The ugly baby in the bath water is hers and hers alone. What will she say? I'm listening...
Back to us. Living while Black in America is traumatic. I don't know about you but I have yet to watch George Floyd cry for his Mother. Rarely any more do I watch the footage of murders of Black folks by white cops. When I do it is with baited breath and my body fills with anger and/or anxiety. By not watching, I am protecting my mind and rejecting the possibility of normalizing or becoming desensitized or accepting as status quo, via constant viewing, the murder of people who look like me. I reject it. Remember COPS and all those jailhouse series. That's what they did, they made it normal for cops to be bad, those shows gave crime a Black face for the world to see, including our kids...
This past week seeing all those white terrorists who were ALLOWED, AIDED & ABETTED to wreak havoc and destruction at the nation's sacred Capitol ironically built by enslaved Black folks, to include MURDER, TERRORISM & BEATING cops and essentially nothing has happened to them. They were not deterred and largely they will not be held accountable in terms of a brand of justice known to and reserved for Black folks in America. One cop murdered, another beaten so badly with a fire extinguisher that he will lose an eye, all caught on camera I'm sure and NO ONE has been arrested? Unheard of!!!
White America MUST look her pathologies in the face and accept that it is she who needs assessment. It is she who tolerated and made excuses for and tried to explain trump for 4 years. It is she who is the face of the 74 Million who voted for trump and who showed up at the Capitol to KILL elected officials at his delusional, self serving direction. How do you spell T-E-R-R-O-R-I-S-T? Ask Black people, we know all too well that which America still wants to deny... How do you spell C-O-U-P? Tell me again, who's angry? SMH...
But in light of all of this Black people are not super human. Like white folks, except for legitimate reasons, we too, are fragile. Ours plays out differently but we too have a breaking point. Fannie Lou Hamer put it to words for us more than 50 years ago, We Are Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired. STILL we are sick and tired...
Black folks, let's take care of yourselves and each other. Do your best to consciously not internalize other people's stuff. While no other better than us can diagnose and tell her what is her problem, leave white America to assess and fix herself. We cannot and should not save her this time. Instead, we must tend to ourselves...
Power to the People!
💓🖤💚
