Waiting for Rosa
When news of the lynching of George Floyd, by Minneapolis police, reached my news feed, I was arrested. I was arrested by a dreadful wonderment about George Floyd, his background and his worthiness. I caught my self wondering what could he have done to deserve such brutality. I caught myself searching news outlets to discover what folks are saying he did. I caught myself wondering if he had ever been in trouble with law enforcement before. If I am honest, I find myself with these questions each time a person who has been twice kissed by God’s sun is sacrificed of the altar of White Supremacy. I caught myself, trapped in an incriminating series of inquiry because of fear AND politics of respectability; my fear was rooted in politics of respectability.
I hold, in my body, fear that the wider world will scroll past the requiem of the slain. Because of news of unacceptable character…previous misdeeds…or living on the margins of cultural mores. My embodied fear was that any iota of flaw would render George Floyd guilty, in the eyes of the wider white world. My embodied fear was that the wider white world might find him worthy of the brutality he received. Fear be damned. Politics of respectability be damned.
Desperate hope deceived me into the belief, the faulty belief, that a perfect past would somehow…someway make the wider world see that injustice was enacted on the body, the humanity of George Floyd. More broadly, my hope, desperate though it was, was that somehow…someway the wider world would find, in the death of George Floyd, apocalypse; that this video this time would cause the scales to fall from the eyes of the wider world. My hope, every time black and brown bodies are lynched, is that the moral compass of the wider world will find truest north. But, my hopes are dashed, without fail. The wider world always finds a flaw. The flaw may be with our character, our moral fiber or the ways we look speak, dress, comport ourselves. We may be discounted because of the ways we BE in the world. The wider world is waiting, I have been waiting, for Rosa.
We know Rosa Parks was a Black woman of repute in her community. She was active and intimately involved in the Montgomery branch of the NAACP as Secretary and head of the youth division. Mrs. Parks was a woman of respectable age and with a respectable profession. Mrs. Parks was of an image of respectability. Her courageous action on that fated day in 1955, was fueled by her long standing commitment to resistance. With each honor due her must come the recognition that her predecessor in resistance of segregated bussing in Montgomery was a 15 year old Claudette Colvin. Colvin was arrested for resisting months before Parks. However, in the months following her action of protest, Colvin became pregnant. Although, Colvin had a long standing relationship with Parks and with the Youth Division of the NAACP, she was deemed unfit to be lead plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle, the case which sought to challenge discriminatory bussing practices in Montgomery and throughout Alabama.
Some speculate, Rosa Parks was chosen because she was an image of respectability. But, alas, there may never be another Rosa. This is not because there will never again be a “respectable” black person victimized, sacrificed, lynched on the altar of White Supremacy. It is because the wider world will, faithfully, find reason to discount us. There doesn’t need to be another unblemished lamb. The blood of too many sisters and brothers cries out from the ground asking, begging, pleading to be heeded. Hear the blood of Emmett and Trayvon, of Sandra and Atatiana, of Aiyana and Tamir. Hear the blood of Michael and Amadou, of Botham and Natasha, of Renisha and Breonna. Hear the blood of Jordan and Elijah, of Alexia and Janisha, of Rekia and Bettie. Hear the blood of Murrietta and Genevieve, of Tony and Clemente, of Cynthia and Tanisha. Hear the blood of Gabriella and Maya, of Philando and Oscar, of Aura and Meagan. I’m sorry that your blood was not enough. I’m sorry that your lives were not enough. I’m sorry that your deaths were not enough. I’m sorry that we were not enough.
Enough blood has been spilled. Enough is enough. Politics of respectability failed us in the civil rights movement of the 1960’s and it continues to fail us today. Hear the voice of your sister, your brother crying out from the ground and harden not your heart. Hear them, not because they were perfect but because they were human. Fear be damned. Respectability be damned.
