We Don’t Cry Pretty

White tears must fall in perfect droplets. They’re such a spectacle, a sight to behold and bow down at the sight of. So-called Blind Justice, or at least America’s twisted version of it, is a proud slave to the pesky moths that are the white man’s fluttering eyelids. We always talk about this mystic being that is The System, and in a way it irks me that we speak of the rumbling government machine in such uncomplicated terms (I just finished taking AP Government & Politics this year). That said, I understand why we do it. Because, in a way, it is simple: The System was designed with the white man in mind; it is centered around the tears he turns on and off. So many tissues and apologies issued at the sight of a single white cloud formation. I bet they feel great, too. On the skin you love so much. They must be soothing. Do they make you feel better about the hate in your heart or the heat that awaits you? Do they have a cooling effect? I wouldn’t know. I wonder if they’re anything like the crocodile tears my mom warned me about when I was four. I remember she said not to shed crocodile tears because they are bad.

White tears must fall in perfect droplets. Though you’d think them rare, quite the contrary is true. Exclusive membership is required, and is dealt at birth. But each member is awarded unlimited tears and complaints, courtesy of the innate privileges afforded our white counterparts, privileges we are told do not exist. Their tears tell us this. Apparently myself and others that look like me use our race, a social construct forced upon us against our will, as an excuse for not putting the equal economic opportunities presented to us to good use. In fact, we are the advantaged people, we are just to lazy to realize it. This is what white tears tell us. We, the bodies that carried the actual building blocks of this country on our bloodied backs. Our blood made your plants grow and our sweat is the reason your fruits are sweet. Yet we are lazy. White tears yell fire on a busy street in broad daylight.

White tears must fall in perfect droplets. The way they glide down each cheek, ruddy and rosy and ghostly alike, simultaneously leaving behind a single line, a trail, indistinguishable from a brushstroke within an impressionist work. Dripping patiently off the chin only to disappear after a neat splash. White tears are like a light drizzle you barely notice through the window during a summer supper at the penthouse. The other penthouse. The kind of rain where the sun is still out; it feels more like a breeze than anything. A rain that is not ideal, a nuisance. Regular people don’t feel such a rain, but they’re below you. We’re below you. You have suede skin.

Suede skin, suede feelings.

You’re suede and we’re what?

We are the lowest of the low.

Not good enough for suede.

Good enough for leather whips though.

Not good enough for a leather belt to hold our pants up.

Good enough for the bullets that shoot us with our hands up.

We Feel It

Y’all literally cry over nothing, and I’m tired of it. Reverse racism is not real — point blank period. But people, including those in power, still eat it up. It’s a figment of your imagination, created as yet another excuse for your shortcomings, another rung between you and me on the ladder of life in America. It is the spawn of the virus that is white privilege, not the opposite of it.

You are not oppressed, never have been, and never will be. Nobody is even making you pay reparations, yet. You have nothing to complain about.

So stop crying about affirmative action and whatever else it is that white people get to cry about. You are so systematically lifted up that when you cry, it’s a hurricane down here where I am. We feel the rain, we just don’t cry over it. It makes our hair shrink, though. We don’t have tears to waste; we need to conserve for the next time you decide to mess with our water.

Stop crying. Because every where you look, you are encouraged. You are told that your life matters, and mine doesn’t. You are told to keep pushing, and I am told to give up. Society says you get to be suede chukkas, and we are the ugliest rain boots there are.

Black Tears Aren’t News

Just ask Sybrina Fulton. Ask Lezley McSpadden. Or Samaria Rice. Or Gwen Carr. Ask any black person that is in touch with the black community.

Black tears don’t have an on/off switch like news cameras do. We constantly cry on the inside and do our best not to let it out. We literally can’t afford to let it out. We may voice our anger and frustration and formulate calls to action, instead. But the fact of the matter is we don’t have time to cry; we have to act. We have to move on. Before the next one happens. Even more than that, we have to go to school or work the next day. We can’t afford to “call in black”. If black people cried at every instance of injustice against us, the cycle of violence against us would continue and we’d all be hungry.

So I don’t cry when I find out anymore. I’m not surprised when they do it. My brother doesn’t cry either; he is only ten. I won’t cry for the next one, because there will be a next one.

But, one day, I will cry. And everything will come out. Tears for all my brothers and sisters, dead and alive. And for my actual brother and my actual sister. We could be killed because our hair is kinky and our Nigerian noses are flat. One day, my tears will zigzag and stream down my face. My nose will run, into my mouth because I won’t get a tissue, and no one will bring me one. My tears will fall in my lap so I can see my sorrow. My shirt will be wet from the misshapen droplets hopping off my face as if they, too, are afraid of my skin. My tears will not be soothing. Instead they will sting; my eyes and nose will burn. One day I will be shaking and won’t be able to stop. I will sniffle from time to time. My eyes will be swollen and I’ll have white streaks on my cheeks. It won’t be pretty. I won’t feel pretty.

Then I will fall asleep, and the next day, I will wake up and go to school.

Thanks for reading. Please push the ❤ below if you felt something.

Follow me: Onyeka C. Arah for more pieces like this one.

If you haven’t already, please check out my story: “What Woke Feels Like”