No More Easy Conversations
Numb. That’s the only word that comes out of my mouth after being asked for the millionth time that morning “how are you?”
The how are you debate has gone on for a long time that people only ask how are you for their own benefit of knowing they asked, and expecting you to play your role in this almost robotic normalcy .
Today was not the day for that. This week, last week, this month is not the time for that.
Since then I’ve been responding based on how close I am to crying at the moment.
Alive. It’s going. Not great. Numb.
I respond to faces that were once smiling, and are now slowly losing color with the task of how to respond to such an answer.
With the murders of innocent men all around us, and police brutality at an all-time high, there can be no easy answers. No more pleasantries to pass the time. During times of silence before a meeting, I ask has anyone seen the newest video from Philando Castile’s wife addressing the public, or read the report that Abdullah Mulafi, the man who recorded Alton Sterling’s murder is suing the police department for seizing his store security footage, phone, and locking him in the back of their squad cars? Most have not. Most say they are too devastated and helpless. Some get too choked up to even respond.
I understand this response, because as a multi-racial women in society, I am confronted with the thought that this could have been my father, uncle, brother, friend, etc. For those white colleagues and friends I have, they feel helpless because they don’t know where they belong in the conversation. To that I tell them to fight through the white guilt. Fight through the thought that you might say something wrong in the search to express yourself. And if anything, just keep spreading the word that Black Lives Matter.
This is why we continue to chant Black Lives Matter weeks, months, years after the movement first started. To remind the public that our black bodies matter. We matter. Not just when they are being ravaged by bullets and put on display for public consumption. Not just when we are falsely arrested for protesting the oppressive systems that works against us every day.
Black Lives Matter. We are humans. We are people who deserve the right to not live in fear that our lives are only as precious as the white officers or citizens who deem them so. That they will not be taken from us because we are selling cigarette’s to provide for our families. That they won’t be taken in a holding cell for a routine traffic stop. That they won’t be taken in front of our loved ones because we were complying with a request to show our license and registration.
Now is when I challenge myself to use my feelings and emotions to fight for what is right. To sign petitions. To call local law enforcement to free wrongly arrested protestors. When I get up and join the group of people who are holding die-ins on the freeway.
This is my chance. This is our chance to make a difference. To change the narrative that black bodies are more than 3/5th a person. That our black bodies are worth the disruption to the norm. That our black bodies deserve to live. And live we will, as we continue on our journey to spread the knowledge that Black Lives Matter.
