Happy Juneteenth!
Volume 2 Number 20
Juneteenth, the nation’s oldest celebration marking the end of slavery. Black folks have come a long, long way in the 155 years since our emancipation, but that’s not the end of the story. This nation has so much farther to go in valuing Black people.
The challenge America has to overcome is her original perception that the value of Black people lies in what we can produce to enrich others. Would that we valued each other simply because we are people.
My thinking when founding Our Human Family was to further the notion that every person has inherent value. In the Episcopal Church, we pledge to “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.” Granted, given that humans are involved in carrying out that pledge, it’s bound to get twisted, it points to a concept centuries older than the episcopal Church, one of Christ’s most found teachings: love one another.
The beauty of those three words lies in its radical, unconditional, no-strings-attached, no-bootstraps-prerequisite approach to “choosing” the beloved. All provisos were rendered null and void.
Would that America was so.
OHF strives to showcase people’s journeys, who they are, and the experiences that shaped them into the people they are today. And in doing so, hopefully, people can see a portion of themselves in those stories, and realize that we’re more alike than we are unalike.
Three of this week’s articles by Marley K., Sally Yoon Watkins, and Jesse Wilson, kick off our series on microaggressions and their direct impact on People of Color. Cynthia Dagnal-Myron recounts the dismantling and repair of one of Arizona’s broken state-wide systems. Her article demonstrates that successfully repairing America’s broken law enforcement can be more than hyperbole. And Joel Leon. rounds out this week’s articles with an uplifting feature on the costs, resilience, and beauty of Black imagination.
Happy Juneteenth to you and yours!
(Special thanks to John Metta for the inspiration.)
New This Week
“Defunding Could Be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to the Cops Who Stay”
by Cynthia Dagnal-Myron
I got a heart-rending email from a neighbor yesterday. She works for our local police department part time, and loves the people she works with, cops and all.
Truth be told, I really like the cops here, too. And we’re talking Marana, Arizona. Where you would think they’d be . . . well . . . what most people think they’d be like.
Some may be. But others aren’t. They watch our houses when we go away for awhile. They helped my daughter and me get settled and feel safer when we first moved out here — it’s a rural area. Or was at the time — wide open.
Only a Quik Mart and one kinda famous Western-themed restaurant that people made “pilgrimages” to, from the city, back when. One Fry’s grocery store, one Walgreens . . . country town. Just starting to go suburban.
We built our house from the slab up, and the first week . . . nothing went right. Phone did work. Electricity wasn’t on — and it was pitch black nights out here. Still is.
So my daughter, then still a little bitty girl, and I would walk the couple of blocks to the Quik Mart sometimes just to grab a treat and sit outside together.
And the cops would stop and talk to us. One helped us get our electricity sorted out, worried about my daughter living in a house without it.
Yep. White cop. Really didn’t like the idea of us being out there alone without power. No pun intended there . . .
Now, there are also cops out here — other parts of town and state — who’ve done things to me that weren’t so cool. I’ve had some truly scary moments. In places where nobody would’ve heard me scream. Or cared if they had.
I’m not that naive. (continued at Medium)
“Feeling My Way through White Spaces”
by Jesse Wilson
As a Black Britain growing up in the 1980s, I can confidently say microaggressions were and still are accepted today as a way of life. In some respects, I am thankful they are not an overt or physical demonstration of racism. But in other ways, those aggressions can be just as damaging — they are a constant hurtful reminder of how I am viewed despite my character and all I’ve achieved.
It is a sad indictment to say that because of where I lived. Growing up with racism is something that you, and sadly also those who are not directly affected, accept for what it is. It is an even greater tragedy to say that today, in 2020. There is still a need to write about a problem that affects so many globally. (continued at Medium)
“Microaggressions Were My Family’s Love Language”
by Sally Yoon Watkins
When my father died, his brother drove up to Illinois from Kentucky for the funeral. Theirs was not a close family, and we had not seen Uncle Jack and his crew for at least fifteen years. Even so, my sister and I appreciated the gesture and were happy to see them. At the post-funeral gathering, however, I was reminded why I had not sweated the fifteen years that preceded the funeral.
Seated between my mother (by then, long-divorced from my father and twice remarried), my Aunt Dana (Jack’s wife), and across from my cousin Tom, I slowly sipped my gin and tonic through a red stir stick. My aunt touched my shoulder and turned toward me. I looked at her.
“Pancake Face,” she said with a warm smile.
I froze. (continued at Medium)
“The Black Imagination, Revisited”
by Joel Leon.
When you are Black, flying can feel like a death sentence. Huey Newton wanted to fly and found a corner instead; Gil Scott found poetry and empty veins; Zora Neale Hurston, with all her imagination, left us penniless, scrubbing floors to live. Capitalism plays a role in this, and so does white supremacy. Baldwin left the states to find Paris and found that the world burns us everywhere we fly to. Octavia Butler put on display the imagination that would give us wings, and even she fell far too soon. Toni showed us the feathered arms of ancestral flight in Sula and would still be asked to atone for her lack of compassion for the white gaze.
We have been hung, dragged, mutilated, beaten, shot and shot at, for wanting more, for imagining more. Every Black death, when tallied, when tagged and buried, should come with an asterisk affixed to all autopsies: Death by murder of the imagination. (more at Medium)
“The Invisible Scars of Microaggression”
by Marley K.
White people may never know what it’s like to be Black, but I do. And as long as I have breath in my body I will talk about the impact of racism, white supremacy, and microaggressions on Black people. White people believe we are in the early phases of a race war here in America. For Black people and many People of Color, every day is a race war. It’s the war we can’t seem to win. As long as there has been an America, there have been problems surrounding race. We can put men on the moon, but we can’t put an end to racism and white supremacy?
Microaggressions are the crimes, impediments, and abuses committed by white people and People of Color because they dislike the color of a person’s skin or they’ve deemed certain racial and ethnic groups inferior to their own. Microaggressions help keep racism alive and thriving by maintaining the white supremacist social order that allows all white people and white-passing People of Color to practice racism regardless of their socioeconomic status. (more at Medium)
One Last Thing
Our Human Family, Inc. (OHF, Inc.) is a registered nonprofit whose purpose is to celebrate the inherent value of all human beings, recognizing that our similarities far outnumber our perceived differences. Please support the work of OHF, Inc. in developing materials and program to better race relations and enable widespread equality in America.
Have a fantastic weekend and a happy Juneteenth!
Love one another.
Clay Rivers
Our Human Family, Founder and Editorial Director
