The Kid in the Orange Belt
You are not a monitor of Black people’s behavior
Summer is my least favorite time of year for multiple reasons. My hair sticks to my neck. I cant bury myself under my covers at night. I always forget I’m wearing makeup, wipe my sweaty forehead with my shirt and get foundation all over my clothes. And more Black people are outside. And Black people wanting to exist in public space? That doesn't go over well with white people who would rather us be invisible. I hold my breath every summer. I spend a season in anxiety, hoping that no one calls the police on a Black person for daring to exist in the sun. Its not enough for me to tell you not to call the police on us. At this point, most people reading this already know that. Lets go further.
White people need to hear this, clearly and often: You are not appointed monitors of Black people’s behavior.
Remember hall monitors? Elementary schools often picked monitors to roam the building- they were “good” students with orange belts who patrolled the halls and reported bullying or rule breaking behavior to teachers or principals. As adults, we were all expected to be hall monitors post 9/11. One of the most famous campaigns of the anti-terrorism movement is, “if you see something, say something.”. We feed into the idea that we are all responsible for keeping our communities safe. But who exactly are you keeping your community safe from? Take 3 seconds, now- and imagine what a dangerous person looks like.
Right.
Whiteness means you have a warped idea of safety. If most white people were honest, their idea of a safe community is one that is absent of Black people. So when you’re forced into community with us, you become the monitor. The person who would rather be safe than sorry. The person who roams the halls just to make sure everything is okay. But that is not community safety. That’s called surveillance. You were not appointed by anyone. It is not, nor has it ever been, your job to monitor the behavior of Black people.
White people also need to hear this, clearly and often: Not getting what you want is not an emergency.
Black people are at our best in summer. The fashion, the music, the porch gossip, the church anniversaries, the hard earned vacations, the family reunions- the noise. Juneteenth! But for some reason, the way we live our lives in the summer is a nuisance to white people- and there is nothing more dangerous to a Black person’s safety, than a white person who is annoyed. Remember: whiteness means you have a warped sense of safety. Whiteness means you deeply underestimate how safe you are, and you overestimate anything you see as a threat to your safety. TRANSLATION: Because you are rarely physically unsafe, you reduce physical unsafely to a feeling of general discomfort- that’s called being annoyed. You mistake being annoyed for your lives being in danger. And you mistake police for a service you can use to make your nuisance go away. But you are not entitled to a nuisance-free life, nor are you entitled to obedience simply because you nicely informed us that your wants should be our priority. Most of the time, calling the police is a knee jerk reaction to being told “no”. You are the hall monitor, throwing a tantrum at the kid who dared to speak the truth that rings throughout the school halls: you cant tell me what to do.
If you’re white, I need you to write out all the things that annoy you, and accept that in most cases Black people have had the police called on them, or worse, for most of the things you wrote down. Then, I need you to recall all the times you’ve been given a firm “no” to something you wanted, and ask yourself how you wanted to react. What is the price someone should pay for you being told “no?” Safety for you might mean a lot of things, but safety for Black people, looks like you being honest about all the ways whiteness creeps into how you expect to experience the world. Later, I’ll write about some specific things you can do instead of calling the police in any circumstance. I’ll write about what actual community safety could look like. But I can’t do any of that until you take off your orange belt. Take off your orange belt, and start exploring who you would be without it.
Talk to yall soon.
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Jameelah Jones
