White People Will Always Let You Down
But I care too much to stop demanding more.
I thought I was going to lose my mind. I’m not saying this flippantly. I remember thinking that I was actually going to lose my sanity, that I was going to…break…somewhere in my mind. I remember thinking that might have already happened. Trayvon Martin had been killed — murdered — and nobody was saying anything. This baby had been shot in cold blood for simply existing in his beautiful brown skin and I couldn’t sleep at night thinking about it. And my friends, people I had known the majority of my life, had nothing to say.
There had been other letdowns in the past, other hurts. But this time, I really needed my community in white liberal Seattle — my friends and neighbors — to get past their shit and show up. I needed this to matter to them, at least a little. Because Trayvon could have been my son or my brother, because he was a baby — our baby. But everyone kept talking about the film they saw the previous weekend, or the new shit they bought online. I started begging people to say something, anything.
When people responded at all it was to say something like, “I don’t think it’s my place,” or “I’m not really comfortable.” I was falling apart and my community was afraid of being uncomfortable. Two friends of mine, Lyndsey and Melody, checked in, got me…
