George Floyd’s Curb Is My Curb Too
On Monday morning after George Floyd was killed, I sat paralyzed at my computer, flooded by emotion. I could not move. I could not be productive, I could not “publish or perish.” I could not focus. Instead, I needed to engage in non-faculty related activity and free write. This is what emerged.
The Curb
I’m sick of shifting.
I’m sick of dancing to and fro, slithering between Afro and “mainstream” mentalities
Sliding on the attire of appropriateness.
At home in my robe of Blackness in Black spaces, and wearing the cloak of conventionalism in white spaces.
The camouflage is too tight for me. It chokes me at the neckline.
I. Can’t. Breathe.
But I’ve assimilated, though! I’ve standardized myself, conformed myself. I’ve whittled myself down to become non-threatening in non-Black spaces! I have attained! I have arrived?
But what have I attained?
I have attained doctorates and education upon education.
Yet I am Still. Not. Accepted.
By reason of the color of my skin, I too can die daily.
Through the circumstantial combination of place and police officer
Gawking, staring, glaring me down, positioning me on the curb, down low
Lower to the ground than the posture of prayer
Making me bow and kneel… and then kneeling on me
Knee on my essence, suppressing, squeezing
Until I remember the love of my mom’s embrace long gone
Until my breath stops.
I have been on that curb. I have been interrogated, humiliated, embarrassed.
I have been pulled to that curb by police officers, unsettled and restless
I have been humiliated by cops. “Did you hide it in your coochie?”
As if he desired to dig in sacred spaces, to reach and grab from my essence.
Always abiding by society’s edicts, structures, standards.
Yet coochie threatened on a curb on a dark secluded street.
I have been brought down low to curb at school, teased by white peers
While studying doctoral things, lofty ideas, high notions, astute ideas
Asked in a mixed company “Do you know Homey the Clown?”
While presenting at a conference with white colleagues,
Peach-faced hotel patron asks me “Take my bags to my car”
In the midst of proper introductions, I am “Dr.”, earned from UCLA
Having my hair touched without permission by white, wrinkled hands.
While teaching with purpose, heart, focus, fervor
Frivolous faculty evals downgrade me to “knowing nothing” by biased beings.
I have been on that curb. I keep being brought back to that curb. Despite the shifting.
I’m sick of shifting.
By Jennifer Payne, 6/1/2020
