racism

it takes a village

lynne, , , Leave a comment

So there are pictures circulating on social media of children being tear gassed/pepper sprayed by police at the protests happening all over the country the last few days following George Floyd’s murder. I’m not sure which image is most pressing to share or whether I should be using them at all without their parents’ consent, so I’ll just let you google this if you haven’t seen any yet yourself. I’m using a picture of my own kid from one of the protests this past weekend instead (yes, with her consent.)

But the very first comment on every post like this I’ve seen so far is something along the lines of “but why bring a child to a protest in the first place?” – basically accusing their parent or guardian of irresponsibility, followed by a lot of emotional labor on the part of the original poster or others to explain why that’s the wrong question, wasting everyone’s energy and shifting focus away from the much bigger problem at hand here.

Let me save you some time.

1) First and foremost: this whole thing is about the fear every black mother and father in America has every single day for their children’s lives. Yes, it was triggered by George Floyd, but we all know our fellow citizens have been under siege long before he was ever born. And he too was someone’s son, and someone’s father. Should he have never left the house? How about his kids? Why do you suddenly care about the welfare of children, when you’ve known all along that this is their daily reality?

I’m going to leave that point short and succinct in the hopes that it really sinks in. Go ahead and re-read it a few times if you like, and please find some BIPOC voices to listen to if you don’t believe this is true.

2) Second: parents everywhere – particularly mothers, don’t even try to deny it – face criticism about the job they’re doing basically from the second they become pregnant to their dying day. It doesn’t just come from well-meaning family and friends – random strangers in the grocery store, on the street, in schools, all over the internet, offer their unsolicited “advice” all the time. I’ve been a mom nearly 18 years now – if I had a dollar for every time I got this nonsense.. well, I’d donate it to the Columbus Freedom Fund because screw anything else right now.

Yes, it takes a village to raise a child. We should all be looking out for our kids. But what kind of village are you being for them, really? You don’t know these families’ stories. You don’t know the context behind the black dad with the toddler eating chips on his shoulders, facing down a cop pointing a tear gas canister at his head. He could be just trying to get home from the park before curfew and got caught in the fray. He could have tried to get a sitter and it fell through at the last minute after he’d already committed to bringing much needed supplies to the event. Or you know what, he could have made a reasonable assessment about the situation – hmm, maybe that POLICE SWORN TO SERVE AND PROTECT WOULDN’T HURT A CHILD AT A PEACEFUL PROTEST IN BROAD DAYLIGHT – and thought it’d be a safe way to teach his kid about exercising their First Amendment rights. Ask yourself why your first question isn’t why an American citizen can’t trust their public servants to uphold the US Constitution, and why your instinct is to immediately judge this parent instead?

3) And finally, let me tell you about some of those last 18 years I’ve been a mom. I attended countless anti-war demonstrations with my baby strapped to my belly in the early 2000s. I led a youth group at my local UU church teaching her and her peers about social justice. Have you ever seen a four year old find the courage to ask a grumpy adult to sign a petition against child slavery in the chocolate industry? I have. And two days ago I watched my daughter get on her knees and at the top of her young lungs fiercely leverage her white privilege to appeal to the humanity of a line of police in full riot gear who had already pepper sprayed a black congresswoman. I’m not sure I have ever been more proud of her. But I don’t say all this to brag – I’m saying that this to me is an essential part of raising our children to become active and aware citizens of the world.

Yes, sometimes it’s risky. Sometimes we need to put safety first – it’s our number one job to keep our children alive. But you want to talk about responsibility? We have a responsibility to teach our children that systemic racism, police brutality and governmental tyranny are obscene. We have a responsibility to teach them that democracy is a living, organic movement dependent on everyday people continuing to fight for it, not just an abstract, dry concept that was decided upon 300 years ago. This means we have a responsibility to take them to protests at every age. We can’t wait till they’re 18 or over to start teaching our children how to be free.

Because guess what – black parents don’t have that luxury.

Now, stop asking why that parent brought their child to the protest. Ask yourself why you weren’t there too?

have a good one

lynne, Leave a comment

Jeff, in my humble opinion the best postal carrier in the world, is a black man. I am a white woman. I’m sitting on my porch reading about the latest racist atrocities in America on my phone when he comes to bring me my mail today, and we exchange our usual friendly greetings.

“Where’s my buddy?” he asks, referring to my dog, who happens to be inside right then, alas. He gives her treats if she’s out when he comes – it’s basically the highlight of her day, and I suspect maybe Jeff’s too. She is pretty adorable, it’s an undeniable fact.

My mail today is just one of those annoying coupon flyers. “Sorry for the junk mail,” he says, “I have to deliver it.” No worries, I say, I understand.

“Have a good one!” he says, and I say “you too.”

And he continues on with his deliveries to my neighbors. And so ends one of the few live, in-person conversations I have these days, which have come to feel more and more precious as the quarantine goes on.

These kinds of surface level pleasantries are pretty typical between Jeff and me. And really, that’s all they should be. I don’t want to make him into some kind of token black symbol for my all-important white allyship. I’m sure he just wants to do his job and live his life as peacefully as possible and not have to walk around being a representative of anything more than anyone else does. He doesn’t need to participate in my Big White Feelings About Racism while going about his work day, or ever. Honestly, I’m not entirely comfortable even using this exchange as an example here without his consent, and am wrestling as I write this with an urge to change his name and particulars of this little story while also wanting to be truthful about my own experiences.

But at the same time, I feel like there are so many little interactions like this where I want to find the courage to somehow say to every person of color in my world, from Jeff to closer friends to total strangers, “I SEE THIS. I share in this grief and outrage. I agree it is unacceptable and I want to do my part in making it stop. It’s disgusting and absurd that we are carrying on as if this isn’t happening.”

I don’t want Jeff to have to wonder as he walks up and down my street – which let’s face it, for all the liberalness of my little community, is mostly white – whether all these seemingly friendly exchanges he has along the way are really dependent on some kind of fragile bubble of self-congratulatory assumptions that could burst any second at the smallest challenge. Whether we’re not all a bunch of closet racists who would stand by and do nothing if it was his neck under the cop’s knee, if he was the one birdwatching in the park while I was out walking my dog, if he wasn’t wearing his blue uniform like a shield of acceptability and was just a black man walking or jogging down our street. I want him to know that no, I wouldn’t be that kind of white person, I’d have his back. And I want to have the courage to face whether that is really true.

But also you know, all of us are walking around holding this sorrow and rage all the time, and so much more. We’re all also scared about the pandemic. We’re all also worried about the government, the economy, climate change. We all have people in our lives fighting cancer, HIV, addictions, depression, and more. And miraculously, at the same time we all hold in our hearts incredible beauty and joy, bubbling hilarity, deep abiding love, and glorious passions. We somehow manage to stuff all these things into the tiny shells of our bodies and carry them around with us as we do the mundane business of our everyday lives, valiantly holding back enormous floods of emotions as we make these small connections with one another. Somehow we don’t use every single encounter to say “OH MY GOSH YOU ARE ANOTHER HUMAN BEING CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?!?!??” Really, it’s stunning.

I don’t know how to better show my humanity to Jeff. I will always be friendly and hold profound respect for the important job he does for my community – which actually is not just life threatening these days because of the virus, but has always been for him just for existing while black. And I will keep looking for ways I can help change that (here are some), for him and for all of us. Maybe that’s all I can do.

But I wish he could somehow hear the waves of my emotion-flood beating at the edge of my words when I say “you too.” I really mean it.