I Keep Thinking

The country is rioting. It’s a perfect storm. Trump, the coronavirus, and now riots. Oh, and there were some killer hornets in there, it’s hurricane season, and the first named storm is forming. So, more than three catastrophes at once. Are we great yet?

But, back to the riots. Simmering resentment fueled by fear has boiled over into rage, and rageful people are putting themselves and others at risk–both from authorities and from the virus–to make the point that systemic racism is a real a present danger in this country. That every time a black person leaves the safety of his or her (but mostly his) home and decides to walk or drive or ride the bus while black, he’s a target. He’s vulnerable to a racist attack by a bully, or a team of bullies, whether in uniform or not.

He could die because he’s black. Many of his brothers and some sisters have died–senselessly, brutally. And the perpetrator(s) have, for the most part, gone free. Maybe they weren’t even charged and brought to trial. Maybe they didn’t even lose their jobs. How long did we think that kind of humiliation could go on before the feelings of shame and fury became retribution? It may not make sense to our brains, but it makes sense to our hearts. At least it does to mine.

As a woman–decidedly white–I have always been aware of being … less safe when alone than if I had been a white man. My husband, in his prime was formidable, and when I told him I was always cautious and on the lookout for possible threat from men, he was shaken. He had never thought about the reality women lived with. Never thought that I and every woman I knew would admit to being on guard in public or when walking (even driving) alone. He, on the other hand, often sized up another man or group of men. Weighing whether he could handle himself if push came to shove. Measuring what he would do if, for instance, that man or those men were to insult me. It wasn’t the same as knowing, as I did, that I wouldn’t stand a chance, but we both learned something about how we measured our fellow humans as we went about our business, both when we were together as well as when apart.

But neither of us ever imagined what it was like to wake up and go out into the world in black skin. We couldn’t imagine being looked at with suspicion while wandering around in a store, for example, being followed by a store security person, for example. We couldn’t imagine being stopped by the police because we ‘resembled’ a suspicious person, the resemblance being simply skin color. To live in that reality every day, every hour of every day, every week of every year for your entire life. To live in that kind of wariness, which is just another word for fear. To live with that ever-present anxiety. When we tried to imagine it, both of us felt that we would fight to the death to right that wrong. That as young people, we would have been agitators. But it was all speculation, because we were white.

While blacks account for approximately 13% of the U.S. population, they are almost half of all homicides. Behind that statistic are dead black men, someone’s sons. Sons who came into the world squishy and wailing and button-nose adorable and so very loved, just like the sons and daughters of white people. How sad to realize the mothers of those black babies being so fearful for their sons every day from their birth forward. And not just normal fear all mothers feel–but rather fear based on statistical evidence. How can that still be true after all these years? How can it be even more true after all these years? We all know how, don’t we?

I know that what’s going on now isn’t right. I know that lots of the people who are being and will be victimized by the looting are black people who are struggling to eke out a living. People who are victims of the system already. The irony of that hasn’t escaped me. I don’t know how many of the crimes being perpetuated are being committed by actual black dissenters and how many are planned and carried out by right-wing organizers fomenting violence in order to up the severity of the charges that will be brought and increase the need for military intervention. I’m not normally a conspiracy theorist, but it’s a new day with a new crazy man in charge, so anything is possible. For today, our country is not focused on healing from a virus, it’s watching cities, towns and neighborhoods burn. And local leadership is on its own. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.