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A country where a unarmed Black body get seven shots in the back and paralyzed from the waist down while a white body with a gun after killing two people walks freely around white bodies with badges is a fundamentally racist country. It is an anti-Black country. It is America.
Whether one's story is told in history books or shared over social, we held out the hope that images of terrorized Black bodies would wake up apathetic white bodies. In what James Baldwin called a white country we hoped people would see Black bodies as human bodies.
But that's not the case when living in an anti-Black country. White supremacy and anti-Blackness is the structure of our country. Black bodies in this country are caught between the juxtaposition of threat and danger. Black bodies have paid the ultimate price for white comfort.
Hashtags for us were never meant to hold out hopes, nor were they ever meant to be prayers, nor were they ever meant to be history books, they were mirrors—a chance for this country to look at itself and the way that it treats its Black bodies. What would it see?
We see it all around us. White bodies matter more than other bodies. White bodies can be angry, and even violent, and live to tell the story. White bodies get hand claps while other bodies end up dead or locked up. White bodies get protected while other bodies get policed.
White bodies with badges, white bodies with Bibles, white bodies with bullets believe the lie that the problem is Black bodies being free bodies, safe bodies. The sad part is I know I will have to teach my son through rage and tears: this country judges your body different.
I know that he will see what I have seen, what my parents have seen, what other people that look like us have seen: white bodies being free and Black bodies being terrorized. He will see this, have questions, and I don't know if I will have the answers. I just don't know.
I know that one day, he will nestle in my arms, and we will cry together. My poor child and I will cry, because we will know the terror together. We will both have to try to find our song to sing. We will both have to survive, to not believe the lies, and to keep walking.
When that happens, because I know it will, I will anoint his head with the oil of my Black prayers that came from my mother’s Black lips over my Black body as she said: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me"
I will let him know what she let me know: Jesus does not forget Black bodies.
And I will teach him something else, something I learned too late: Don’t you ever get used to this. Don't ever get used this. Ever. Do whatever you have to do to save Black bodies. Bodies like yours.
And I will teach him something else, something I learned too late: Don’t you ever get used to this. Don't ever get used this. Ever. Do whatever you have to do to save Black bodies. Bodies like yours.
