All Lives Matter Thursday.
As I write these words, the country of my birth and residence has chosen to show how little the majority of its residents care for people of African descent. Once again.
This is nothing new.
I love Arundhati Roy’s observation that the pandemic is a portal, but right now, it feels like the same old mess, dialed up to 100.
More than two months into the global crisis that is opening the 2020s, we are dealing with the same tired racism.
In the United States, Black people are disproportionately affected by COVID-19. We make up a disproportionate number of the dead.
We are disproportionately affected economically, thanks to the wealth gap.
We are beyond exhausted.
It’d be one thing if we just had to deal with racism at the national level, but in the interpersonal realm, racism is also a feature, not a bug.
Here’s the PSA I posted on Facebook. I replicate it here for posterity:
PSA:
Please stop "All Lives Mattering" Black issues, events, research, and scholarship.
Please stop requiring that Black academics and activists attend to every single facet of diversity in every action... in every work... in every post... in every word... in every breath.
It is internalized white supremacy.
It is antiblackness in action.
Let me be clear.
Every single facet of diversity and difference that you claim Black people are not sufficiently attending to *also applies to Black people.*
We're also queer, trans, non-Christian, disabled, neuroatypical, not from the United States and/or West.
Some of us come from poverty and/or the working class.
Some of us are also Native, Latinx, Asian, Arab, Muslim, and from every other background.
Some of us are doing work across these issues. Many of us are aware of the Black people who are doing work in those areas. However, it's curious that you rarely mention, cite, award, or appreciate Black folks working hard at the intersections, who are doing this work.
We are not perfect magical Negroes who can do the hard work of building a more equitable world for you while coddling you and making you feel comfortable all the time.
Stop muling us.
And especially stop muling us while posting about Black Lives Matter, White allyship, wringing your hands, crying, and insisting that we perform emotional labor for you *while we are dying.*
Yes. We have listened to you. Listening is required for our survival.
We are flawed humans with much to learn. Just like you.
We can be kind.
We can be humanizing.
However.
We are not your wokebots. We are not the help. We are exhausted, beset on all sides, and we are dying.
During a pandemic, it seems that you want even more labor from us, while we're suffering.
The bar you have set for the Black people in your circles is untenable. It is unbearable. It is unacceptable.
Some of you are horrified and sickened by seeing the White supremacist death penalty enacted on camera. However, I find that some of you are not very reflective on how you treat the Black people you know, and call "friend."
What's up with that?
You can't say "Black lives matter" and mean it if Black lives don't matter in your everyday actions.
This has been a PSA.
I am tired.
I wanted to write a more hopeful post. Today, I watched inspirational videos after I collapsed in bed after work this evening, exhausted.
I ended up weeping like a baby over this video about the Voyager 1 spacecraft…
I saved the screenshot of President Jimmy Carter’s message on the Golden Record almost 43 years ago:
I was led to it by a video that’s relevant to my novel rewrite’s second draft, which I finished Monday, but which #ProfessorLife and the terrible news from the Twin Cities completely derailed.
What happens as you approach the speed of light?
What happens as you approach the speed of light?
Tonight, I’d hoped to write about different things.
I wish I had that privilege. (A longer reflection of what constitutes “privilege” for Black people in this country is coming.)
But the imperative of being Black in the United States insists upon different themes.
All Lives Matter every Thursday…
When will the Thursday where Black lives matter ever come?
What I’m Reading
All the things NBA YPL ‘20 related. And a whole lot of re-reading for my summer course, which is off to a great start.
What I’m Writing
Had a great time at the Weekend of Writing Dangerously virtual retreat, which thankfully took me away from the initial reports of the horrific violence in Minneapolis, and led to finishing off my draft.
All my other writing projects are coming along as well. For the first time since I submitted my tenure materials on March 1, 2017, I have a path forward for all of my writing.
It is one of the #silverlinings in a pandemic where all lives matter.
Being/Doing/Going
I ran my first errands toward the end of last week. Very proud of Philadelphians. At least at the Wawa, ShopRite, and Target I went to, everyone was wearing a mask, and social distancing. All three stores were clean. Still, it felt like a science fiction.
I’ve got a few irons in the fire. Not many. This summer’s all about writing… and percolating.
Words of the Week
Hang on. I’ve been listening to Donny Hathaway this week. He is the best soul singer of the 20th century ever captured on vinyl before his untimely death at age 33 in 1979.
Maybe my Black life doesn’t matter to the rest of the children of planet Earth. But it matters to me. And the Everything is Everything album feels like a hug from the past.
Hoping against hope that next Thursday will be better.
Mmm, times haven't always been so very good for us baby, no, no…