We’ve been warned. This horrific shooting in Charleston arrive on the heels of the Baltimore Riots, the young woman attacked by a police officer in McKinney, Texas. Ferguson.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind it will happen again. It will happen again soon.
This all also happens right on the heels of two friends who have very recently lost a parent. They are in mourning. It strikes me there are many similarities. Now is a time to empathize. It is a time to listen. To hear. To figure out what you can do to help, support, love and reflect but without bothering those who are have lost so deeply.
I’m telling you, if I’m feeling hopeless, stuck and furious, I can only imagine how people who go to the Emanuel AME church or live in Charleston or live black in this world feel.
As always, I read when I’m trying to make sense of the incomprehensible.
I came across an article titled Allies: The Time For Your Silence Has Expired by Tawnya Denise Anderson. She tells us that while listening and sympathy are fine, they is not enough anymore. Now is the time for action.
Denise wrote so very clearly and powerfully, but it was her reaction to people’s questions in the comments that struck me. She responds with patience, kindness and an incredibly thoughtful reflectiveness.
“Concrete actions are largely determined by one’s own context. What are you able to do?”
Important and powerful words. It is not for us to ask her or any other member of the worldwide black community or any other community that has been marginalized and attacked for what they think we should do. We’ve already been told. Over and over.
This is what I plan to do.
Stop pretending racism doesn’t exist.
It does. I don’t know how to illustrate it any more clearly, but a 21 year old white boy walked into a church, watches people pray and decides to kill them because “I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.”
Also, stop making excuses. The confederate flag is an overt symbol of racism. It’s the flag of slavery.
Stop trying to rationalize the murder of nine people with talk of mental health issues and gun laws. Yes, that is part of it. No one should have bought this crazy ass white boy a gun for his birthday. Yes, it takes a very special kind of fucked up to do what he did, but he had been steeped in a racist stew of rage that whispers insidiously “They are killing us. They are stealing our world.” That rage lead to his heinous, horrible act of terrorism.
Stop saying it’s not terrorism. It is. But you know what, even if you can find some ass backward rationalization to say it’s not, why? Why would you poke a stick like that at people who are in mourning? Have some decency.
Oh and start calling people out when they’re racist things.
What white people can do in the wake of the #CharelstonShooting by the brilliant Ali Barthwell pic.twitter.com/90Ojvdf5Ua
— Anne Thériault (@anne_theriault) June 20, 2015
Also read: Dylann Roof is a racist and terrorist. That’s all you need to know by Kera Bolonik at Dame.
Take that motherfucking flag down.
Not at half mast. Take it down. It is an ugly vestige of an bygone era that we should be happy to see disappear in the rearview mirror. To mix that metaphor. You can’t move forward with the stink of that dog shit on your shoe.
Read: Take Down That Confederate Flag — Now by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Look to yourself first
My favorite poem by Rumi Solomon’s Crooked Crown talks of the wisdom of even the wisest of people growing wobbly. When you see injustice, when something goes wrong, he says, accuse yourself first. Look to yourself to see where you can improve. Look at your own preconceived notions and the choices you make in your lives.
Then uproot your own misconceptions about race and privilege at the core.
Read: Eleven Things White People Can Do To Be Real Anti-Racist Allies and Partners
Go and learn.
This is a Jewish thing. Go and learn. The Elder Hillel says “V’ahavta l’orecha c’mocha.” Love your brother as yourself. That is the crux of the entire Bible. For the rest, go out into the world and learn.
Go and read. Read African history, American history. Read black philosophers, historians and black literature.
Read — in no particular order — Frederick Douglas, Olaudah Equiano, Martin Luther King, Malcom X, Rebecca Carroll, Carvell Wallace, Ta-Nehisi Coates. Phyllis Wheatly, Sojourner Truth, Richard Wright, Tony Morrison, Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Amiri Baraka, Alice Walker. Read about Ruby Bridges. Learn the real history of the slave trade.
Oh God, there is so much more. That doesn’t even begin to brush the surface. And really, there’s no separating African American history from the rest of ALL history. We’re connected.
Read: 20 Things You Need To Read Before You Talk To Me About Race
Read: The Atlantic Slave Trade in Two Minutes
Read: What I Learned from Leading Tours at a Slave Plantation
Talk to your children.
Start early. To quote my awesome and lovely friend Asha Rajan, “If my kids were old enough to experience racism from birth, your kids are old enough for you to have a conversation about it.”
They are not too young to learn. They are not too little to take responsibility. In fact the opposite. The sooner you teach this lesson, the more easily they adopt the truths inherent. And as anyone knows, it is with the children change begins.
Read: Here’s How You Talk To Your Kids About the Tragedy In Charleston
Also: What I Told My Children About Charleston
Teach something. Give of yourself.
Teach, but not as the knower of all things, teach as an exercise in mutual learning and understanding. Volunteer, not as a saviour, but as a human being who is just there to learn.
When I taught at Booker T Washington in Morningside Heights, I worked with a group of eighth graders. We’d talked about Shakespeare, Kafka, Langston Hughes, and it was their turn. “Write about your lives,” I said.
One boy, his name was Adonis (Right?), told me he didn’t have anything to say. I looked him right in the eye and asked “What do you know that I don’t know.” He didn’t respond. So I repeated it more loudly. “What do you know in this world that I know nothing about?”
That’s when he crumpled. “Nothing,” he mumbled into the floor.
I swear I died just a little bit then. Who taught this child that his experience meant nothing? What kind of world taught this boy and his classmates that school is a place to quash the self? Who made education prison for them?
Give of yourself and create an environment where that is not the case, and never, ever forget, that you are not the authority on them. A good teacher is always aware that she doesn’t know everything.
Don’t be one of those “It didn’t happen to me” people
There is nothing more odious to me than a person who looks at injustice, small or big, and says “Oh well. I can’t do anything, because it didn’t happen to me.”
These are the people who sit by and pat themselves on the back for being decent. They didn’t do the bad thing. The weren’t there when it happened. They abdicate their responsibility.
I’m here to say, it doesn’t work that way. You are either helping or you are hurting, part of the problem or part of the solution.
That type wants to stand by and say they won’t dip a toe in the water, because it’s not their fight. I’m here to say, they are already drowning.
It will eventually become your problem.
Let’s say you’re one of the type from above. Maybe you need an additional reason to get involved. Yes, maybe this time you weren’t praying at that church in Charleston. Or you weren’t shot in Missouri. Or it wasn’t your son who died in police custody. It wasn’t your 15-year-old daughter left helpless by a 200 pound adult male pressing her into the ground and touching her body.
Not this time, no.
Let me tell you, you will not escape forever. To paraphrase the words of James Baldwin, this time, the fire may be in the hills, far away. It won’t burn you, and you won’t get hurt. Your home, your children, the clothing on your back. They will be fine. This time.
But the fire next time? The fire next time will be with you.
And finally, remember those who were lost with respect, with dignity and with love.
Read: My Thoughts in Remembrance of the Charleston Nine by my friend, the gorgeous in every way Lola Akinmade.
I am sure this is not exhaustive. I am positive I have more to learn. So please, anyone who wishes, add your resources, your thoughts, your opinions in the comments. And if I need correcting, please don’t hesitate to do that either.
Oh, and any conversation here will be respectful. I’ll erase anything else.
