Still I rise.
I often revisit these words from the great Dr. Maya Angelou. It’s a poem that has resonated with me from the moment I first read it. Its poignancy and tone reminds me of the person I am and the person I work to be each and every day. It is a poem that one turns to in moments of triumph as well as moments when feeling hopeless. The words are a shoulder you can lean on and the cheerleader to push you forward. The kind of strength that comforts, that rallies, that gets you standing back up no matter how many times you’ve been knocked down. It’s the kind of strength that provides a shoulder to cry on, that’s gets your chin up, and that races with you to the finish line.
Those are the words that will now forever be with me. And yes, I will go back and read that poem a thousand more times but I don’t have to go very far now for those words of strength and support.
There I was thinking that I was just accompanying a friend to get a tattoo, for support, for something to do in the moment. A couple of other friends were also getting their first time ink and suddenly it felt right. It felt like the right moment to have those words with me permanently.
The decision to get inked in that moment may have been spur of the moment, but I’d been thinking of what words from Maya Angelou I would get as a tattoo. Her words have always struck me as perfect, the right amount of grandmotherly advice mixed with get your shit together. So I tend to look to her when I need a reset button.
Her words have always struck me as perfect, the right amount of grandmotherly advice mixed with get your shit together.
The past year was an amazing year, it has also been a challenging year. Embarking on a year long trip around the world with 70 strangers seemed like the perfect reset button. What could be better, no one knows you, there are no expectations, and perhaps you can take a break from all of the things going on at home. But home even if physically far, is never quite that far away. And when it comes to racial justice issues, there is really no escape. Because, although you may be far away, your friends and family are still in the trenches, which means so are you.
One specific moment last July brought that point home with a vengeance.
I love whisky. Anyone who spends more than a few minutes with me will know that I LOVE whisky, as somehow it will come up during any conversation. Back in July, I’d planned on meeting up with a friend in Glasgow for a few days, to hang out in one of my favorite cities and of course partake of a few drams. Since I follow a few activists on the frontline of the social justice work being done, when there is something going on, my alerts go off. Right after checking in to my airbnb, and preparing to head out for a walk, I see the Twitter alerts and the first thought I have is Alton Sterling just got killed, what is going on, what else is going right now. And looking through I see that another black man has been shot and killed by the police. Philando Castile. And the wave of grief that hit in that moment was incredible. Having the death of Philando Castile happen while I was still processing that of Alton Sterling was just too much in that moment.
I pulled myself together and decided to go for a walk in Kelvingrove park. In this idyllic setting with puppies playing in fountains and families walking around and just about everyone enjoying a moment out while the rain had let up, I broke down and cried three times. Looking around, I wanted that feeling of being carefree that everyone around me seemed to have. I wanted a moment of just true freedom, a moment without worry, a moment of joy. I couldn’t find it, not in one of my favorite cities, with whisky to be had, in a beautiful park. I couldn’t find it. And that is the impact of the continued racial injustice in the United States. It’s inescapable. Added to the devastating weight of this, when you’re the black face in white spaces, as my friend PDP aptly puts it, there isn’t often the luxury of grieving openly, you’re expected to put it away, as your white friends don’t see it, don’t feel it and don’t grieve for the lost lives. Yes, there might be a ‘that’s terrible that this happened’ split second, but the the day moves on, life moves on and you’re stuck in this mental prison of anger and grief that you have to keep bottled. Whether it’s you or a stranger, the knowledge that you could be next or your family or your friends, keeps you in this constant stage of alertness, even in moments when it might move to the back of your mind something happens, again, to bring it right back. This is a burden that we are never allowed to set down.
And every time an innocent person is shot and killed by the police, the first person I think of is one of my young cousins, I have a big family and a LOT of cousins, but he is the one that always comes to mind because his awakening into this injustice has been gut wrenching to watch. To see someone, who though not blind to the realities of the world had managed to grow up fairly unscathed by those realities (as much as one can be) and to see him start to realize what those rules of engagement mean, it’s painful. He’s the baby of the family, we all treat him like the annoying kid brother, yet we’re all a bit protective of him as well. He was the one I’d hoped would be able to get through this unscathed, unrealistic as that is. His chosen career means that he is often in and around buildings late at night. He talks about his white colleagues just being able to go in and do their jobs, but for him, he makes sure to put the fluorescent vest, and all the associated safety gear in order to visually telegraph, ‘hey just doing my job’ lest he become another statistic, another hashtag.
Understanding the absolute lack of empathy, care, or value assigned to your existence is a tough pill to continuously have to swallow. We are inundated with both implicit and explicit examples of how we as black people are not valued. It’s not something that we forget, but every time someone else is killed it brings it right back in your face, like someone stepping on that toe that is already broken, the pain is sharper, amplified in that moment. All of the myriad ways that we are being killed from the papercut level incidents to those that end in death, all of those moments go through your mind like a movie on fast forward. And those moments add more cracks in the armor to your soul. The armor that allows you to go back and put yourself together again. And you wonder if there will come a time when you won’t be able to do that. Breaking is not really an option, but man am I tired, and weary. I often wonder how many of us have to die before this ends, before we as a people decide to take concrete action. And am afraid that there is no ceiling to that number and that one day the armor will not last.
There was something about the almost back to back deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile that just broke a dam within, a dam that was holding back all of the anger and fear, and disgust, and despair. We have to keep these emotions behind a wall in order to remain sane. And I’m particularly adept at keeping emotions behind a wall or at least to myself. You learn early on to pack it up and put it away, to go about your day, you don’t forget, and it leaves its mark but you put it away. In that moment, I couldn’t quite put it away anymore, not so completely. It was the moment where I started thinking that whatever I was doing to stand against this justice wasn’t enough. That whatever we were all doing wasn’t enough. Looking around at those considered friends, white friends, and seeing the degree of reaction or lack thereof further fueled the anger. How does this not move you? What does that say about the relationship you have with your brown and black friends if this doesn’t move, if your day just continues as if nothing had happened?
How do we move on from here? By looking beyond ourselves, by being actively empathetic rather than passive. By speaking up rather than being silent. By believing your friends’ stories rather than questioning them. By understanding that your reality isn’t the only valid one. Action changes the world.
