This Week's Opening Thought: August 21, 2023

This week's opening thought: If you live in the United States, you live in a country where many people believe lizard people walk among us, JFK, Jr. is a descendent of Christ, alive and preparing for a run as Donald Trump’s running mate, and that Joe Biden is not the acting President on top of believing Joe died years ago, leaving a hired actor to portray him in public to save face.

At this point, no one should be surprised that we can't have honest conversations about real fact-driven issues in the United States.

We can't even agree that there ain't no damn lizard people walkin’ the streets.

On Wolves, White Violence, and "Changing the World" After Reading One Anti-Racism Book

One of the ongoing conversations I have with white people is around them feeling like they've taken a couple of trainings, read a few books, and now understand 400+ years of racism and white supremacy to the point where they're ready to "change the world" and "be an ally."

Y’all don’t realize how dangerous y’all are.

I would rather you didn’t open up the door to learning if you weren’t going to come in, take a seat, and make it your forever home.

All y’all are doing is adding more weapons to your anti-Black, racist, white supremacy-upholding arsenal. You’re more dangerous to communities of color, Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, when you know a little because y’all conflate it as if you know a lot and wield your good/bad binary like a Morningstar.

I have yet to see a white person who has attended a couple of trainings at work and read a few basic books do anything but harm melanated folx while thinking they’re helping us with their new “education.” And I have yet to see an “educated” white person respond to being called in or out about harming others demonstrate that they have the emotional maturity and ongoing understanding of white supremacy enough to take in the feedback, atone, and do better.

Wolves in ill-fitting sheep’s clothing.

If you’re going to open the door, come in, stay awhile, and decide if you’re gonna love it or list it.

For all our sakes.

[Image Description: An image of two wolves staring at each other under a big moon. Above them are the words, “White people: inside you there are two wolves.” Below them are the words, “They’re both racist. One of them just hides it better than the other.”]

Image Description: An image of two wolves staring at each other under a big moon. Above them are the words, “White people: inside you there are two wolves.” Below them are the words, “They’re both racist. One of them just hides it better than the other.”

On Professionalism, Games, and Neo

What Western culture likes to call professionalism is more of a tenuous game of restraint and mindfulness the further you are from whiteness.

For many melanated folx, it takes a lot of energy, therapy, mindfulness, and understanding the impacts of generational trauma, situational trauma, and white societal consequences not to shake some of y'all like a Polaroid picture.

And that's not a list of considerations for a work week.

Most of the time, all these tools and considerations go through our heads on a workday.

And sometimes, we're already in this headspace of maintaining and sustaining our peace and holding on to our careers by 9:30 a.m. on a workday.

White Western ideology would make you think professionalism is like a chess game.

That's because white people and people with privilege, power, and positionality don't have to play chess while dodging bullets like Neo.

On Bus Stops, Kylie Minogue, and Distance

As I was transferring buses on my commute to work this morning, I walked up to the stop for my second bus, where a white woman was waiting for the next leg of her trip. As I came to a stop, I sat on a bus bench about six to eight feet from where she was standing. As soon as I sat down, she immediately moved out of the space and stood on the other side of the LED sign showing the bus arrival times.

She put 10 feet and a wall between us.

And all I did was sit down at a bus stop while waiting for my bus.

Maybe she moved because I smiled at her as I approached the stop, which I unconsciously do all the time. After all, I’m friendly, but I know how people view big Black men in overwhelmingly white cities like Portland, so I try to exude an aura of "not dangerous" to minimize the unspoken fear factor I evidently add to the pot of by existing.

Maybe she moved because of my pink headphones and Singin’ in the Rain t-shirt.

Maybe she moved because my laptop bag, adorned with patches of Alfred Hitchcock, Mario, Luigi, Spider-Man, Chibi nigiri, and musubi, offended her.

Or maybe she moved because she’s racist and full of stereotypes and anti-Black rhetoric to the point where she felt the big Black guy boppin’ to Kylie Minogue posed a clear and present danger to her safety.

All I did was sit at a bus stop while waiting for my bus.

These moments happen to me all the time. I know that one misconstrued smile or glance, or a moment that I’m seen as an invader of some white person’s space, could be the difference between me getting to work on time and never going to work again. And I know that all I can do in these moments is hope that a higher power has my back because even when a Black man does the right things to protect himself, he’s still a potential bullet shelter or convict.

And all I did was sit down at a bus stop while waiting for my bus.

I got to work on time. So, there’s that.

Black Poetry Tuesdays (August 8, 2023 Edition): "Bullet Points” by Jericho Brown

Trigger warning: anti-Blackness, hate crimes, murder.

The week’s Black Poetry Tuesdays piece is from Jericho Brown. Brown is a Black U.S. American poet, writer, and professor. Brown's first book, Please, won the American Book Award, and his second book, The New Testament, was named one of the best poetry books of the year by Library Journal and received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His third collection, The Tradition, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and was a finalist for many awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award.

The following piece is called “Bullet Points.” In this piece, Brown focuses on the reality of police brutality in Black communities in the United States. This piece is partly in response to the suspicious deaths of multiple Black people while in police custody in 2018 and 2019, but also a dissertation on Black bodies murdered by the police with no justice and accountability. Jericho weaves a message to his Black friends and family, asking them to fight for justice if he dies in police custody because his demise will not be self-inflicted. “Bullet Points” is heavy, genuine, honest, and brutal and generates, sadly, familiar feelings of powerlessness in the face of constant danger, wearing a veil of public safety.

Bullet Points

I will not shoot myself

In the head, and I will not shoot myself

In the back, and I will not hang myself

With a trashbag, and if I do,

I promise you, I will not do it

In a police car while handcuffed

Or in the jail cell of a town

I only know the name of

Because I have to drive through it

To get home. Yes, I may be at risk,

But I promise you, I trust the maggots

Who live beneath the floorboards

Of my house to do what they must

To any carcass more than I trust

An officer of the law of the land

To shut my eyes like a man

Of God might, or to cover me with a sheet

So clean my mother could have used it

To tuck me in. When I kill me, I will

Do it the same way most Americans do,

I promise you: cigarette smoke

Or a piece of meat on which I choke

Or so broke I freeze

In one of these winters we keep

Calling worst. I promise if you hear

Of me dead anywhere near

A cop, then that cop killed me. He took

Me from us and left my body, which is,

No matter what we've been taught,

Greater than the settlement

A city can pay a mother to stop crying,

And more beautiful than the new bullet

Fished from the folds of my brain.

You can learn more about Jericho here.