5/18/2022

I am afraid.

I need not recap my life and family story of immigration and migration to escape racism to make it clear the reality of the hate that instills this fear in me. I don’t, but I often do, because it needs to be realized that the headlined events of xenophobic terrorism are realities that I live with the potential of everyday.
I am half white, but that does not protect me. I am black.
I have a white male partner, whom in reality I only put at risk, along with our light skinned daughter.
–I am a color-coded moving target for white supremacists.
This is the real “Most Dangerous Game”—living as a person of color in the USA.

I am afraid.
I am unsafe walking, running, jogging, driving, birdwatching, hiking, shopping, gassing my car, working, swimming, dancing, entering my home, being home, asking for help, sleeping in bed, being in school, in church, in my home community, as a visitor, as a child, as an adult, or a senior citizen.

I am afraid of the white supremacy
that we are all swimming in—
Some of us drowning.
I am afraid of the culture that wants to drown me,
And the smiling white faces of which some realize I am drowning,
some aim to aid,
most are oblivious,
and others intentionally pull me and others like me under.

I am afraid.
No, I was not near the most recent mass shooting hate crime. But every time a “lone wolf” steps forth
I know others lurking in plain sight can and will be emboldened.

I am afraid.
From the attacks, threats, harassment toward my beloveds, and others like us, I have been conditioned over a lifetime to be on guard of and fear (especially) white men.
And yet, I married a white man.
And my grandfather, Papa, is a kind white man, who never made me feel such fear as I felt of white men elsewhere, but instead loved. And so I was raised to know that white men were not all out to get me, though I often felt that way walking down the street or traveling in rural areas as a child; and still at times today.

I am afraid.
They tell me “things have changed” from when my dark-skinned father was driven off the road and harassed into leaving my birthplace.
Or elsewhere when a call from “the police” threatened my parents’ little “nigglettes”.
They say things have changed. But the “they” making the statements are usually, most always white. They don’t know the fear and see the red flags that those of us with the trauma of living as melanin targets recognize.

I am afraid.
And it is that fear this mobilizes me, that makes me want to strive to put weight to shifting the moral arc toward justice.
I know I can be an activist, but I cannot protest an active terrorist into reconsidering race and racism.

What is needed, or has been needed is the shift much earlier–at the dinner table.
It’s in the awkward, tense, avoided discussions with the family member spewing or harboring racist discourse that we need a change; An intervention. It’s in the moments that you fear the fracture of a family or a friendship that may just save a life, or 2, or 10…

I am afraid.
And so I turn to my white siblings, and I ask them to do this awkward scary thing of stepping up, speaking out. Not to an audience, or crowd, but to family, friends, those you have access to. Being liberal, being moral, needs a mouthpiece. We have long listened as hatefilled oppressors set the tone, the conversation. Right now we need white allies to wake others up. Be the moral compass for others to follow. Staying silent only aids white supremacy, with complicity.

It has always been about keep us apart. About dividing us, into fractions, turning us against each other.
Thus, this has always been
your struggle
too.

In the words of activist Fannie Lou Hamer, “Nobody’s free, until everybody’s free.”

As I stop to take a breath and seek safer ground, I pass the flame,
To you.
–It is your turn dear co-conspirator in our work toward shared liberation.
Yes, I know,
You are afraid,
Just as I am, afraid;
And yet
By necessity

fearless.