The great Nina Simone once said:
“I’ll tell you what freedom is to me. No fear”.
Fear. Such a small word but has the ability to set the world ablaze.
Growing up a black in the south I don’t remember a time where racism wasn’t a casual yet unwanted guest at the dinner table. An unfortunate reality that even as a child I couldn’t grow up with the fantasy that people were color blind. To learn early and not foolishly wonder why but to “get a back bone” and toughen up. My life wasn’t going to filled with a possibility of “if” but “when” racism comes knocking.
“You gotta be 10 times better. Smarter. Work harder. No one is going to give you anything. You are not like everyone else. All sentiments that echoed in my head and carried with me by the age of 7.
Growing up in a predominantly white elementary and grade school often times as the only person of color in class I soon learned how others viewed me by the sleepovers I wasn’t invited to, the off-color curiosity about my hair, and the unanimous confidence that I knew all things concerning black folks as if I was a member of the Black Caucus at age eight.
I get it. In a small Alabama town I perhaps could have easily been the only black person my classmates could have ever met. I remember the dread of studying the Civil War in history class and the stares that followed after the word “slave”. No pressure for a school age little girl.
I’ll never forget the day that racism yanked me out of my desk, spat me in my face, and crushed my young soul. I was in the 4th grade and a classmate at random raised his hand and asked could he tell the class a joke.
For the life of me I will never understand why this teacher obliged especially since this kid stayed in trouble daily but nonetheless she allowed him to share. 21 years later and I can still vividly picture him stand up at his desk and with such a strange sense of pride and authority mouth “How do you get a black man out of a tree?”
As I held my breath and assumed this would be where the joke would end and though rattled I would somehow be “safe” from offense as with confidence knew my teacher would refuse to allow him to carry on. Instead I heard the crisp words of “How?”
The words that followed will haunt me until my last days he uttered:
“Cut the rope”.
I cry for the young girl that day that was allowed to be violated in the name of a “joke”. I cry for that girl who soon learned that no matter how smart, kind, docile, innocent, you are not exempt from racial pain. To know that you must walk through life cautious, hesitant, yet somewhat hopeful that others may or may not judge you by the content of your character instead of the color of your skin. But you have to find strength to find peace in that either way.
But the reality is this.
I have been followed around in stores unnecessarily that others assumed I didn’t “belong in”.
I have been called nigger a handful of times.
I have been called “threatening” simply for both respectfully and rightfully disagreeing.
I have walked into breakrooms and employee lounges where the word “Those people” and “them” have been used as code words to reference people of color.
Though with multiple degrees I have been mistaken for the assistant instead of the manager and have been told too often “You weren’t who I was expecting ”as if that was a compliment.
I have listened and held my tongue with the “just saying” devil’s advocates and the passive aggressive micro aggressors who declare how fatigued they are with “all this race talk”
Bless your heart.
Fatigued? You have no idea.
I too am tired.
I am tired of the fear of birthing a future son that I will one day listen as my husband explains what to do to appear “non-threatening”. I am tired of the nervous wreck I will become once he begins to drive because we will have to teach him how both to drive and to “drive while black” simultaneously.
I am tired of the anxiety that consumes me every time my husband leaves our home without me if only just for a minute to grab some milk less than a mile away. I am tired of the visualization of me being a single mom to our children one day if he never comes home.
I am tired of the perception that others have when they see my black 6 foot tall lanky brother with twists in his hair, who loves the color black, wears hoodies regularly but also has a mouth full of blue and red adolescent braces. I am tired of the fact that I have mentally prepared myself for a potential injustice should he ever “fit the description”
I am tired that I must teach my daughter what it means to be strong before she can even spell it. Because as a black woman in this world she will not be afforded the luxury of privilege outside of our home. And to possess enough strength to one day birth a black son in a world where it’s not unanimous that his black life will matter.
I am damn tired.
Tired of seeing the disenfranchised be told to pull themselves up by their bootstraps when they don’t even have shoes.
Tired of being ridiculed by others on how to handle past, present, and future pain by those who are the descendants of those who have oppressed and think that the extent of inclusiveness is having black friends or simply liking Michelle Obama.
I am tired of being told that “slavery ended a long time ago” when my 73 year old grandmother can still smell the stench of Jim Crow and the last sweet memories my grandfather on his deathbed whispered were those of sharecropping and picking cotton.
My story is not unique only to me. It’s the story of the millions of others this country.
So where is this freedom and liberty that we speak of when blacks aren’t even free to express or protest their plight freely without being trivialized on other issues such as black on black crime? Meanwhile the Ku Klux Klan and other white nationalist groups are granted freedom of assembly, arms, speech, and press without the bat of an eye and are free of condemnation.
Where is this freedom we speak of if I’m not free to be me because that puts me at risk that your perception of me may somehow inherently cost me my life?
Doesn’t sound much like freedom at all.