Over the last week, we’ve seen people take to the streets to protest 400 years of racial injustice and state-sanctioned violence in America. The murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tony McDade, Nina Pop, and others who haven’t made the news were fueled by racism and white supremacy. As a writer, I find words to be powerful, I see language as a tool to bring people along, stories as a way to make meaning, and narrative as the way we share experiences. But there is so much lip service being paid to the movement that feel like empty promises right now.
I am not interested in performative wokeness, but if I stay silent, I am complicit. If I speak up, I am centering my whiteness and taking airtime away from folks who are actually making a difference. Or is it that I have access to spaces through my privilege where my voice can make a difference? All of these things are true, all at once.
So, I find myself oscillating between my white fragility and what feels like impotent anger.
The more I have immersed myself in the root causes of racism, I learned how entrenched, insidious, and systemic the problems are. As I became an adult, I read more works by Black writers, studied social justice movements, took diversity and anti-racism workshops, donated, voted, volunteered, and committed my career to elevating the stories of social impact organizations that are chipping away at oppressive systems. I came to terms with the fact that I will always be updating the operating system that comes standard with whiteness.
And I am again reminded that: 1) it is never going to feel like it’s enough, and 2) what matters is that I do something anyways.
At a fundraiser for a Pride organization, a guest enthusiastically told me how she brings her kids to the March (she called it a parade) every year, but followed it up with, “But we don’t really talk about being gay, they’re too young for that.” They were 11 and 13.
When the Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage came out, my partner and I hugged and cried in line at airport security while the rest of the passengers went glumly about their travel day, oblivious to what this meant to millions of people around the world.
When the Pulse nightclub shooting happened, I was shaken, but more so stunned that I didn’t hear much of anything from family or my straight friends about it. I didn’t see posts in solidarity or texts, or calls checking in, and while the LGBTQ community mourned, we often felt alone in our pain. They didn’t connect the dots that this was impacting my community, nor did they know what to say, so they didn’t say anything.
Let me be crystal clear: these things are in no way the same as the campaign of fear and violence that the Black community faces. But it is my only proxy to watching the dominant culture roll forward without a care as you sit and grapple with an identity that could get you fired, tortured, or killed.
So I keep stumbling through it, because the rights I enjoy now were hard-fought by Black Americans, starting with black trans women who were fed up with being fed up. I expected more from people when my community was attacked, so I need to find ways to do better for others.
The O.G. Revolutionary, Marsha P. Johnson