Facebook Publication Date: 12/13/2018 8:12

we need to keep in mind the larger issue, that is understandably dwarfed by the sheer horror of the collective action on the individual young woman and her child, and that is this: the universal agreement that black bodies are allowed to be manhandled and tortured, even unto death.

This is part and parcel of our dehumanization; part and parcel of the fact that 150 years after Emancipation and 60 years after what is now called the Civil Rights Movement, the base humanity of Black people is still violently denied. This matters.

The idea of my leaving my house, for any reason, is fraught. That core fear informs, and sometimes decides, my choices of movement, of self advocacy. And I am fortunate. I will not be sitting on the floor waiting for hours because some caseworker messed up my child care paperwork.

No. I will get into my late model car, drive to my government job, get lunch in the cafeteria on campus, maybe go to the mall to return a defective eyeliner, pull money for the christmas party, take my friend to a simple birthday dinner, maybe get gas, go home. A nice middle class day for a nice suburban middle class woman, right?

Every one of these activities is fraught with danger. I have had near altercations with white women in line at the cafeteria, and have held my tongue at their rudeness. I have been accused of being a threat at Macy’s, an incident over which I still have nightmares. I have had my card specially scrutinized at dinner tables. It adds a patina of fear based cortisol to every area of my life. There is no such thing as a simple action, no such thing as mindless diversion.

This is important. One of the fundamental rights we are supposed to have is the base right to be left alone. We never are. And the intermittency makes worse. How many times have I held my breath waiting for a blow, when nothing happened? Because on the few times I exhaled, and dared to think the world accepted and acknowledged my personhood, I have been reminded, sometimes with force, just how untrue that was. As to the young woman holding a 1 year old football (kids are heavy) for two hours, what else could have been done other than invoking the brutal force of the state? A chair, a kind word. Maybe (gasp) expedited service–because what went down was far more expensive in terms of man hours than a case worker doing their job.

But this was performance theater. Not for the woman, but for all watching, so they knew where they stood in the hierarchy, and what could indeed happen to them if they dared advocate for themselves in inhumane conditions. It was a show of force, and no less than state terrorism.

Which is why it was a microcosm of what black women endure on the daily.

This got ‘resolved’ in the sense that she was released. But the day will stay with not only her son, but with her. I hope she was able to keep her job. I hope she walks through a crucible not of her own making.

But the larger issue still stands. Until we are acknowledged as full humans, this will continue. And this is not only on the state. This is on every white person who literally banks on our humiliation and our degradation. It is for white people who created an economic system that forces people to sit on the floor for child care vouchers in the first place.

Do this internal work first before you dare express outrage. Outrage is, in this case, nothing more than privilege and poverty porn unless you are really ready to face your own complicity in systems that ultimately forced that woman to squat on the floor. And then, after you face yourself, then face her and her sisters and give everything you have (not just what you want) to dismantling. Hey Nice White People–the police did that *for you*; for a society you profit by and take pleasure in.

When will you stand up and Say No?

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