Facebook Publication Date: 10/3/2019 21:10

What a triggering week.

I have compiled voices and perspectives on that I think the community should hear, and because we are not beholden to news cycles, I am not going to post all of them up tonight. I don’t want you to fatigue; and I don’t want you to glaze over.

What I am going to talk about is something we will visit again, when we are more ready, but like our hand was forced with the reporting, so are our hands forced now, with hopes for an approximation of justice raised and then dashed in less than two days. The fatigue of a different sort. The weathering. I want you to feel it.

In case you are wondering, this is a big deal. And we need to struggle with it.

First, though, let’s talk about trauma, about pain, about victimization, about betrayal.

Not Dallas though. We will turn to this in a moment. I want to talk to you about this last week for me, starting last Monday, and that has yet to let up.

Taken by themselves, these are hardly the sort of things that make one rock in a corner. But I want you to think of multiple assaults, made by multiple people, witnessed by scores more. Not murder. But torture.

I want you to think about the fact that there is never an opportunity to escape. That I had to walk to my car, or go to my office, or punch back in from lunch. That I had to talk with my sister; succor a coworker; call my mom and tell her the earrings came in. That I had to come back to baseline *enough* to be able to come here to Lace on Race and on my personal page and engage, and write, and research, and submit drafts to Marlise for editing, that I had to dispatch my duties as a congregant at church, that I had to keep it upbeat for Tikka Rose, who can read me like a book with her gentle sad Lab eyes, that i listened to my nephew and their love troubles, and then love euphoria, and then back to troubles again. That I had to remember my meds, and to eat just enough but not too much; that I had to approve the Ask, which always makes me twitch, I want you to think of me as I brushed out my wigs and, as i do every night, confront my baldness. I want you to really feel the weight of the last week.

I want to tell you before I tell you about the stones.

Two Mondays ago, we were talking about white people taking up space, jostling, daring us to hold ground, giving murderous looks when we did. Having to make calculations: i have a 15 min break; do i have time for a teachable moment?

I was thinking all these things as a woman, then another woman, then a man, all white, pressed in front of me while i waited in line in the cafeteria for soup. I want you to think about the white man in back of me, who, on the one time I stood my ground and waited for the requisite noises of social greasing, got those courtesy ‘excuse me’s’ and ‘thank you so much’, and he said something hale and hearty and well met and they both looked at each other and confirmed their niceness, all the while being silent when I was careened by.

I want you to think about the lady who almost made me spill my soup when she decided her potato chips were more important than my equilibrium, and the entire line was silent.

I want you to think about how I carried this back to my cube, and made jokes, and did my research and entered it into my spreadsheets, and signed birthday cards.

I want you to think about the next day when a car came thisclose to hitting me in the parking structure; a common occurrence. I want you to know the two possible looks from the driver, that I have come to know well; one a stoic looking ahead, the other looking me right in the face; this time the woman looked ahead. I want you to think about the relief I feel whenever a black person, who needs their ass in their chair just as much as Becky does stops and waves me on, smiling, nodding. I want you to remember that we comprise less than 5 percent of the workforce in my org. I want you to carry that near miss with me as I walk the quarter mile to my desk, where I have to smile, and turn it on, and resubmit my leave request, and do the stuff of life in my cube.

I want you to come with me as I leave Peter’s office, and grab a bite, and then get dog food for Tikka. I want you to feel my scraped knuckles as a white woman refuses to move to her ‘lane’ in the aisle, ramming through enough to make metal to skin contact, and giving that ‘sorry not sorry’ smirk when I dared to say ‘Ow!’. I want you to forget the rest of what you came in for, and just make it out the door, and then I want you to feel the cart behind you push you, because that lady just had to get her items on the belt. And then when I say ‘Wait’, she uses all her plausible deniability and her blue orbs opened wide so you can see the whole circle, and imagine choking back tears when she says ‘sorry, I didn’t see you’ and you forget about kind candor and teachable moments and you say to her, ‘I am a large black woman. You saw me.’ And then I want you to hear, even in the heavy silence in the Vons on West Washington an alliance for the woman in the hemp and the ethnic beads, and you cut your losses, and accept the eye contact of the clerk who needs this goddam job but who i know is on my side, and who doesn’t charge me for a bag, but that small gesture isn’t enough, and you hold your tears till you get down the esclator to your car, and you *both* hope that the lady doesn’t see your tears *and* that she does, and then you remember Tikka needs her food, and you can’t crash the truck, so you wipe your eyes, blast music, and head home.

I want you to think of the rest of the week, each day full of papercuts to the soul, and I want you to remember that I have decades of race work behind me, that I know what to say and how to say it, and still I cry almost daily. Or want to.

I want you to think of just this last Monday, again in the cafeteria line where there are signs that say cheerfully ‘pop your top so the line doesn’t stop!’ and we dutifully do because people do lo key steal; forget to mention guac or extra cheese and the last lunch lady is gone, so we open and are super conscientious about telling Alicia what we got, everyone but the white man in front of me, pima cotton shirt, executive cuts to his thinning hair, who taps his opaque container and says ‘chicken salad’. Stay with me as Alicia looks pained, and all the brown and black and Pinoy clerks and techs and admins look on with their tops askew, and imagine me chanting to myself ‘babies and fools, babies and fools you can’t get mad at babies and fools’ so i put on my most ingratiating and bubbly tone and say ‘you didn’t pop your top!’, with wide eyes and a confused expression and he looks at me rolls his eyes, and taps the top twice and says, like commanding men from offices with doors learned to say in B school, in his most distinguished and commanding tone, ‘Chicken Salad’, this time with a scowl. ‘But your top isn’t popped!’ in the tone meant to be truth telling but not in any way usurping, when what you really wanted to say was ‘Pop your muthafuqing top, and don’t put Alicia in a funky position, you douche; you’re not better than the rest of us!’, and i felt first the yay from people in the line for his being held accountable, then the don’t get us in trouble, and i see Alicia’s pleading eyes, and I shut up, and he takes his change, gives me a withering stare, and grandly goes to the condiment station where he gets more napkins than he needs.

I want you to think about waking up with double vision in your ‘good eye’, and finally calling Kaiser, and hoping the doctor will take me seriously, and not attribute it to weight, or whatever else he thinks of me; I want you to wish with me that I had dressed better because they treat you better when you do; I want you to remember all the times I dressed for church when what I needed was a look at a rash. I want you to remember with me how to say just enough to let him know i am worth listening to, but not so much that he feels threatened, and being overly grateful that he treated me like a person and not a problem. And the strain of caring more about your appearance than the fact that your good eye is fading and you’re terrified; you need his best, and the chino skirt may not cut it. You got lucky this time. But maybe not the next. So always remember the good fake pearls.

I do this for a living. Remember this. I do race for a living. I am an expert. How much of my expertise I have to assert just to have my eye examined. I want you to come with me to the Thai place where all the heads swivel, and eat my spring rolls and pray with me for a neutral experience.

I live this work. I have thicker skin than a rhino.

I want you to come with me to the parking structure yesterday morning, when a white man refused to get in car with me, and then I saw the other black woman, Ann Taylor-ized head to toe, in the car. And we exchange glances, and joke about the man who would rather be late. In 2019. And we talk about how it happens all too often. And she tells me she’s in HR, and how rude people are to her in the lobby, and then she is the one who onboards them. How it doesn’t bother her anymore. I think about the odds for the UPS guy holding up the door is in direct proportion to his melanin level.

I want you to hang out in my cube with me when the sentence came down, whites hiding their eyes, tight lipped when the obvious is stated ‘we just aren’t worth very much’, and vapid refrains of ‘healing’. I want you to see the glances we exchange; but we cannot voice our pain. And they know we can’t. And we know they know.

I want you to stab at your keyboard, making the data work, finding answers for everything but this.

And then I want you to imagine 56 years of these cuts, of this suppression, so you can do your job, live out your call, neither displace nor lash out, and what living your life for the convenience of mayosapiens actually costs you.

Costs me.

I make calculated calls every day, every minute.

So did he.

Stones. All stones that weigh us down, that blunt our responses, that make us both triggered and strategic.

We survive. But we will heal despite you.

One day this will be less so. I have bet the farm on this.

On you.

But for now, assume we are all bloody, and that the hug left psychic biowaste on Amber’s very soul.

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