So, it's been a minute since I last updated this blog. A lot of life has happened in the interim. No, I'm not going to promise to try to catch you up on it, but you will, I'm sure, get a glimpse of it here and there as I add new entries. I will promise, however, to do a better job of keeping it current.
I'm going to lead with an obvious piece, given what has been happening over the last few weeks. I was hurt, sorrowful, horrified, angry, frustrated, and even a little scared when I wrote this. However, even though those feelings are muted now, I had been increasingly thinking, for quite some time before now, of the things I brought up. I know that many cops are truly trying their best to protect and serve all the citizenry. Some people draw down trouble upon themselves by engaging in behavior that truly is criminal, and they ought to be held responsible for it. No one ethnicity holds the corner on cruelty to others of a different ethnicity; all the cruelty mankind has visited one group upon another throughout history proves this. But upon one day, after so many other instances of apparent racially motivated misbehavior, one more person of color died at the hands--or in this case, the knee--of a white cop. In front of a live audience. For no justifiable reason that I have yet to hear. It didn't have to happen. Why did it?
The entry is recorded in my personal journal and on Facebook, but it has been edited slightly for this space. I originally wrote it June 1, and all timeframes and events are relative to that date.
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Things I'm thinking about today:
In all but melanin count, due to albinism, I'm black. I'm an image bearer of God. I am loved by Him with an everlasting love, washed in the Blood of the Lamb, and filled with His Spirit. But on the wrong day, under the wrong circumstances, another person who also claims to be one of God's image bearers, who calls the name of Jesus, and who believes s/he has God's Spirit--or who may ascribe to different creeds altogether--may decide to try to harass me, harm me, or kill me. For no better reason than because I'm black.
It's no longer enough to try to reassure me that I'll be fine as long as I'm well-behaved and nice, or to tell me I'm being silly because I'll be left alone as long as I do everything I'm supposed to and don't do anything I shouldn't. I thought that, too, for awhile. And then I saw and learned of too many instances where people were wrongly accosted, harassed, and harmed while doing good deeds, while caretaking on the clock at their jobs, while performing chores on their own property, while doing paid work on the property of someone who'd hired them, while trying to get into their own dwelling, while relaxing or even sleeping at home. Whether child or adult, young or old, alone or with a loved one, watching birds in a park, or grilling out in one, selling water and cheap snacks to thirsty passersby and hungry travelers, or peaceably loading out supplies to go volunteer somewhere, the common denominator in all these scenarios additional to their happenstance is that the doers were doing while black.
I am a homeowner. This fact can be verified in the county deed records. They will tell you my name, the location of my property, when I bought it, from whom, and for how much. I have my copy of the deed, signed by me on my closing day and by the lawyer who witnessed it. Yesterday, as she was about to leave my home, a friend came back to my door to alert me to the presence of some people who had questions about the previous homeowners. My friend is black and was loading out some items I gave her. Judging by the voice of the person who actually spoke to me when I stepped out to see what was happening, the people questioning were white. So were the previous homeowners. The woman named the previous homeowners and wondered where they were. I stated when I'd bought the house, as well as what the previous lady of the house told me regarding why they were selling. These passersby were just curious, the woman in the car said; they used to live across the street at a specified address. My friend watched them drive away, then, as she left, she called me back to tell me that the man who was driving had stopped at a house a couple of doors down. She was concerned for me. I was equally concerned for us both. I shouldn't have had to be.
I have an alarm system that has a glass break sensor and is controllable by various means. A couple of times I have accidentally pressed the panic button and had to speak with police to verify that it was an accident. I've set off the glass break sensor by doing any number of household tasks. One time, a friend set off the alarm and couldn't deactivate it. To date, I've had no adverse interactions with police on account of any of it, but there was the one time when police actually did come out because of the panic button. I felt safe mostly because I had a white friend with me at the time. What if she had been black, and I'd had more melanin?
I'm single, and a little senior by some people's reckoning to be thinking of romance and marriage, but I haven't discounted the possibility. What ethnicity should he be? Should I love black and risk him being harmed on my account while he's with me, or live with the question in the back of my head of whether he will go out one day and not come home to me because he did something, legal or not, while black? Should I hope for the chance to love white, but then have those monents when I wonder if, as his wife, I'm subsequently enjoying certain privileges and protections that I might not, or goods and services for which we might pay more or have to push harder to get a fair price, if he weren't white? There was a time I didn't think about such things. I don't think I'm paranoid to be thinking about them now.
I'm visually impaired due to the aforementioned albinism, and mostly alone in public because of the aforementioned singleness. As of this writing, I'm almost six months out from spinal surgery; before that, I was accustomed to carrying my things in a small pack that I wore on my back. The most recent one I had was quite stylish, a leather look with judiciously placed studs and closures made to look brass, but a pack nonetheless. What to do if something I had ever casually and unthinkingly done with my pack
had drawn the attention of a cop or other person looking to be one more weapon of black destruction? Being one who hates drama, tries very hard to put out "Don't look at me" vibes, and will go far to avoid conflict, how long would I have to figure out that I was the problem, just by my very existence? And what mitigating factors would be cited or outright lies told to explain their behavior away?
And, heaven forbid, should I ever accidentally wander into a reenactment of one of the scenes that have been playing out recently in Minneapolis and other big cities, would I become a victim of friendly fire from one of my own because s/he can't see this sister for the blond hair, blue eyes, and fair skin, who would see the albinism and not recognize that I'm just "red"?
And I freely admit that this is just me thinking. What others have experiences is far, far more devastating. And most of the people who picked the fights, who called the cops, who flagrantly crossed boundaries that weren't theirs and stretched the bounds of self defence, who were themselves cops violating procedures and breaking laws they lied about protecting and serving, were in the wrong. And they knew it and did it anyway.
I'm black. But I bear God's image. He made me this way, loves me this way, chose me this way. He is the Judge of all the earth, and He does right. By His design, even if I am a weapon in my own skin, even if any black person is a weapon in their own skin, it's not against you, whatever your skin color is. It's against our greater common enemy. So if you have a problem with us, then you actually have a problem with God. The height of your steeple, the thickness of your Bible, the fervor of your patriotism and longing for traditional values, or your upset over anything else you think is impaired, disturbed, or theatened by my existence, will not change that. If you love my God, you must love me. If you can't love me, then you have a problem with my God!
