My header on Twitter is a text from my cohort and close friend, “Spring 2020 we’re walking.” I didn’t know that we’d be walking and running in honor of Ahmaud Arbrey. I heard about what happened, didn’t want to watch the video, I opened Facebook and it started playing, I was glued to the screen. I think I needed to see it to make it real, because honestly, what the fuck. A 25-year-old Black man in Georgia, running. Do you cry every time you hear about another murder of a Black person? Do you flinch when you’re scrolling on your newsfeed and see a headline about another Black Boy being killed? Do you stop to read and share the article? Or have you become so numb to the inhumanity of the Black experience in America, that is being shot in cold blood and where murders are found innocent? Well, they cannot be charged for the murder of someone who isn’t seen as a human being…a justification made during slavery, because our bodies were stolen property. Stolen, Bought, Owned, Sold, Repeat. This should not be just another day in the life of a Black American. We speak their names we create hashtags and posts, take the streets to march in protest, as we have been doing for so many years, when will that be enough? When will being Black be safe, what does it take? Sitting in my living room writing this, a living room. Botham Jean and Atatiana Jefferson thought they were safe in their living rooms. Where is our safe haven when churches have experienced shootings and fires for as long as I can remember. So, I then I begin to think, maybe my mind is the safest place for me, but it’s polluted with the audacity of oppressors, of people who don’t acknowledge those who look like me as human beings. No matter how much money we make, how well we are able to code switch, how we dress, talk, our work ethic, we will remain the “other,” we will remain lesser than in their eyes, no matter how much beauty we see in our diversity of blackness, in the way we move, in our curls, our curves, in our intelligence, our perseverance. We cannot co-exist at a peaceful state…in a nation, in a world built on the foundation of racial hierarchy.
So we Scroll, Share, Post, March, Repeat.
BlackGirlKnowMagic 