It’s ok not to be ok.
It is ok to be exhausted.
It’s ok to cry.
It’s ok to be angry.
It’s ok to be numb.
Right now is a heavy, heavy time. I am not gonna lie… I have felt it all week long as I have taught, worked and even in this moment, as I write.
I have been thinking about the way that white supremacy and its constant, unrelenting abuse of Black and Brown bodies has become normalized. I was texting with my very insightful friend and colleague Marsha Davis and she just said this,
“They’re just instilling terror and activating the response in me that those white terrorists want us to have. They want us to be too scared and too exhausted to challenge this system. I refuse to live under their reality.”
I refuse to live under that reality.
White supremacy ignores the actual lives of real people, where the reality of who we are is ignored and the truth of Black and Brown women is dismissed. It divides… It generalizes and it takes away our agency.
It took away Duante Wright’s agency.
It took away George Floyd’s agency.
I refuse to live under that reality.
I refuse to live under a reality that ignores who my ancestors have been and who Black and Brown children will be in the future. I refuse to live under a reality that ignores my grandmother’s brilliance, or dismisses my great grandfather’s ingenuity. That ignores my uncle’s hard work and determination.
I refuse to live under that reality.
White supremacy shunned them, shamed them and punished them for showing agency. For being themselves, for loving themselves. They had done nothing wrong but be born in a world that hides power imbalances and resource hoarding. A cultural that created a narrative through myth and history that they were not worthy, that they were not capable, that they were not fully human.
They were not victims, they were not undeserved they were oppressed. There was nothing wrong with them and EVERYTHING wrong with this world and the white power structure they were forced to navigate.
I will own my agency everyday and that may get me killed, but let’s be clear white supremacy is already killing me.
My agency is my resistance.
Whatever you’re feeling it’s ok.