Friday, September 25, 2020

Brothers, Can we Talk?

 I'm a Black woman, born of a Black woman and a Black man. When my mother died, it was my father who nurtured me and instilled in me a sense of pride of self, of my race, of my abilities to do whatever I put my mind to do. He never imposed limitations on me as a Black woman. The only caution he ever gave me was to not burn my candle at both ends and to be mindful of my health, I am an asthmatic. He never stopped me from trying anything and always encouraged me. Daddy was a strong Black man who introduced me to Shirley Chisholm when I was a little girl. He reminded me of the fortitude of my late mother's quest for gender equality in the workplace and of the namesake who marched at Selma.  He is the one who gave me my pseudonym, Tayé. Daddy was a strong tower of empowerment and fought all the way to his last breath for social, gender, and racial justice.

It is in remembering my father this morning that I'm asking the brothers, can we talk?

What is it, especially those of my generation who were born the year of the Civil Rights Act being signed, that compels you to even consider this orangevillageidiot for President? 

I could not believe it, yet, history has told me I can, when there were Black men considering voting for this man for a second term because they just could not abide by a woman being that close to the Presidency. That is why these same men did not vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and have been a part of ushering in this terror we've lived under for the past four years.

Now, to be fair, Black people are 13% of the entire population, so we are able to move the needle only so much, even if we generously estimate that 9% of us are of voting age and able to do so. We know we are not part of the 53% of white women who voted for that menace and are definitely not part of the 42% of the American population who side for anti-Black policies, despite being harmed by anything this administration does. We know that. But it is the approximately 5% of the U.S. Population, adult Black men, who I'm concerned with.

Brothers, can we talk?

I know, not all of you, right. I know some of you are strong feminists and believe in a Black woman's right to exist fully as herself. I raised such men and am married to one, was the daughter of one. I know there are so many of you who do not fall into the religious conservative leaders of our mainline Black denomination who have a narrow view of scripture when it comes to women's roles in society. I know, not all of you.

But, seriously, can we talk?

What is it that makes you, brothers, want to rule and control so much that the wisdom of the sisters is ignored? Is it that you crave what you see for 400+ years and assume that must be power? Is it the quest for dominance to gain back what you think was lost for 400 years? Is it that you have lost the spiritual connection to our ancient selves that listened to wisdom? What is it?

I seriously want to know.

Because we are in peril.

I've written about it and talked about the evil coming to us and was rebuffed more times than I can count. So many other voices rose up after Tamir and Mike and now, Breonna, year after year, and the sisters are wondering, just what will it take for you to chose us and not crave what the devil is offering?

This is am important year, it is not the time to fall on ideological purity of a woman's role. It is not the time to be afraid of an AfroIndian woman and the maybemighthappen that she would be President. What about your Senator, Congressperson, Governor, LtGovernor, Secretary of State, Treasurer, Attorney General, Mayor, City Councilperson, Dog Catcher, Park and Rec Board, School Board? What about the Sheriff? The Prosecuting Attorney? All those amendments they are trying to rush through. What about that? 

Can we sit down on November 4, 2020 and iron out any theological, ideological, or philosophical issues we may have and present a vision for the first 100 days of a new administration? Can we do that after we get past this dictatorwannabeconartistinchief? Can we stay focused with our eyes-on-the-prize? Please?

Focus.

Let's do that.

Do it for your sons. For your daughters. For your mothers. For your sisters. Let's get this thing done. Register, the clock is ticking, make a plan for how you will vote and how you will protect the vote of the community. 

Then, after it is done and the results are in, we can sit down over coffee. 

Thursday, September 24, 2020

My Daughters are Not Safe in This America


It is the wee hours of the morning, when darkness surrounds, and sleep should be sweet.

 It is still and very quiet in my home, situated in a wooded town near Yale.

Our house is on a serene tucked away cut-de-sac of colonials on lots of land, trees in the landscape, the ocean a mere 15-20 minute drive in any direction, peaceful.

Yet, I am not peaceful, I can not just marvel at the beauty around me.

I turned off social media upon the advise of a dear sister who told all of us Black women to attend to ourselves. I told my husband this vegetarian needed fried chicken, greens, cornbread, and some pound cake with strong coffee - comfort foods I remembered from my late aunts. He brought home some fried shrimp for me and we sat at the table with our youngest daughter to listen to her .

She knew what happened and it was written all over her face.

We were still processing the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg on Rosh Hashanah and that her family hadn't even had the service before the Senate Leader issued a statement that they would fill her seat. His statement came before some even knew of her passing. 

It was not a restful night then.

I turned off everything and curled up under a comforter. Felt numb for all of the weekend and then emerged ready to keep the fight I have been on for people to use their voice and vote.

Then, Monday came and  you could feel the tension.

My daughter went for a run, it is a mile if she runs up and down our street.

And two of my neighbors put out yard signs signaling they were choosing the side of hate, a candidate who clearly is unconcerned about my sixteen-year-old.One put up an enormous flag of that candidate a mere week after my daughters and I joined my husband in our move to the northeast. I thought this was a Blue state, but even in all this blue is a spot of searing hatred for our existence.

But the wife waved as she saw me drive by and she was out for an afternoon constitution. and their daughters waved from across the acres when they saw us outside last week when the first moving van brought our stuff.

Yet, it is not safe for my daughter.

I can not sleep in this America when Breonna Taylor, an essential worker in this world of Covid, was asleep in her bed and was murdered. That was in March 2020 when the Covid deaths had not reached into the unconscionable. Just a month after Ahmaud Arbery was trying to stay fit in and was merely running and was gunned down. So many after Breonna, that the cries of Black blood are mingled between unmemorialized lives lost from Covid to being murdered or having racial epithets hurled like assault rifles waved at passers by, the cries the silent cries.

My daughter in college is a freshman. I checked in on her and her friends. She told me she was ok and then did what the Gen Z often does when they need to process, call each other. I could hear her and my baby girl, a junior in high school, talk way into the night.

I do not feel safe in my home, all 4000 sq ft of it. Where in here can I hide from the raging hate that is in the air as dangerous as Covid 19?

How do I let my daughter go back to her school on Friday? I want to keep her here, in her room, in virtual space, but know that she needs to make friends, being a new kid. Tuesday and Friday, we emerge from our home to venture out. 

What do I tell her? When does her Black Life Matter?

The rumor is that this same administration of hatred, a puppet of the senate leader who has shoved 200 judicial appointment into lifetime positions while the country was distracted by the antics of the orange carnival barker. The one they are planning for Saturday is public and he is doing his usual overbearing, doublespeak, justifying this just 40 days before a Presidential Election.

And the Black in skin only Attorney General in the State of Kentucky announced his run for Governor.On the back of an innocent Black woman's murder that signaled to his white constituents not to worry, his skin was only Black, but he would be "their" governor. He planned and had a wedding to a pretty white girl in the middle of pandemic and protest.

I do not know what to say to my daughters right now.

I am angry.

Very angry.

And feel a dread I have not felt since six days after my fifth born, first daughter, was a newborn and those towers came down as I watched the morning news.

What will become of their tomorrow?

What kind of place am I leaving them?

How much more do we have to fight to be seen, loved, wanted, protected?

Malcolm X was right, we are the most unloved,  unwanted, and unprotected.

They erase us and lump us into  being women of color to not see our Blackness.

While white women steal our Blackness and make careers from it.

I can't sleep.

Do I get bullet proof glass for my windows? Can someone ram their way through the stained glass and wood front doors? What about through the thick wood of my side door?

My fear is not unfounded.

They have shown us what they think of us.  All summer. Louisville held over 118 days of consistent Protest and we saw someone, a white kid, travel across state lines to take open shots on Black people and protestors who stood with Black folks. He is a year older than my youngest daughter. 

We are not safe.

Not when someone is already in custody yet the police put on armor and in the darkness of night ram their way into the wrong apartment shooting. yes, Breonna's boyfriend shot back, it was his castle, he had a license, and he was not who they were looking for.

But the inditement was because the police scared the white people who lived next door to Breonna, nothing was said about the Black couple who lived above her.

Her life meant nothing to the judicial system.

The judicial system where municipal judges are elected and all of them have eyes on the prize that is being stolen from RBG's most fervent dying wish.

We are mere weeks from the election.

In my fear, I can vote.

In my new state of Connecticut, they automatically send you an absentee ballot when they send you your voter registration. My registration was completed within a week. I will vote.  I will keep working so other's use their voice.

And in my fear, I will keep speaking up and out for justice. I put my pen down for a while after 2016. I was rendered numb that day and took my thoughts to seminary so I could wrestle with how people who claimed to love could vote in such vile evil.

My daughters are not safe in this America, but I will keep fighting to make it so.

.

Sunday, September 20, 2020

Moving in Motion

 I've moved from the Midwest to the Northeast.

Moving is motion.

It was set in motion over a year ago.

In the year-and-a-half since I said I wanted to move, so many things in the world snatched my breath away.

January 2020 was the kickoff of what was supposed to be a huge celebration year for me and my family. It was my sorority centennial, two of my children were graduating, my husband and I were celebrating a big double digit anniversary, our first daughter was turning eighteen, college was looming, so many things we had planned. 

Then, like everyone, our world stopped.

Almost as if we were watching a slow motion movie in reverse, we could see the year become one long calendar page of not-moving.

It started on March 5.

That was the date the first Covid-19 case came to our suburban region. There was still so much unknown about it, we weren't in the Northeast at the time, we hadn't been to Italy, the ones who brought it in had.

My girl was a writer for her school newspaper and it was the middle of a presidential primary, the election was to be that coming Tuesday, March 9. She had a Press assignment to go downtown to cover a candidate that a lot of her generation really liked. It was the last freeish carefree photo I took of her before everything changed.

They had a trip that we still let them go on. No one had any clear understanding of this thing or how it spread. Some of my sorority members and I joked about people not washing their hands, like it was a normal part of our all the time, just like wiping cart handles. Information and misinformation was spreading fast.

Everything was changing faster than we could keep up and a spreading doom was looming.

By March 11, there was trepidation and cancellations started coming in fast. Our girls still went on their orchestra competition, the place they were going was not open to the public and they had worked so hard. It was their last sister trip where they were carefree.

Then, the world seemed to stop. Spring trip plans became watching the news, the death count had not hit even 500, toilet paper and hand sanitizer suddenly became hot commodities.

When I look at my calendar now, well into September, I wonder about all the stillness, the moving as non-moving that ensued in those months.

Our family still found ways to find joyful moments in quarantine school for the girls, in birthdays and anniversaries not with friends and family, in quiet graduations and new phones so we could chat across country. We wore comfy clothes and our dry cleaning bill plummeted, we were working and studying at home.

The vast movement of life kept going, from protests over the murders of innocent people who were running (Ahmaud) and sleeping (Breonna) and just living (George) to a summer of so much hate and violence that it was hard to not see it all as a pandemic. The list of names grew just as long as the numbers of those who succumbed to this take-no-prisioners virus.

And those who were charged with the care of the county were still on their almost four-year-war against everyone but a narrow nationalist few.

Motion.

Movements of bodies and people risking bodies for liberation.

And the zoom went on.

I work up and began to wonder at what will the remaining months of this year bring. 2020 has taken so much from so many. My sister, the king of Wakanda, even RBG could not go on, may her name be a revolution.

It was perhaps her death on Rosh Hashanah, the seemed to wrap 5780 (Jewish year) up in that box we want to just tuck away because the pain of it is too much.

Like many, I spent my Friday night into Saturday in just stunned numbness. I'm in the Northeast and too far from that spontaneous vigil outside the Supreme Court that was in memory of one who sought for justice for so many of us.

So many of us who could not move anymore. 

We were stilled.

So many who count so much for this year.

Then, we moved, ourselves, our grieving had to be action.

Out came the credit cards and checkbooks to make her most fervent wish our most fervent hope.

Justice and righteousness would meet, it would mean something, this entire year would mean something. Lives, over 200,000, now, simply did not vanish and there not be something. We who lost couldn't even grieve, but Friday, somehow brought us a moment we need to stop moving. To be still. Still with all that 2020 had done and then decide.

Just like we decided to say yes to a place we had never been before and really did not know a soul, we have to decide on stepping out for life, taking a chance for the future. 

Moving in motion. Is motion. Is active. Is intentional.

Nothing still or stagnant about it.

For moving is life.

And as long as we have it, we will do whatever we can to protect it for everyone.