I can’t breathe.
Each morning, as I wake up from a night of sleep that is rarely long enough, I avoid getting up by scrolling every timeline I’ve got. Snapchat is first -- just to see what my friends were up to while I was asleep. Then instagram -- early morning posts are often motivational, but not quite motivational for me to get up just yet. Next is Twitter -- mostly just to find out what’s going on in the world. The last thing I check is Facebook. This is the hail mary pass of procrastination. The hope is that a longer list of friends and a timeline with more words and videos will suck up enough time that I will forget my responsibilities altogether. That doesn’t really happen.
Instead, I scroll past a montage of the year’s best cat videos to see something that never fails to twist a knot in my stomach:
Instead, I scroll past a montage of the year’s best cat videos to see something that never fails to twist a knot in my stomach:
Is a Black man jogging at night suspicious? An Alabama cop thinks so.
Police tackle Black student using ATM for ‘looking suspicious.’
Florida police officer fatally shoots Black man whose car had broken down
The headline may not be especially colorful. It’s possible that no one died or was seriously injured -- at least not physically. In fact, the end of the story may include quotes from the local police department saying, “the parties involved were not arrested,” or “after deescalating the situation, officers told the individuals they were free to go,” as though this makes it better. As though they truly felt free at the end of it. As though they could ever forget. As though that encounter ended when the officers and victims parted ways.
If they parted ways. If the victims lived. If they did not die in a jail cell, die on the pavement, die in a pool of their own blood.
Die alone, aside from those with the blood on their crooked hands, those who created an altercation where there wasn’t one, those who made assumptions with lifelong or life-ending consequences, those whose prejudice is like a tattoo they can’t see when they look in the mirror -- they can pretend they don’t know it’s there.
That tattoo of hate, of prejudice, of skepticism is one that threatens the lives of Black people in America every single day. It has for a long time. But in 2015, this is no longer a topic of quiet conversation, not a subject confined to whispers at the dinner table or in corners of the house between parents afraid for their Black child’s safety. The conversations have spread to Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and GroupMe, places where people are talking about how to end it and how to protest it and how to honor the lives lost.
These are also the places where Black Americans see the perils of living while Black. The videos on our timelines are not of strangers that live across the country, not of people we will never meet; the people in those videos are our friends, siblings, cousins, parents, aunts and uncles, coworkers and roommates.
When I consider that, when I really think about the fact that someone I know and love and have plans to hang out with or see or even marry -- when I think about one of those people writhing on the ground, arms being twisted out of their sockets, voices screaming at them to stop resisting -- my lungs don’t work quite right. The weight of that loss, either of life or of dignity, sits on my chest. Perhaps it’s not so much my lungs not working as my ribcage being immobilized. Perhaps it is the ache in my heart that makes the rest of my chest feel tight. Perhaps is the knot in my stomach radiating throughout my body -- pain and fear so strong I feel it in my knees.
Either way, I can’t breathe.
But then at some point the video gets too graphic or my eyes start to burn with angry, sad tears or I look up and realize I have five minutes to get ready. My screen darkens. I climb out of bed. As I brush my teeth and pull on my clothes and head out the door, the weight seems to fade.
But then the same story is on the news when I walk into the School of Communications. Or reports surface about a student I know being called a racial slur in an Elon Law classroom. Or my professor plays music to get the class going, and when the N-word plays, I feel the eyes of my classmates waiting for my reaction.
Alone, each of these small things is manageable, or maybe not entirely offensive at all: the news, though quite sad, should be on all the time in the School of Comm. And I actually enjoy when professors try to lighten the mood of a 100-minute class period by playing some great music, even if it is uncut.
But sometimes, when my day starts with a stark reminder of the perils of being Black in America, those small things pile on. I think Leonard Pitts, Jr. would call each of those things "an inert part of the boulder of oppression" constantly on the backs of "woke" Black people. On a day that starts with a tragic reality check, I feel the weight of that boulder. On my back. In my gut. Sitting on my chest.
I can't breathe.
And I until something changes, I won't be able to.
If they parted ways. If the victims lived. If they did not die in a jail cell, die on the pavement, die in a pool of their own blood.
Die alone, aside from those with the blood on their crooked hands, those who created an altercation where there wasn’t one, those who made assumptions with lifelong or life-ending consequences, those whose prejudice is like a tattoo they can’t see when they look in the mirror -- they can pretend they don’t know it’s there.
That tattoo of hate, of prejudice, of skepticism is one that threatens the lives of Black people in America every single day. It has for a long time. But in 2015, this is no longer a topic of quiet conversation, not a subject confined to whispers at the dinner table or in corners of the house between parents afraid for their Black child’s safety. The conversations have spread to Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and GroupMe, places where people are talking about how to end it and how to protest it and how to honor the lives lost.
These are also the places where Black Americans see the perils of living while Black. The videos on our timelines are not of strangers that live across the country, not of people we will never meet; the people in those videos are our friends, siblings, cousins, parents, aunts and uncles, coworkers and roommates.
When I consider that, when I really think about the fact that someone I know and love and have plans to hang out with or see or even marry -- when I think about one of those people writhing on the ground, arms being twisted out of their sockets, voices screaming at them to stop resisting -- my lungs don’t work quite right. The weight of that loss, either of life or of dignity, sits on my chest. Perhaps it’s not so much my lungs not working as my ribcage being immobilized. Perhaps it is the ache in my heart that makes the rest of my chest feel tight. Perhaps is the knot in my stomach radiating throughout my body -- pain and fear so strong I feel it in my knees.
Either way, I can’t breathe.
But then at some point the video gets too graphic or my eyes start to burn with angry, sad tears or I look up and realize I have five minutes to get ready. My screen darkens. I climb out of bed. As I brush my teeth and pull on my clothes and head out the door, the weight seems to fade.
But then the same story is on the news when I walk into the School of Communications. Or reports surface about a student I know being called a racial slur in an Elon Law classroom. Or my professor plays music to get the class going, and when the N-word plays, I feel the eyes of my classmates waiting for my reaction.
Alone, each of these small things is manageable, or maybe not entirely offensive at all: the news, though quite sad, should be on all the time in the School of Comm. And I actually enjoy when professors try to lighten the mood of a 100-minute class period by playing some great music, even if it is uncut.
But sometimes, when my day starts with a stark reminder of the perils of being Black in America, those small things pile on. I think Leonard Pitts, Jr. would call each of those things "an inert part of the boulder of oppression" constantly on the backs of "woke" Black people. On a day that starts with a tragic reality check, I feel the weight of that boulder. On my back. In my gut. Sitting on my chest.
I can't breathe.
And I until something changes, I won't be able to.