I need to write that shit down but I don’t even know where to start. I’ve read so much since the verdict.
I heard it Saturday night. I was alone. I had met two middle aged black ladies doing a yard sale up the street that day walking the dog. I had excused myself, passing through their stuff and one said “it’s all good!” which I rarely if ever hear in white LA. It made me smile. It sounds cool, it sounds chill compared to the straight, almost passive aggressive “it’s all right”.
That night I broke down. I broke down hard and I could have broke down so much harder. Thought of my white foster mom who last time I saw her two months ago was talking about “that nigger” who wanted to help her at the hospital. You have no idea. Thankfully I heal like Wolverine.
All I wanted that verdict night was to go up the street and hug these ladies, in silence. Eyes closed and running. Of course, I didn’t do it.
I kind of hit a point with this story: I don’t really want to talk about racism with white people, ever again. Sorry white friends, nothing personal. Most of you just haven’t read enough about black history and it’s a little hard for me to be in the middle witnessing everything.
I still can’t formulate my feelings. Not really angry or hopeless –I mean of course I am-, I more feel like this is it, black people need to not believe and quickly as possible try to live out of that system that systematically, forever it seems, will punish us.
It took me almost two weeks to post that, reading it over and over. I shouldn’t keep that shit in me for so long.
One reply on “Trayvon”
Well, somehow, I foolishly think I can feel you on some of it.
Maybe because I thought things were different and I got disappointed.
My brother was born in Africa, Senegal, a long time before I was born. I always thought he was african because he had an african paper and had to choose at 18 yo and couldn’t avoid the military service to have french nationality.
As a kid, I thought you could be white and african, well I didn’t know that colour was a factor. So for years I thought I could be african some day if I decide to go spend my life in Africa.
Ha ha.
Now when I say that to black people, or white poeple they laugh in my face before I even explain how you can see that as a kid and why it makes sense.
What gets me on these comments on the riots after the verdict is the complete lack of political counsciousness and sociology. I have witnessed that stupidity in every conversation on the internet after the verdict. FUCKING FB.
I couldn’t even argue with some stupid (white) people who were unable to see the big picture, the social background, the History. I could do a best of of the dumbest comments on the situation. White europeans who would give their opinion on a matter so far away from their day to day life…
I wanted to scream and hit them in the face tbh. The same stupid comments on riots in French places where young people express the only things they can. Violence right back at the face of society.
Riots DO NOT START FOR NO REASON. People don’t get angry for no reason. France more than any other country in the world should know that better. Révolution française, 1789. After year and years of being crushed by power, treated like dirt, starved and used, the people got angry and killed the first king they found. Guess what, it was not even the worst. Yea people get silly when they get emotional. Luckily in France medias did not dare criticize too much and I had the feeling that on a mediatic level, everyone was shocked after the verdict, but it was not clearly explained to the people, unlike the riots in Brasil, who benefited from a large explanation of the social background… and the corruption and the abuse of the government/banks/society.
I instantly felt I was wasting my energy on those conversations, so I can’t even begin to imagine how you must feel.*
After I “understood” or realized rather that being white and african Could not be possible, I got relieved in the 90’s where we’d be told at school that we could all live together. I mean, maybe I made it up, Im pretty sure someone told that to me. Or wait, maybe it was in a book, or in Church. Anyway. I bought it.
Ha ha.
Im sorry h. Im really sorry that you were broke like that. I’m sorry your mum said that also. I would hug you in silence if I could, but I guess it wouldn’t be the same, because you’d need something more.
You keep up the good work.
I’ll read some more.