Hear Our Pain or Feel Our Rage

This time feels different.

The history of the United States, from its inception to now, is marked by black folks trying to make the country live up to the promises it made on July 4, 1776. This idea that all men are created equal has somehow eluded us. So the country sits, nearing the midway point of 2020, at a place that we may not have ever seen it before. The check that America wrote to its black citizens nearly 244 years ago has come due.

Hear our pain or feel our rage.

We've seen the images in Minneapolis of folks protesting. Not just protesting the death of George Floyd, but by the justice systems lack of urgency in addressing it. Finally, his killer has been arrested, but only after a chunk of the city was set aflame. In my own hometown of Louisville, KY, protestors marched in the memory of Breonna Taylor, a black resident that was killed when police executed a No-Knock Warrant. Yes, violence erupted during the protest. Why? Because black people are tired. We are so sick and so tired of  being denied justice. And in 2020, we have reached the boiling point.

Hear our pain or feel our rage.

Fox News contributor Tomi Lahren opined, echoing a few other prominent white folks, why do black people need to riot? Why can't they just protest in some other fashion? That sounds great on paper, seeing as the First Amendment to the US Constitution grants every citizen the right to protest and air grievances. But let's unpack a few things because the "riot" isn't where this started, but it is where we are right now.

Black folks said don’t treat us like slaves and that we were more than 3/5th human and the whole country went to war over it. After the Civil War, you said we couldn’t live with you, so we went and set up our own neighborhoods and cities and towns and you got upset and they were burned to the ground. At the beginning of the 20th century, we tried to get laws passed, peacefully, so we could legally be full citizens and you lynched us, for fun and sport. Lynching to send a message of hate.  Then, in the late 1950s and 60s, we peacefully marched through the streets. We sat in at lunch counters. What was your response? We were assaulted. Fire hoses and police dogs were turned against us. The homes of our leaders and our churches were bombed. Our children and elderly were killed (there’s a neighborhood in Birmingham called Dynamite Hill because the area was bombed over 50 times in a less than 20 year period). And the man that you love to quote, that stood up and preached nonviolence, that said he had a dream about love and brotherhood and urged America to come together in peace... He was shot and killed, like a rabid dog in the street.

Black folks have quite literally tried everything to get you to care. We’ve tried begging. We’ve tried pleading. We’ve marched. We’ve sang songs. We’ve voted. We’ve gotten laws passed. We’ve prayed, Lord have we prayed. We've written eloquent essays and delivered eloquent speeches. And, yes, we’ve even kneeled. 

What has become of all that pleading? Nothing has been right. Nothing black folks have ever done has been accepted by the majority as the right way to protest. Nothing. So, you wanna finally notice the plight of black people because there’s riots? You wanna thumb your nose at the way we communicate our pain? You only mention Chicago when it fits your gun rights narrative? You wanna toss out “black on black” crime, as if ALL crime isn’t intraracial? You wanna look down your nose at the very people who's blood helped fertilize the soil of this country? To quote Ice Cube as he portrayed Craig Jones in the 1995 film Friday: "Bye, Felisha."

Hear our pain or feel our rage.

This time it feels different than the other times black folks have collectively reached their breaking point. And it has to be. This has to be it. I had a conversation with my youngest daughter. She reads and watches the news. She asked me about George Floyd. She asked about Amaud Armery. She asked about Christian Cooper. We talked and, like every generation of African-Americans before me, I had to have a frank conversation with her about what her race (she's biracial, but that IS black) means in America. It was heart-breaking to tell her what she's going to have to deal with. The worst part of all is when she hugged me and said: "Be safe."

Now, I can add my daughter to the list of the black people over the centuries that have had to hug their black brothers and sisters tight and say "be safe." Be safe when you run (Amaud Armery). Be safe when you're in the park (Christian Cooper). Be safe when you're at home (Breonna Taylor, Botham Jean). Be safe when you go to a party (Oscar Grant). Be safe when you have a normal traffic stop (Sandra Bland). Be safe when you're playing in a park (Tamir Rice). Be safe just existing. Two words that carry so much weight because while we know those names, there are so many more that aren't publicly known, but their families and their communities miss them just the same. 

My daily prayer begins with "Dear Lord, please don't let Terry Brown be a hashtag."

Hear our pain or feel our rage.

Judge me if you want. Judge my people if you will. I’ll only acknowledge your riot takes if you know the name of the man MN police killed (George Floyd, by the way). If you want to understand what it's like for your African-American brothers and sisters, just listen. We're trying to tell you. We want you to understand. We want to make America the best that she can be. Black folks have been fighting and dying for this country since Crispus Attucks fell in the Revolutionary War. The Greatest Generation of black folks went and fought for a country that still denied them the right to vote. Do not EVER question our patriotism. We just wish America loved us as much as we love her

It’s not the 3rd Monday in January and it’s not Black History Month, but try THIS MLK quote on for size: 

“And I contend that the cry of ‘black power’ is, at bottom, a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro,” King said. “I think that we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard.”