Imperfect Allyship and Trauma

Symptoms: 

✊🏻It’s like a constant state of put your head down and keep moving forward fighting for what is right, but at the same time, constantly feeling physically sick to your stomach.
✊🏻Your body is so confused. Sleep is weird, your stomach is angry, you are a strange form of outrage, despair, and you know deep feelings of trauma are there, but your body is in it, you can’t function normally, and you can’t deal with those right now because you have more important things to do. Like fight for black people’s right to be ALIVE.

Truth:

It’s not about us. With the full knowledge black people have had to fight alone for generations; be an ally. For those of you who are white you are probably just now realizing black people have had recurring, oppressive trauma their entire lives, and generations before them. This is not new to them. It’s not JUST their trauma, it’s GENERATIONAL trauma. It is time for you to put your ego aside ( been there, more on that later) and learn. Grow. You can read a book. Listen to podcasts with voices who differ from your viewpoint or experience. Ego is a refusal to grow. Ego is a refusal to admit wrong. Put your Ego aside and learn to do better. Do better. Grow.

Embarrassed To Say, Been There:

Yikes: Up until I was 19/20 years old, I was a walking talking point of race and economic knowledge. I repeated only phrases I’d been told to believe or heard on the news. I had no depth of understanding on the topics, I only knew, mainly Republican, talking points. Deep in my empathetic heart I knew I disagreed, but I people pleased my way through politics and social issues. I regret that to this day and will work the rest of my life trying to do better.

Fast forward: As a freshman in college living in a city (Chicago) for the first time in my life; I learned I was the definition of sheltered, naive Catholic school girl. Think of believing you are blind only to be told that you can open your eyelids and see. That was me. Unfortunately along the way, I’m pretty sure I hurt a lot of people with my ignorance. And my naive baby heart held so tight for so long until I was ready to put my ego aside and do better. From race to social issues I learned life by meeting so many beautiful people different from me and taking college courses on sociology and psychology.

These experiences brought me slowly, but surely to the conclusion that what I had parroted my whole life was so wrong. And, man, is that a humbling experience. AND Learning I was wrong was the best experience of my life. Life changing. I learned better, so I did better (Thank you Dr. Maya Angelou). Turns out, in college classes opinions don’t count as facts and facts have to be proven by unbiased sources and research. (“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” -unknown.) I had my heart all along, it was just too blinded by ego and talking points to grow in education and knowledge. I’m not proud of that. But that journey made me.

If you are arriving to the party this late: admit you were wrong. Admit you’re learning to do better. True integrity is admitting you were wrong, and changing.

If you, like me, are currently in a state of trauma, chronic stress, and at times, despair for the world: there needs to be time to recharge. BUT Let your only fuel be fighting for the rights of those who don’t have them. Full stop. Not because it’s trendy. Not because others see you checking your fight against racism box. Not because you feel like if you don’t do anything it’s embarrassing. Not because you feel guilty. Only from a selfless, just fight for the equity of those you know and those you don’t. From that fuel, and that fuel only, recharge and take care of you. Let it open your eyes to the many reasons we need to continue to learn to do better. Let it open your eyes to WHY protests and MASSIVE structural changes are not just necessary, but life and death for black people.

These feelings are so complex. I don’t begin to pretend to say it well. I’m imperfect in my allyship. But I continue to strive for learning. Striving to be the best ally everyone else deserves. If you’re feeling this way, congratulations, you have a heart who feels deeply for others and is brave enough to use it. I’m with you, gosh dammit it’s f*^#+*} hard. But I know we won’t regret being unabashedly ourselves. Being unashamed in the pursuit of bettering ourselves as allies. Unashamed at bettering the world for others. And unabashedly talking and questioning in hopes of changing the hearts of those too scared to learn, change, & do better for people they don’t know.

Stop It With The Blue Lives: It’s Not About You.

Fixed it. As someone who works in social media, the original of the photo below is so deeply troubling that I will not even post it for reference. I edited this one because it can be used to inform others to do better.

The original also breaks flag code, but I digress. The Deep Problems with this are:
1.)The very deliberate changing of the colors of the original to be blue (fun fact police officers DON’T actually have blue skin)
2.) The small font size mentioning victims and bad cops in comparison to…
3.) The big font size focusing on “good” cops.
4.) The privileged defensive language (I can and will).
5.) The putting of victim and bad cops on the same level, in the same font size, in the same font. Beyond cringeworthy.

Apply it to your life:
Let’s say someone’s child tragically died of an illness. They’re giving a eulogy about what that child meant to them, what their life meant to them, and someone takes the microphone, with a perfectly healthy child and yells ,”MY CHILD MATTERS,” in their face. How would you feel? How would they feel? That’s what the ‘blue lives matter’ does to every person of color every single day.

All cops are not bad. But it’s not about them. It’s not about you. Policing needs to change because innocent people are being killed; innocent people who look nothing like me. If you are a cop, and you allow your people to kill people or harm minorities because of race; you TOO are a bad cop. And every person who makes excuses for people being innocently harmed, profiled, or worse, killed are just as guilty.
If your family member was killed for being a woman by a man; would someone scream in your face “MEN’S LIVES MATTER!!!!!!”? Unfortunately in today’s world, maybe, but everyone around them would see they’re wrong and stand up for you.

Race shouldn’t be different. No one doubts police lives matter. The difference is police aren’t killed for who they are, for being born, they CHOSE to be a police officer. Of course no one deserves to be killed. And that’s EXACTLY the point! Black people didn’t choose to be born into a racist society hellbent on their oppression; YET they are killed for existing with skin.
I know people who have cops in their family have good intentions and real concerns for the safety for their family members, as they choose to do a very risky job.

What you need to realize is this: for hundreds of years people of color have had their slaughter, lynching, raping, & genocide excused, as blue lives matter unintentionally does. You should never say blue lives matter, not because police officer’s lives don’t matter, of course they do, but you should never say it because that is you signing your name and legacy to a system excusing the mass genocide of people of color for being born and having skin.
. . .
For the sake of my friends, some who have become family, my nearest and dearest, and those who I don’t know, I will not allow anyone posting any blue lives matter comments on my posts or page. People of color are humans who deserve to live. Full stop. They deserve to be spared from the retraumatization of seeing this blue lives nonsense. Not on my page.