Fear and outrage

Fear is an emotion that everyone feels and nobody likes.

Fear often expresses itself through other emotions - like anger.

One other thing that really struck me about Ta-Nehisi Coates' book Between the World and Me that I talked about yesterday was his openness to talk about black culture and the role fear plays in black life.

Currently in America there is a lot of fear going around - particularly fear of the "other."

First of all, there is no "other" - we are ALL human beings, we are ALL one in Christ, we ALL bear the image of God. Yet somehow along the way the "norm" seems to have become white skin and Christian - everyone else is "other."

We fear other skin shades - "[illegal] immigrants are taking our jobs and increasing drugs and violence!" "refugees are trying to get into the country to hurt us!" "Muslims are terrorists who hate us and want us dead" "All Muslims belong to ISIS" etc. etc.

In this country we go even further when dealing with black lives..

"They don't talk like we do - do they not know proper manners or are they just stupid?" "They wear their pants too low and their jewelry is too big - didn't their parents ever teach them how to dress themselves properly?" "They talk really loud and blare their music"

We have made their lives negative. We have made them "other" by the way they dress, talk, wear their hair, what music they listen to, etc. We have demonized their culture.

They are just living their lives and we are killing them for wearing a hoodie with their hands in their pockets.

Coates recalls in his book a time when, as a journalist, he took his son with him to talk with a mother who's son was murdered by a white man who didn't appreciate how loud his friend's music was being played. Before they left, the mother said to Coates' son: "You exist. You matter. You have value. You have every right to wear your hoodie, to play your music as loud as you want. You have every right to be you. You have to be you. And you can never be afraid to be you."

How outrageous to think that we have put such restraints on an entire group of people. We have sent them a message that they have to live by our rules or die. We have sent them the message that who they are is not good enough - not worthy of living! I am heartbroken.

I don't want to live in this white American box that I have never fit into anyways.

If I, a white American, do not want to and do not fit into this box, how can we expect anyone else to?

Coates also showed me the "hardness" one develops by living in the streets. Not homeless, but the ghettos and inadequate living conditions America has traditionally forced its black bodies into.

These black lives fear white people because white people fear them and fear leads to hatred.

To survive the streets you have to make people fear you. You do this by channeling your fear into rage.

"The crews, the young men who'd transmuted their fear into rage, were the greatest danger. The crews walked the blocks of their neighborhood, loud and rude, because it was only through their loud rudeness that they might feel any sense of security and power... In other cities, indeed in other Baltimores, the neighborhoods had other handles and the boys went by other names, but their mission did not change: prove the inviolability of their block, of their bodies, through their power to crack knees, ribs, and arms."

He says too, "It was always right in front of me. The fear was there in the extravagant boys of my neighborhood, in their large rings and medallions, their big puffy coats and full-length fur-collared leathers, which was their armor against their world... I think back on those boys now and all I see is fear, and all I see is them girding themselves against the ghosts of the bad old days when the Mississippi mod gathered 'round their grandfathers so that the branches of the black body might be torched, then cut away. The fear lived on in their practiced bop, their slouching denim, their big T-shirts, the calculated angle of their baseball caps, a catalog of behaviors and garments enlisted to inspire belief that these boys were in firm possession of everything they desired... It told them, against all evidence and odds, that they were masters of their own lives, their own streets, and their own bodies." (which they in fact were not and are not..)

If we don't ask questions we can live in our innocent ignorance. Perhaps we don't want to ask because we are comfortable. Perhaps we don't want to ask because deep down inside we know the answers and the answers bring us sadness and ANY other emotion is better than sadness - than despair.

Those black lives Coates is telling us about, the ones us whites most like to despise, they KNOW that they are but one wrong turn - one wrong word - one wrong place at the wrong time away from the loss of their bodies - from prison or from death. Those black lives Coates is telling us about, they are doing their best to create their own illusion that says they are not afraid - yet they know what they are up against.

I am heartbroken at the reality Coates has welcomed me into. I grew up with my own set of fears. The fear of public humiliation, my parents divorce, getting a B on my report car, but never did I fear that me or anyone in my family would be murdered. If I feared this it was because of the fear of serial killers - a once in a lifetime, freak accident type of event, completely irrational. Yet they live in a world where murder is an every day occurrence. They have been put there and then blamed and shamed for being there.

I am outraged! I am sad. I am despairing.. I am counting down the days to a new presidency. Holding my breath for what is to come. And reaching out for help in this struggle. I stand with my brothers and sisters despite the color of their skin or the culture in which they were raised. Will you stand with me? We have to fight for change.