checking on your black colleagues? don’t forget your own journey
Originally posted on the Facebook page of 122 Founder, Nnenna Akotaobi.
I'm grateful for the texts, calls, and outreach from folks checking in on their black friends and neighbors. Thank you. I appreciate, and affirm, all of the rage on social media by white friends, colleagues, and acquaintances.
But it's not enough.
Neither is, "I'm not racist." Or, "I don't see color."
You need to see color. Our country was built on a system of race. It's part of our cultural currency. Ignoring race does not negate its existence. It erases BIPOC (black, indigenous, and people of color).
Do not check on me, but rather, CHECK your colleagues, friends and family in their casual and explicit racism.
Check the racialized language you allow in your sphere of influence.
Check the anti-black jokes that are dismissed as no big deal.
Check the folks that you may assert are "too old" or "raised differently", and therefore their anti-black or racist sentiments are excusable.
Check the patterns of thoughts, behaviors, actions, and values, that do not connect the current cycle of *recorded violence against black people + death + public outrage* and the 401 years of inequity and anti-black racist violence in the US.
Your black friends, neighbors, and community are used to it. We have a lifetime of practice. We've grown up socialized in this world. We've learned to code switch, adjust, ignore, internalize the rage, cry silently or in our own circles, complain only to folks who 'get it'....and then log back onto our Zoom meetings like nothing has happened.
Some black folks have evolved from exhaustion to rage. Some black folks have resorted to begging for their humanity publicly as a survival mechanism ("I bleed the same blood!") Some of us have even adapted by expressing anti-black sentiments ourselves.
We're exhausted, but we've been here before.
COVID-19, racism, violence, unemployment...and yet, we persist.
We'll continue to fight, organize, cope, protect our brands so we can survive in a world that does not really see our full humanity - especially in times of peril or stress.
But...how can you help?
Many white folks are entering a new journey of "discovery". I welcome you. And commend you. But the center-piece of this exercise in uncovering the racist and inequitable systems in which we exist is not black people....its you.
It's understanding your own role in these systems, and how you unknowingly create the circumstances that permit violence and anti-black sentiment to endure for 401 years in the US.
Some white folks have asked me for resources, mentorship, or guidance. Which I get. I am a diversity educator, strategist, and practitioner. I am always happy to make recommendations for reading, watching, listening, learning.
But the best way to help your black friends and community members in this moment is to work towards a practice of anti-racist behaviors. Every day.
There is a range of behavior from #AmyCooper to the deaths of #GeorgeFloyd and #BreonnaTaylor. What's universal is that all the folks involved in these scenarios likely consider themselves good people. Good people... who've been socialized the believe in weaponizing the emergency response system against black people. Good people... who've been conditioned to believe that kneeling on the neck of a black man is an entitlement of their job.
Good people must instead do the hard labor of learning...and then unlearning.
Good people need to talk about race..daily. Good people...resist the urge to tokenize the black people in their life for self-comfort. Good people vote for policy-makers that are invested in anti-racists platforms. Good people leverage the power of their voice to call out other good people....and condemn bad people.
Good people...know that there is not arrival point for anti-racism.