Tag Archives: Black Lives Matter

To White People: You’re gonna have to smile first

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I know. I know. That changes things quite a bit. This is not how we usually roll past each other. It’s not how we do things. How we function.

It’s on me to make sure cashiers see me and my big smile when I enter a store, regardless of what emotion I’m feeling, whether it’s a shit day or I’m really wishing to not be seen but I need to pick up my prescription.

It’s on me to show them very quickly that I’m harmless. That I’m not a thief nor am I going to blow up, go off or get uppity. I need them to believe I’m one of the good ones.

It’s on me to move aside and apologize if you bump into me with your cart. I’m in the space you want to enter.

It’s on me to not make any quick moves. And keep my hands out of my pockets.

It’s on me to lower my voice.

It’s on me to calm down and shush my laughter.

It’s on me to make sure you’re comfortable.

Yes, I’m wearing my No Justice No Peace t-shirt with a Black Lives Matter mask, and all my blessed turquoise, which is confusing for you. Maybe. I’m not exactly Black Black, but I’m Brown and if you need to stare at my hair, I have to be okay with that. I wore it out so what can I expect.

O Wait. We’re wearing masks. I can’t see if your lips are tight, if you’re sneering with disgust, ready to spit, or if you would actually smile.

I don’t know what to do now. How do I navigate the space we share?

See- If you’d had enough, if you think you’ve been quiet around all the Black and Brown people you had to encounter today, yesterday, this year or the last and today is the day of “I gotta say something about these people and all this shit,” I could easily be on the receiving end of that. I think about this every time I go out. With every white person I pass. Is this going to be that moment?

Lovecraft Country gave me the cry I needed

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Yesterday I woke to news about Mr. Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man who stopped to break up a domestic situation, and ended up being shot in the back eight times. In front of his children. I’m going to type that again. IN FRONT OF HIS CHILDREN IN THE CAR. And then I came across the video. It was embedded in a news article.

I hesitated to watch it. Did I need to see it? Will I just add it to the gut wrenching, horrific images I still have and will never forget of Mr. Floyd being murdered by police? What will viewing this video do to me?

That felt like a selfish or self-serving question. And in no way was I thinking this was all about me and yet, it is also about me. I’m Mixed Blood. Indigenous and Black. I’m the Black and Brown folks are talking about. I live in Minneapolis. I have family and friends, a tribe, a community and they are strong, loving people. Black Lives Matter. And they are wounded by the pain of racial strife (wow, that’s such a timid word…I apologize. I’m continuously struggling with words to describe my feelings about my life, our country, and our world).

So I watched it. Just once.

People were screaming. Shocked by what they were seeing unfolding before their eyes. And then Mr. Blake tried to get in his car. The cop grabbed the back of shirt with one hand and fired on Mr. Blake with the other.

Then the car horn. From Mr. Blake falling against his steering wheel. In front of his children.

A woman in the street shrieked with hysteria.

This is more trauma. More. More. More.

I had a full day scheduled with work deadlines. I’m a Sensitivity Reader and Diversity Editor. I’m a Beta Reader and a writer. I have a novel manuscript to revise about a Mixed Race cop who takes on a white supremacist who starts a race war in Minneapolis. She’s assisted by her ancestors.

I have a TV project about a half-Native, half -Vietnamese adoptee of a wealthy white Minnesota family who returns home when her father is dying and is met with the secrets and trauma that made her run away in the first place. I had a development meeting with my co-creator and co-producer, Elizabeth Frances, on the calendar.

I was scheduled to show up yesterday. But I couldn’t get there. I felt the hard lump stuck in my chest slowly making it’s way up to lodge itself in my throat. My daughter, Lanee Bird and I texted about the world, and I cried because I can’t get on a plane to go see her in NYC. I reached out to my super smart Twin Cities girlfriends and they, like me, were feeling the rage. I went to Facebook to check in my friends, to share this overwhelming flood of emotional pain and angst of everything that is happening in our lives. Covid. RNC. Race relations. Hurricanes and astroids.

Then my meeting began and I asked Liz to hold space for me because I needed to cry. Which I did a bit but I think rage was still the power emotion in charge. We ranted. We laughed. We made plans to rule the world. Or at least the airwaves with a podcast called “Calm the Fuck Down” and I felt better. Not clear. Not healed but better.

I kept busy after that with busy work, cleaning the bathroom, and taking moments to breathe. And then I sat down to watch Sunday’s latest episode of HBO’s Lovecraft Country. Oh…damn. The brilliance. The poignant brilliance.

There are a few shows that require me to get ready to view. Ones where I have to gather my blanket, hot tea and Kleenex, put down my phone and close my computer. And plan to not do much afterwards because I need the head and heart space to process. Handmaid’s Tale is like that. And more recently, I May Destroy You. And now, Lovecraft Country.

I won’t spoil anything about this show because I want you to see it.

Just know that at then end of Episode 2…in my “O, Damn!” exclamation was the directive for my dam to break. I wept. The tears weren’t just about the show. They came from someplace deeper in me. They came from me holding my brown face in my brown hands and feeling the righteous rage of my ancestors, Black and Brown, captured, denigrated. And killed.

Sometimes, too many times, it’s so difficult being Black and Brown in this country.

#BlackLivesMatter

#IndigenousLivesMatter

We matter. We always have. And we will make the world know this.

Be safe.

The race war was my nightmare…and novel

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After the world watched Mr. Floyd being murdered by the brutal force of racist cops in my city, and BIPOC took it to the street, the white supremacists raced out to clash with them. This was an opportunity for them. They got the go ahead from their leaders, including the loudest in the white house.

I shook and shuttered with fear. I wept with my family and with the spirits of my ancestors. Because for years, I’ve had nightmares of running feet. Black feet. Brown feet. That’s where the story began that led me the story of STANDS ALONE. A Mixed Blood, half-Native, half-Black detective with the help of her ancestors takes on a white supremacist who starts a race war…

In Minneapolis. Yeah. I know Lake Street. And 38th and Chicago. South Minneapolis.

I’m still reeling. I’m still hurting. And this is the revolution.

BE safe.

Not a Toast…on MLK Day…

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I struggle this morning to find the music I need to write to…because I am attempting to avoid some pain. That deep pain of racial upset, discord…from the hate that runs rampant in our country today. As the numbers of followers of evil men grow, the ones that openly carry weapons with their racism to shoot to kill because it is their right… as white… The ones who wish to close the borders, cage Muslims, hunt Black youth, rape Native women, strip away dignities, deny care and health, stamp out the futures for children and women because of the color of their skin, because of how little they have… as the followers of evil men grow, I feel my anger drain to sadness.
 
I know at some point I will listen to the words of the great Martin Luther King, Jr. today and I’ll cry. I always do. I know that I carry within me the stories of my ancestors before me. I know these stories. Of Black slaves. Of persecuted Native women. Of poverty-stricken souls. I know these people. And today, when we honor the man who had such vision to dream of a better tomorrow, a time of equality, peace and love, I will want to do that, too. For me and for you. And for all these ancestors in my heart. In my DNA. I will want to keep dreaming and wishing.
I don’t want to fall victim to my own discouragement. I don’t want the larger forces that wish for those of us who believe in peace, to win. I don’t want to fall defeated, to take on exhaustion as a failure and go away silent except for the sound of our muffled tears.
 
I’m at the page trying to write, trying to lose myself in fiction because real life is really hard. And breathing is a task.
 
I’ve been rereading Toni Morrison’s “Playing in the Dark” fascinated by her wisdom and pondering my own lens to the stories I tell. I am wishing that I find strength to keep going because I don’t know how to do anything else but this, to tell a story in any other way than I do now. Tough. Gritty. Truthful (according to my own truth… and not anyone else’s).  I am tired.
 
I’m thinking of this next year and what it could bring. If I show up. But today, I’m feeling the struggle. And am sitting in my office with only the sounds of my finger tips on the keyboard.
I am avoiding music. Of civil rights. Diverse voices that sing the blues. That make me wanna holler. I can’t force myself to deny struggle or betray by listening to something poppy and joyful because I struggle. I struggle. 
So this isn’t a Toast to anything…