Pain Can Only Be Buried For So Long
You can’t bury pain without healing. Eventually, it will rise either in small reactions or show it’s head in a massive eruption. What you are witnessing is the violent eruption of pain due to the injustice that blacks have faced in this country. For 400 years, black people have been treated terribly for simply having brown skin. Race has been used as a social construct to create division and power vacuums. Now the chickens come home to roost.
You see, I got up yesterday and went golfing. I honestly needed the space to clear my head and getaway, but after golfing I walked around the suburban clubhouse and saw people sitting, eating, having drinks while some 21 miles away all hell was breaking loose near my home. I began to feel guilty. I felt guilty because I knew that my privilege allowed me to get away from it all (at least mentally for a moment). So I got in my car and drove home. As I drove east, I felt as if the sky got darker. It felt as if the clouds of rage and oppression hid the sun and my soul became uneasy.
My parents called me 5 times to make sure I was well as they saw 47th street being destroyed on the news and they also know I have a hard time not answering the call to be active in the fight for justice. They also knew I wouldn’t sit and let staples of our community be destroyed. I went to see my friend Jonathan T Swain. I wanted to make sure he didn’t need help or need me to sit in front of his store. He’s provided jobs and revenue from his store to support the community and has given his life to service. I then went to check on Trez V. Pugh III on 43rd street. His Sip and Savor shops have been the birthplace to so many wonderful things and it absolutely matters that we protect these places. I went home and I began to read. I feel now is the time that I need to study and get wiser. I got a wonderful call from my brother Xavier Ramey on Wednesday that not only encouraged me both personally and spiritually but also motivated and empowered me to use my voice. So I’ve decided to work harder and use my voice. He shared that my transparency and experience is necessary not just for myself but for the larger community. He also made it clear that the time is now to organize and plant even more seeds of justice.
As I walked my blocks I thought of the folks sitting at the golf course and I thought of the words of Dr. King. He said, his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, “I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. For those of you reading I want to make it clear. If we continue to settle for order of negative peace and constant tension these moments will continue to happen. Things will only change when my white brothers and sisters are as moved by the George Floyd video as am I. We can only change things together until we acknowledge the historical pain that exists in people of color in America. I’m not sure how that happens but understand that until it does and until we can move our inherent bias out the way to hear from each other. These seasons will continue and this country will break under the weight of its self-imposed pain.
It is no coincidence that these events have taken place almost 100 years to the day of massacre of black wall street in Tulsa Oklahoma.
