My blog post was in its outline stages, drawing a bright, white line between Amazon’s idyllic ad celebrating Prime delivery workers, and the lived reality of black drivers who can’t do their job without getting harassed by, in some cases, their own customers. I had hoped to make a powerful statement to other white folks, to illustrate how our bleached vision of the world so obviously excludes the experiences of black folks.
But after gathering the evidence for my argument, the draft just languished. For a day. Then a week. Until I was pretty sure I’d be shelving yet another attempt to tackle racial justice.
Then came George Floyd. One more black man murdered by police on camera. One more black man whose labored pleas for help met callous indifference from law enforcement officers. The video was everywhere up and down my Twitter feed. It was unavoidable. So, like too many times before, I watched. I saw 15, maybe 20 seconds of the clip before I had to scroll away.
Finally, I understood why so many black brothers and sisters have been asking us not to share these snuff films. I felt pain and rage and disgust that it takes an act so inhuman to inspire me to speak out, as though the thousands of microaggressions I’ve observed against people of color aren’t enough to warrant my persistent, vocal opposition. There is nothing preventing Indianapolis from becoming the next Minneapolis, the next Baton Rouge, the next Ferguson. Certainly not me. Not sitting quietly in my house like this.
One striking image from the protests in Minneapolis captures what anti-racism looks like. What anti-racism has to look like. See all the white arms raised? The white fists?
We are the structural racism we came to dismantle. We hold sway over the institutions of power in our cities and states. We must take collective, intentional action to change those institutions if we truly believe that black lives matter as much as white ones.
November 3rd seems like a good place to start. There’s a lot of work to do between now and then. Who’s with me?
Child of MAGA Adults 