None of us are the same anymore, and some of us are dead
Last Monday, I took a hot shower, put on a wool hat, hopped into a rented car, and drove to the Walgreens in South San Francisco. I took a hot shower because this felt like a medical thing, and my mother taught us that you shower for medical things. Also, if we’re being totally honest with each other, I stank. Good hygiene was an early casualty of the pandemic. But today was a new day, so I wanted to start it like a human being, and not like the semi-feral thing I’d become in lockdown.
Cause I
I put on the wool cap because my head was recently shaved. Clippers were the first thing I bought during the lockdown. I figured if we were gonna be stuck at home, with no access to professional haircuts, we should learn how to shave our heads. (My family did not share my enthusiasm.) Personally, I love a freshly shorn head. It’s an action haircut! I am ready for action! You can do anything with a freshly shorn head. Except retain heat. So after my hot shower I put on a wool cap to stay warm.
Our family doesn’t own a car. We’re city people. We mostly get around on public transit, although we’ve been avoiding it during the pandemic. My daughter doesn’t have this luxury. She’s what we now call an essential worker. She takes the bus to work. She double masks and puts on gloves, which reduces the odds but not the anxiety. We’ve been getting around on our bikes a lot this year. We’re lucky to live in a place where we can ride bikes pretty much year round, so that’s nice. But South San Francisco is outside of my bike range, so I rented a car.
I was going to the Walgreens in South San Francisco because I was getting my first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. California had opened up appointments for people 50 and older the week before, and after a lot of refreshing different web sites without any luck, I got a text from a friend that said in all-caps “WALGREENS NOW HURRY!!” I got on the Walgreens app, and after a series of nerve-wrecking mishaps to log in, I managed to score an appointment! I was thankful. I was relieved. I was lucky. I was privileged as fuck. I was also scared, because oddly once you’ve been locked in your house for a year, and someone opens a door, your first reaction isn’t to run through the door. It’s to wonder if you can survive on the other side of the door.
But you have to try. So you take a hot shower, you put on a wool cap, you get in a hot rented car, you drive to the South San Francisco Walgreens, a nurse checks you in, puts an infrared thermometer to your forehead and says the words you’ve been dying to hear for over a year: “Your temperature is 102º.”
I Feel
1,974 miles from that Walgreens, in Minneapolis, Minnesota a cop is on trial for the murder of George Floyd. A murder we all watched him commit. A murder that we’ve all seen happen too many times. A murder that took nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds of commitment to bring to full fruition. I am not calling him a bad cop, or a corrupt cop, or a rogue cop, or a bad apple cop, or even a racist cop. I am calling him a cop. Because all of those other words are contained in the word “cop”. And you cannot call him a bad cop, because that cop was doing his job. That cop was defending whiteness. And if the point needed to be driven home any clearer, during this trial, just ten miles away from where a murder we all saw is being debated, another cop murders Daunte Wright, a Black man, not for having an air freshener hanging from his rearview, but for being Black.
It’s not really a murderous cop that’s on trial though. What’s on trial is who gets to call themselves an American, and who gets protected and served by America. In America, a country that defines whiteness as good, and healthy, and safe, and desirable, Blackness is a virus, and cops are an antibody. Cops protect and serve America’s white body. What’s on trial is whether America’s definition of itself is wrong.
It is.
When this pandemic is over, if it is ever over, we still have to deal with the pandemic of whiteness, and I fear that pandemic will never be over. Because so many of us don’t believe it’s real. Which sounds familiar.
Feel Like
James Baldwin once asked white Americans why we felt the need to invent the word, and you know what the word is. The answer is easy. We invented the word so we could sleep. We invented a word because we needed a place to hide our sins. We invented the word because without that word we were stealing human beings, we were raping human beings, we were separating human beings from their children, we were buying and selling human beings, we were depriving human beings from life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which are things we tell ourselves human beings are entitled to have, and we did not want people who looked like James Baldwin to have have those things. And to live with ourselves, to live with the memory of what we’d done, and what we were hell bent on continuing to do, we needed to think of them as something other than human beings. So we invented a word that made Blackness less than human. We invented it to be an ugly word. That word is our antibody against Black bodies.
We invented the word because without the word we cannot sleep.
Words have meaning. And while meanings change over time, the invention of a word will always reveal a truth about its purpose. Just as the invention of America’s police will lead you to a truth about its purpose — the first police in America were posses for catching runaway slaves. The Second Amendment was written to legitimize those posses. It was introduced as an Amendment to the Constitution because Virginia governor Patrick Henry, of give me liberty or give me death fame, feared that without it slaveowners couldn’t pursue runaway slaves or suppress slave uprisings. America’s police have always been in the business of protecting and serving whiteness.
As I write this, a video is released of cops murdering Adam Toledo, a 13 year old boy. Everything written about police violence is out of date as it’s being written.
I Am
I have been in my house for fourteen months. I am attempting to survive a pandemic. And, even in the middle of a global pandemic, I am lucky. I am lucky that I’ve been able to earn while sitting on my ass at home. I am lucky that I have a home to do that in. I am lucky that I’ve been able to feed myself and mine during this pandemic. And I’ve been very, very, lucky that this virus has not entered through my door.
Like most white Americans, I feel safe in my home. I’ve been told that this is a privilege. I’ve been told that going outside and not being murdered is a privilege too. But they’re not. They’re basic human rights. Everyone should have a home where they feel safe. Breonna Taylor was murdered while she was sleeping soundly in her home. Everyone should be able to go outside without being murdered. George Floyd was murdered going out for a pack of smokes.
I’ve been hiding in my home because there is a tiny little invisible virus out there that wants to kill me. The few times I’ve gone out of my home I’ve been terrified. Is someone not wearing a mask? Is someone too close? Is my mask on right? Am I gonna get it from a doorknob? A package at my front door? A clerk at the grocery store? I’m not overreacting, as of this writing, Covid-19 has killed 579,903 people in America.
Imagine there is something outside that wants to kill you. Imagine there is something outside that is looking for the smallest little slip-up to kill you. Imagine that thing is armed to the teeth. Imagine that it believes its job is to kill you, because it has been killing you since its invention, and has always gotten away with it. Now imagine half of America giving that killer medals, throwing it parades, and rewarding it with pensions.
There is now a vaccine for one of these pandemics.
If fourteen months feels like a long time, imagine what generations must feel like.
In a Burning Building
On Wednesday, April 14th, at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, in the same city where a cop is on trial for murdering George Floyd, and the same city where a cop murdered Daunte Wright, a 61-year-old man walks into a hardware store. He’s not wearing a mask. An employee asks him to put on a mask. He does not comply. Instead, he strikes the employee with a piece of lumber and leaves the store. The police are called. They ask him to stop. He does not comply. Instead he gets in his car. The police follow in theirs, finally bringing him to a stop, after a slow speed chase. An officer, from the same police department as the cops that killed George Floyd and Daunte Wright, approach the car. He asks the 61-year-old man to get out of the car. He does not comply. Instead, he pulls the cop through the driver’s side window and drives off, while simultaneously striking him in the head with a hammer.
The 61-year-old man is, of course, white. And is, of course, in custody. He did not comply. For his non-compliance, he is not dead. And yet, when a Black person is murdered by police, a large swath of people who look like me start asking, “Why did they not comply?” That is the wrong question. Obviously, it’s not a lack of compliance that gets you murdered by police, or that 61-year-old white man would be dead. A better question would be “Why are they Black?” If you don’t want to get killed by cops, don’t be Black.
When I was growing up the gold standard for proving we weren’t racist was to say that we didn’t see color. Our best compliment was to tell you that we didn’t see you. America has been asking Black people not to be Black for a long time.
And I Gotta Go
“Your temperature is 102º,” she said.
“WHAT?!?”
“Go outside. Cool off.”
I’m standing outside Walgreens, in the shadiest spot I can find. My mind is racing. Am I about to find out that I have the virus just as I was about to get my first dose of vaccine against it? I start panicking. It’s not helping me cool down. I start making plans for the worst-case scenario, which is a thing I do. If I plan for the worst, I’ll be pleasantly surprised when it doesn’t happen. I’ll drive the rental car back. I’ll wipe it down. I’ll text my wife and ask her to pack me a bag and leave it at the front door. I’ll check into a hotel and hopefully ride it out. This calms me down. I have a plan. I walk back inside. The nurse takes my temperature. It’s 98.6º. I get a dose.
That’s one pandemic on the way to being handled.
We can start getting a handle on the other one by defunding the police.
There are many groups doing work. This is a very, very partial list. There are many ways to help, from getting in the street, to getting your camera out when you see a cop stepping to a Black person, to getting on the phone to your elected officials, to getting out your wallets. Only you know which of those is right for you. It’s a lot, and if you cannot help today, maybe you can help tomorrow. Meanwhile, heal.
(These descriptions are taken from the sites themselves.)
Minnesota Freedom Fund: The Minnesota Freedom Fund pays criminal bail and immigration bonds for those who cannot otherwise afford to as we seek to end discriminatory, coercive, and oppressive jailing.
Know Your Rights Camp: Our mission is to advance the liberation and well-being of Black and Brown communities through education, self-empowerment, mass-mobilization and the creation of new systems that elevate the next generation of change leaders.
Campaign Zero: We can live in a world where the police don't kill people by limiting police interventions, improving community interactions, and ensuring accountability.
Defund the Police Petition: Minneapolis and cities across our country are on fire, and our people are hurting — the violence against Black bodies felt in the ongoing mass disobedience, all while we grapple with a pandemic that is disproportionately affecting, infecting, and killing us.
Contact our elected reps: They’re supposed to be representing all of us.
Also, if you have access to HBO, please watch Raoul Peck’s new series Exterminate All the Brutes. It is a heart-breaking story well told and it is worth your time.
Oh, and if you want a free zine of My People Were In Shipping, in English and Portuguese, just fill this out.