The Dithering of a District Diva

A few weeks back, I re-read Toni Morrison’s bone-chilling first novel, The Bluest Eye, and it got me to thinking about fear. The main character is a little Black girl named Pecola, who has been told and shown repeatedly throughout her life that she is ugly and worthless–so much so that she prays to God to perform a ‘miracle’ and make her eyes blue, like Shirley Temple’s, so people will see her value and treat her  accordingly.

In the foreword to The Bluest Eye, Morrison writes that she intentionally did not write Pecola’s story to bear the weight of the novel alone, one, because the weight would “smash” the delicate and vulnerable Pecola, and two, because she didn’t want to “lead readers into the comfort of pitying her rather than into an interrogation of themselves for the smashing.” Morrison believes she failed in that effort, as “many readers remain touched but not moved.”

Not so, for me.

Ever since, I’ve been going out of my way to affirm and validate every little Black girl I see–in stores, on trains, on the sidewalk, wherever–whether with a smile or a wave or a short conversation (with parents’ approval) that hopefully screams into the depths of them, You are seen, baby! You were born to be loved, and you are loved!

Because, like Pecola, our fears don’t grow in us and manifest in our lives as the result of only 1 thing or 1 encounter. There are series of events that teach us whether we matter and how much, and our deepest fears–that we don’t in fact matter–grow into beliefs and beliefs into actions.

Fresh off the murder of unarmed Black man and father of 4, Walter Scott by White South Carolina police officer Michael Thomas Slager and the assault on a bus full of Black people in St. Louis whom the cops made keep their hands up for 5 minutes like a stick-up, while they “searched for a suspect,” I’ve awakened this morning to learn of the next hashtag, unarmed Black man Eric Harris, who was not only murdered by police but when he cried out, “I can’t breathe,” the police are heard on video saying, “F**k your breath.”

F**k your breath.

My God.

We are continuously bombarded with graphic images of Black death at the hands of White police. That psychological violence does something to us, when we know any of us, or our sisters, brothers, fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts could be next. Though the police killings of Rekia Boyd, Miriam Carey, and 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones didn’t get near the universal Black outrage and support as Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown or 12-year-old Tamir Rice, Black female death by police and vigilantes is just as much of a problem.

So what have we learned? Running away from police won’t save you. Putting your hands up won’t save you. Fighting back sure won’t save you. Being rich and/or educated won’t save you. Being able-bodied or disabled won’t save you. Being a woman won’t save you. Being mentally ill won’t save you. Being binary or non-binary won’t save you. Being heterosexual or homosexual, asexual or intersexual won’t save you. Being a playing child or a sleeping child will not save you. What are you supposed to think and feel and do?

In the face of so much traumatic external, physical fear, we internalize it to the point of, (often undiagnosed) emotional distress. We have been raised and are raising our children (subconsciously or otherwise) with the psychological damage that was passed down from our parents, and their parents and theirs. Anti-Blackness and misogynoir are such global, inescapable, deeply ingrained tools of oppression that even the most “woke” among us still perpetuate it. A thoughtless comment at a family reunion that a little niece carries with her into adulthood. A father’s dismissal. A mother’s criticism. A store clerk’s impatience and a Black girl’s general invisibility is compounded by everything she sees in the media about herself and everything Black boys and men, who should’ve been her brothers or fathers or lovers and defenders, do to her, instead affirm for her her deepest fears, that she is, in fact, inadequate, unsatisfactory, unpretty, minuscule, of no importance.

And the outside world, her oppressors, smash her with their ‘guilt’ and pity instead of interrogating themselves for the smashing.

So, we date inappropriate men who affirm for us how we already have been socialized to feel about ourselves. Or we desperately hold onto people we should’ve never gotten caught up with in the first place. We regard Black women, Black skin, Black hair, Black features as generally less-than, inherently negative–unless White women possess those same features–and treat Black women and girls accordingly. When the White world kicks us down, we go home to our Black families and blame them for the fall. We use young Black women to boost our waning egos and discard them at leisure. Or we focus our energy on how we dress and the car we drive and the career we’ve built for ourselves. We rest on the success of our family name or do whatever we can to make a new name for ourselves and escape the family we see as causing us pain.

We shuck and jive or put our fists in the air. We tell each other to wear appropriate clothing to be taken seriously, don’t litter, don’t acknowledge psychological pain but also don’t do drugs to numb it. We go to college or we join the police force. We peacefully protest or we riot. Be closeted and respectable or be out and proud. Be patriarchal and oppressive or intersectional. We get married and have children or we avoid having children at all costs until the world deserves them, or because we simply don’t want to. We organize or we criticize the organizers for not having a ‘plan’. We support our young people or we dismiss them as ‘too radical’. We say, no justice, no peace, or we say ‘extend a hand in love’ to White people ad make them feel good and safe when we never not one day have that luxury in this country. We say “All lives matter” or BLACK LIVES MATTER. Or we do nothing at all.

Pick any of the above–we’ll still be Black. And being Black has life-and-death, physical, emotional and psychological consequences that are based on the totally irrational system of White supremacy and White fear of Blackness.

And as dream hampton says, there is no right or smart or better way to cope with irrational White fear.

So what can we do about fear so deeply ingrained in them and therefore in us? Though internalized systemic racism in individual Black people causes harm to other Black people (like that Black officer who stood by as Michael Slager planted a weapon on a dead Walter Scott), can we judge them? Can any of us judge the way we cope with somebody else’s system of irrational fear and psychological warfare?

I have no answers. We’re all just trying to feel better.

I just want the system of White Supremacy uprooted and destroyed at the source. I want White agents of the State to stop killing us with impunity. I want every Black life to matter. I want to be seen and I want to see.

And if no one else has told you today:

Your breath matters. Your life matters. You were meant for more than this. You do not deserve this. You are inherently worthy. The God of this universe created you intentionally and your Black life mattered to Him even before you blessed the earth with your presence. His glorious light lives inside of you. He is on your side. You, baby, were born to be loved and are loved.

So fight back against any force that would tell you otherwise, fight for your life however you can.

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