"But thanks to something I experienced the previous night in Charleston, I couldn't shake a paralyzing feeling: When black people and white people clasped hands in the arena that night, the comfort wouldn't be evenly distributed. The healing wouldn't flow both ways...
Survival for black folk during slavery, Jim Crow and well beyond necessitated thousands of small demonstrations of pleasant compliance toward white people. This didn't just mean crossing the street when a white person approached; it meant keeping your eyes down while you did it. It didn't just mean stepping off the curb for a white person; it meant smiling as you did it.
Today, it means that when I discuss these shootings with my white students and my heart is bursting at the seams with outrage and grief, I must keep my voice and gestures gentle and calm and validate my students' most hurtful comments so they don't feel personally indicted...
I joined in the singing — We'll walk hand in hand, we'll walk hand in hand. We'll walk hand in hand someday — but I was thinking about the heartbroken men I met in front of Emanuel AME Church the night before, who spent energy they did not have on appeasing yet another white police officer."
http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/06/24/417108714/dispatch-from-charleston-the-cost-of-white-comfort?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20150624
There is so much emotional babysitting. And it's only more frustrating because it's babysitting of people who will never be impugned for their emotionality, but who will often look at me slantwise and discredit what I am saying if I betray the fullness of my feelings.
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