"The system has failed us, the cops murder us, what can we do about that? How… how is it even possible to meet these murders with a monopoly of force nonviolently, and if it is possible, what is the most effective way to do that?
Tulsa officials called for “calm” after scattered protests broke out last night. The reason Tulsa isn’t on fire is not because black people are “calm,” it’s because we are NUMB. We are so used to this endless parade of white paramilitary shit that taking the fight to the streets seems pointless...
I would never admit this if white people were still reading, but at this point I am nonviolent because I’m afraid of the white man, and terrified of his police... I wish I could blame my restraint on God, or my respect for the rule of law, or even on a sense of hope. Instead I must live with the knowledge that my desire for self-preservation trumps my desire for justice."
Yes, the numbness is real. The feeling that resistance is futile that creeps in, and then you retreat back to the numbness because there is still technically some potential from that position.
Weirdly, since I was a child I would calm my fears of racist violence by thinking "I am loved by lots of passionate white people who think I deserve to be safe; if I were to die, they would do something about it, my worth and value would be honored". I felt safer because I lived in a wealthy area, then because I was a private school kid, then later an Ivy Leauge graduate - and, more than that, I felt that white supremacist violence could never achieve its aim of erasing me.
I can no longer pretend that this is true.
--> also, I read and experience this essay as a person telling us about their emotions, their trauma, their grief, their struggle; an appropriate reaction is an empathic one, thinking about how to restore him to a place where he feels safe. But I know that most people can't see that, that they will read his raw feelings as some kind of absolute political manifesto and their first reaction will be to "debate" the "validity" or "rationality" of his "points".
FB: "This is how a man gets “radicalized,” I suppose. At this point, any black person, any black person with an actual plan for how to overthrow white power in this country could at least get me to subscribe to his or her freaking podcast. I am fertile ground for any methods, fair or unfair, to protect my children from the white man’s police."
(If you are about to click or comment because you "disagree", take a second to look at the language and observe that he is expressing his feelings and sharing the way he's processing trauma, not laying out a political treatise. You can't disagree with a person's experience of grief and fear, but you can continue the conversation by exploring your own emotional response)
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