It’s crazy. Admittedly, I avoided it––the Derek Chauvin trial and any other news that served as a reminder of black reality in America that came across my social media timelines. I didn’t want to click on any videos of a black soldier in uniform getting pepper-sprayed by cops or read anything about how another white guy committing another mass shooting had the fortune of being taken into police custody alive, without incident. I didn’t want to keep up with any current events. My heart could no longer stand to see the bold horror of this country, lest I go mad. So, I avoided it.
And then yesterday, I sat down on my couch and clicked open a Good Morning America interview clip on IG with Robin Roberts and the parents of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old shot by police officer Kim Potter during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. I didn’t even finish the entire clip before my heart became disturbed, heavy; my stomach unnerved. Here we are again. I closed the video. Avoidance was no longer available to me. Brian and I spent the rest of the evening trying to digest events of the past few days, watching and re-watching Kim Potter’s bodycam footage, watching protests and turmoil in Brooklyn Center, and the commentaries of it all. I looked at Brian, ‘how did I miss all of this?’ Though I already knew the answer to that.
Silly me to think for one second that I could close my eyes and take a break from the weight of my blackness. Here I was again, looking at my beautiful son, thinking about his inherent challenges and all the things we have to prepare him for. It’s maddening. With torn and bleeding hearts, we smile. It’s exhausting.
Humans make mistakes. I do not argue that. Though in some professions, the threshold should be barely existent and the consequences appreciable. But a few months ago, body camera footage released by police in Ohio showed an armed white man, armed, who failed to comply with police. He even threatened to shoot the police. He then even fled the scene as they asked him to get out of his vehicle. Yes, that happened. There’s the undeniable dilemma. I saw someone say on social media that being black is not knowing how much of what you got or didn’t get, what happened to you or didn’t happen to you, was simply because of your skin color. There’s the burden. In counting all our tears and sighs…
And in my Lynae Vanee voice, ‘I’m quite tired of people using the sainthood rhetoric to trivialize black people getting killed by the police. Literal mass murderers are at least making it to the police station.’ How haughty and sick it sounds to imply someone deserved to die by bringing up the strikes against them. Let us be for real; you have strikes too. They are just buried or packaged prettier, thanks to your privilege.
Warrant, no warrant, misdemeanor, no misdemeanor, I’m so sorry and sad Daunte Wright lost his life like that. I’m sorry that his little baby boy is going to grow up without a father. I’m so sorry that Daunte’s mother had to get that call. Oh the clay is vile, beneath the feet, and long the mile. Something has to change. There is no mistake about that.
P.S. A black mother’s prayer… still relevant
