American Pie
Wednesday evening a journalist reached out to ask if I would “boycott” the Blue Oval Showcase I’m participating in this weekend.
And if not, if I was going to do some other demonstration.
I pushed reply…
I typed:
“Thanks for reaching out, thanks for your question, but I’m not okay today, I’ll get back to you.”
And I’m not okay.
Again.
But that immediate inclination to look to the black people and ask what they’re going to do in the aftermath of [Insert the latest victim here] breaks my heart.
You want a scoop on how I’m going to demonstrate at the weekend.
I want to know if you care about what people are demonstrating about.
I want to know why, as an American citizen 400 years after the colonizers decided that sugar cane, cotton, and tobacco would be the source of their wealth…
And that my ancestors would be enslaved to do the heavy lifting in order to generate said wealth-
That there isn’t more…thank you for your service- you know for the 400 years of free labor that a lot of America’s “oldest” families built their fortunes on, and that every other person has benefited from in some way…
There are RUNNERS that follow us black athletes, that know the grind of tying a shoe every day…that literally know- just like I do, what striking the pavement feels like,
Know- just like I do, how our joints feel after a tough session,
Know- just like I do, how deep the soreness can be,
Know- just like I do, the satisfaction of pushing yourself beyond a previous edge.
We have all of this in common.
And STILL…they type the words “so does mine” as a COUNTER to me saying “my life matters.”
As if, my declaration of “mattering” was somehow a declaration of them not.
I am the daughter of Jo Ann, and Robert Madison and I fucking matter.
And it doesn’t matter if I take another step, run another race, make another jump,
I matter.
And they, along with the people who know me and love me, won’t accept me dying the death of 3/5ths of a person at the hands of ANYONE.
They won’t accept me becoming a hashtag, popular for a brief moment in time and fading into the collective memorial of souls lost.
Because I matter.
All I have ever tried to do in my almost 35 years on this planet is to be able to look at myself in the mirror and love the shit out of my reflection…
Look at my parents and see pride…
Look at my sisters and see love.
I will not look at them or myself and see slave, or accept another inferior status bestowed on me by someone else.
I will not spend another minute trying to convince anyone else of my worth- from fan to sponsor, to politician.
You will value what you want to value.
You will compartmentalize my humanity by adoring me in a Team USA uniform,
Scold me when demonstrating at a place you deem inappropriate.
Blacklist me for not being as malleable as you’d like me to be.
Follow me around a store deemed to be unaffordable for me.
Escorted out of a business class line, because I “must be in the wrong place”.
Or perhaps I get a pass as an Olympian.
Or because I’m articulate and write well.
Maybe you value me as the exception to the(your) rule?
Whatever it is, you will value what you want to value.
And I will not spend another minute trying to convince anyone else of my worth- from fan to sponsor, to politician.
I have worked far too hard, for far too long making other people comfortable with my existence,
Because I dare to take up space.
Because I have the audacity to call out people older and better connected than me for their abuses and their bullshit.
I may not have lashes and scars from a slave master’s whip painted across my back (and not from lack of some trying I must add)
But I am scarred.
And I am tired.
And for that reason I won’t spend another minute qualifying the value I was born with.
BORN WITH.
People with children, people who have tried to have children, know the miracle that birth is.
I was born mattering.
Every cell that divided, every synapse that fired, every gene both expressed and not, every muscle that contracted in concert to escort me through the birth canal deemed it so.
And for that reason I won’t spend another minute qualifying the value I was born with.
Especially if we’re going to continue to qualify disproportionate mistreatment of people who look like me in this country by doing Cirque Du Soleil-like backbends, stretches, and reaches to retroactively extract from a life its unsavory elements that serve to make the brutality more palatable.
A 400 year head start wasn’t enough?
Withholding property and the right to vote wasn’t enough?
Segregating us- feigning separate but equal- that wasn’t enough?
We’ve made enough progress after 400 years to attempt to do the same things for ourselves that your ancestors got to do on the backs of mine:
Things like pursuing education, creating wealth, supporting our families, getting paid equal wages for equal work.
You know, the slices of the so-called American Pie.
And this is where so many folks get it wrong….
I’m not coming for your pie.
The ingredients, when we are granted access to them, are here.
We can make our own.
And although we haven’t had 400 years like some others in this country to get that recipe just so…
I’m in the kitchen baking…
And while I’m whipping up ingredients in my own home,
in my own kitchen,
in my own oven,
folks are out here acting like my pie threatens the existence of theirs.
What are you doing?
What are you lacking so badly that you’d rather remain apathetic or worse still moved to actually rail against equality???
I said repeatedly in this writing that I would not spend another minute trying to convince anyone else of my worth- from fan to sponsor, to politician.
But that’s ultimately untrue…
Because someone has to stand up and say enough.
Someone has to disrupt your sports, your NFL fantasy draft party, your tennis match, your privileged political apathy to snap you, ever so briefly, out of your well crafted bubble to show you what you have allowed.
Look
what
you’ve
allowed.
Bloggers Note: Who’s the “You” I’m referring to in this post? You in this post refers to the majority. The 76.3% that present as White. Based on that number what the 76.3% of the population tolerates, allows, or won’t allow is largely what happens in this country. 13.4% of us are black- most of us descendants of ancestors who were enslaved…the incentive for the 76.3% to give a shit about the 13.4% or the 1.3% (the indigenous population now) is low. Our lives rarely ever effect your day to day living.
Until we fuck with the sports that is.
But anyway, I feel strongly that I can’t take too much more of my “American Family” being this dysfunctional (I know that I can bear whatever I need to but damn it’s a lot). I can’t and will never understand how we can be in line together at the grocery store buying hotdogs and shit for national holidays, or watching the same sports on tv, rushing to buy the same snacks for national championship football games and bowl games, Super Bowl Sunday, or the Olympics, cheering shoulder to shoulder- and you look away, essentially metaphorically stepping over the body when one of us falls victim to racism, discrimination, police brutality.
We’re supposed to be Americans. And that makes us family. And I guess the saying “you can’t choose your family” is extremely apropos here. And by some (of many) miracles a majority of the 13.4% of our American family still hope for better from a country that told us exactly what she thought of us from her inception. I know “YOU” didn’t own enslaved people, and you damn sure don’t own any now- and I am not blaming you nor trying to make you feel guilty about your ancestors. I’m saying that 76.3% is a really big number- I imagine that if the majority of the majority wanted things to be different they’d be different.
I’m really disappointed that they aren’t.