Artwork and photo by Baird Stiefel
Dear Friend,
I hope you have not been confused by my silence, but I find it very painful to comment on black death so publicly. Pictures and videos of men who look like my father, my stepfather, my baby brothers, my uncle, gasping for air, bleeding out, dying, on the tiny screen in my pocket. There is nothing normal to me about placing that in the same cyber space for the same 600 people I would share a birthday message or a song I've discovered. Then again, there is nothing normal about the very content itself, so perhaps an abnormal response suffices. I do not claim righteousness—clearly this appeals to others, soothes somehow. I don't know. Even on good days, I rarely find comfort online. But I'm writing this, up late on the East Coast, scratching scalp and rearranging commas, because my anger just keeps looking for a place to go. Truth—earlier this week I had become quite concerned with my apathy, how easy and delicious it had been to just become numb to anything outside my bedroom. Write, paint, take meds, eat, shower, sleep. For a time, I had been feeling like a very good American citizen: unbelieving in change, desiring labor, bootlicking corporations and democrats, swallowing their spiders to fall asleep. Now I am sick in the suburbs just as I had been as a little kid. I can see her: a precocious, brown-skinned girl, smoothing down baby hairs with nervous gestures, spit as styling gel. Even then in the calloused palms of girlhood, I knew the world was not designed for me. There was this grand plan to "get out," and I did. The real scare came when generational grievances had been aired and still not remedied, systems still failed us (were made to fail us), and many promises of equity continued to be broken. I'm back here after many years. What's changed but me?
Don't be mad—I do have a quick confession. A strange feeling comes over me when I see a particular type participating in this phenom of sharing videos, this product of our zeitgeist. Friendly caucasian film students, funny girls with mullets, blondes dyed pink, DJs, ex-classmates, Miami's finest, generic white boys and their carbon copies, they all bring me close to confusion, and I confess, occasional disdain. I watch them listening to MY music, envying MY features, sharing videos of MY brothers and sisters dying right in front of MY eyes, as if I am not padding around the same cool bright mornings as them. Floating through a summer spent inside when all I can do is look and look hard. The intentions are good and liberally informed... they crave change and, I suspect, are afraid of what their silence would possibly mean. And yes, I want them to see what has happened to us again and again. I want the dismantling to—finally—be their burden and not mine... so what is this possessive feeling? Over a culture I want to share? Over an injustice I want unsmothered? Perhaps it is that white people can see, they can scroll and scroll and donate and share and sign and call. They can tell us they are with us and bleed and cry, but they can never, ever, understand.
Then comes the hardest pill: there is nothing we can do that we have not done already to stay alive. What could George and Breonna and Trayvon and Freddie and Sandra and Tamir have done? What's the acceptable persona for black people to take on that will signal to white gatekeepers we are worthy of living another day, engaging in their (and it is their) society's privileges. Building this nation was not enough, okay. Raising their children, birthing their culture, fueling their economy while they steal from and kill us is not enough, so let me think. Perhaps it is in the way we speak, the way we dress, style our hair, who we love and fuck, and how we love and fuck them. I want those gates opened for me and for the men and women who look like me, but I am afraid when I notice a very strange, undesired side effect: I am excellent at pretending. The skill to metamorphose for them, for survival, is one learned with practice, born of horrible fear and restlessness. Almost perfected it, thinking somehow I could keep the gates open with some wind conjured of my own tired breath, disappearing myself in the process. But of course, there is no reasoning with fascism, racism, the police state we live in, and even if there was, I am so tired. Tired of imitating the violence of colonialism in cities across this country, tired of corporations hijacking our justice, tired of the lie that government has an egalitarian track record, tired of the propaganda, the get rich quick, the regurgitation of copious slogans all meaning nothing, tired of this president and his coded language—just say what we already know, sir—that you are looking for a final solution. A solution to the problem of black lives and the threat that our brilliance poses. Listen to me when I say I am tired of this supremely American life.
There is no right way to live through this except to live through this, I suppose, and that's what black people have always done, what we will continue to do. I can cope with being a Stranger in the Village so long as I am alive. One stellar laugh I've had is at the trend of white women's fear of "being perceived," as if they are not the default. I have been hyper-perceived by all of them, all of you, forever as far back as I can remember. That Stranger in the Village, black body in the snow, comes creeping back, again again again. "To be a stranger is to be looked at, but to be black is to be looked at especially." Reading Teju Cole now, twisting my mouth at his truth. If I am in a predominantly white area, I draw stares, on the street, at the bodega, wherever. This is not breaking news but merely a part of my commute. On my better, vainer days, it's adoration or brief sexual interest. Other days, I walk fast and am very afraid. Heart quickening, pulse raising skin, up, down, like a light switch or my changing mind. Hatred? Mockery? Fear? Something swimming in my stomach flips and dies at the thought that is not just all in my mind, some irrational fear of "being perceived" like pretty brunettes with antisocial tendencies get to have on the internet. No, I'm afraid it is not that at all, friend. One day, my little human foibles could very well get me killed.
Quarantine has given me lots of time to read. Ross Gay's essay in The Sun, "Some Thoughts On Mercy," has been sticking with me lately. He writes, "It had occurred to me that when I paid my taxes, I was helping to pay police officers' salaries, and therefore this cop was actually my employee—though I wouldn't have said so to him." Neither would I, Ross, but isn't that a cheery little thought: me paying for my own assassin. Black Americans forced to fund this country's largest white supremacist organization, enforcing not protecting, choking not serving. And then on the same day that thought comes to me, someone dares to ask me how I'm "doing" or "holding up" and I wonder how where when to even begin. The question echoes, getting quieter like a bottle dropped down a staircase, then shatters. When this happens, I remember. I remember someone I really enjoyed not that long ago, someone I sometimes think of while reading romance novels. A person capable of getting political for fun, a nice boy I would maybe kiss again in an elevator. My desperation, my fear of fetishization, wanting to be a kinder, more honest woman, capable of easy love, not for him, but for myself. The whole time I was falling for it, I couldn't say anything that was on my mind. I had nightmares and health insurance plans and nightmares about my health insurance plans and convinced myself he couldn't help me, that no one could, that something was going to get me in the night and no one would remember my name, know what I mean? I think I was just afraid to name the thing that was killing me. The deck stacked against me from birth. The chains mistaken for skin. Now when asked the various "how are you" questions by friends or family, I have to say everything, even when I'm crazed and overflowing with pain. No longer lying to myself with the soft refrain of, I just thought he could read my mind.
I think the question I've been struggling with is how to channel outrage when outrage has become the norm. Outrage seems synonymous with shock, but hearing about another black boy being killed while I have my cereal or walk in the garden has become so commonplace it has thwarted the very definition. The outrage washes over me as I go downstairs to make lunch, do handstands with my brother, etc. After I've cried, I immediately become "hungry for visions of the apocalypse" (Paglia). It does not seem melodramatic to revel in the destruction of what we built for free. I have not however become so deluded by that young, college-educated fancy to think that everything is wrong and it's all-about-me. But I do know that I am hurt bad. I regret to say—but I must be honest here—that I rarely feel grateful for allies doing anything. The slimy protection that comes from their presence at a restaurant, a department store, my own block, the "we love you's" and the secret debts I am expected to owe. The hilarious shouts for justice from people I know personally whose fear of being called out on their shit far outweighs their desire for justice. Ex-friends/lovers who have, shall we say, done me wrong (probably a peeve best kept between us). To not be angry, to not be spiteful and hurting and always inward-facing, the simple choice becomes numbness, but I've had my days in bed. Done with all that now. I'm writing to you to stave off the train a little longer. The train on weeks like this I feel is chasing me down rather than waiting for me to jump in front. I'm scared for my family. I'm scared for me. I am broken for the families who have lost their sonsbrotherssistersparents. How could they not want it all to burn? How could I not agree?
Love,
Kass
