I’m not sure what it is exactly, but between my fb newsfeed, CNN coverage of Trump’s tweets, and the general mayhem of the day (I’ll trade you pee soaked reporters in Charlottesville and raise you N. Korean missiles possibly reaching Guam) – being in America is giving me a never ending anxiety attack. I caution not to say PTSD, because I don’t want to be clinically inaccurate or to exaggerate the low-grade, persistence of the bullsh*t onslaught I’m experiencing at the moment. But, seriously, what the absolute fck is going on and why is mass hysteria the norm?
I am an expat who came home because I wanted to see things for myself. I also came home because I was getting too deeply invested in the problems of a place that I wasn’t really attached to. I wanted to be in solidarity, in mind and body, with the struggles closest to my heart and closest to my identity. Empathy and philanthropy can only take you so far, eventually you have to identify. And I knew that what hurt my heart most were police brutality against the Black community, the infringement on the civil rights of people who look and live like me, and the repeated silencing of their efforts at redress.
I recall sitting in Jo’burg with a Zimbabwean acquaintance a few months back as he taught me about how much Black people all over the world see African-Americans as an ideal example for civic engagement. He proceeded to tell me with admiration in his eyes that eventually us African-Americans would kick ass in America against those racists. (We) African-Americans were making noise with Black Lives Matter. (We) had done it with the civil rights movement and inspired liberation movements throughout Africa. (We) African-Americans were disrupting the ideal American dream narrative everyday. Those cracks & fissures would lead to social rupture, legal breakdown, and political break throughs. He was as hopeful as a negro spiritual sung over an organ in a Baptist church on MLK, Jr. day.
I dashed those hopes. I proceeded to tell him he was wrong. We had reached a dead end. We had run out of convincing ideas. And better yet, whatever ideas we presented were batted down in word and deed. Everything we tried was proving ineffective. We could march. We could televise our revolution. We could name & shame (police killings of unarmed Black people). We could find a White ally to speak for us. I mean, we could do everything that once worked and this time it could very well not work. And I said, that’s what we’re experiencing here, because this shit ain’t working.
I could ask why. But I won’t. I’ll just hypothesize that it’s simply that we are only being heard by people who already care. The others, the Bull Connors of the world, have made a choice to ignore our presence and to undermine our existence. Oh and they are crawling out from their thinly veiled hovels to let us know which side of the political spectrum, racial divide, and socio-economic gap they stand on.
So, this low grade anxiety I’m suffering from is simply the persistent reality that I am experiencing a “trust no-one” frost on everything I touch. I can’t trust the police to keep me safe. Or trust that my husband will come home from a run in the neighborhood. Can’t trust that a young woman going to pray in a local mosque will come home safely. I can’t trust that compelling images of now unhooded racists will de-stabilize the American public. And, what’s worse is that I frankly don’t trust that anything will change.
The only thing I can trust, at this moment, is that I am not crazy.
This crude state of affairs is very real.
existabovethenoise 