A Look Into My Eyes

I was running in the park yesterday: keeping my distance, mask on, exercising like so many people do in that area on a daily basis, but I just could not feel the same comfort that any other jogger felt. It dawned on me as it often has when I’m out in public: my body as a black adult is inherently a threat and imposes fear upon other people. It doesn’t matter what the person I see is thinking. I’ve had too many experiences, both my own and transferred to me from others, in which I could see directly or indirectly the terror in the eyes of the non-black passerby; the suspicion displayed by each individual that I had to be up to no good. I automatically think everyone is afraid whether they are or not. Each time I see a family or a mother/father with their child, I dart away much further than the average person would. I don’t want them to be afraid. I want to make sure *they* feel safe.

I keep running and taking in each look. I’ve come to realize there’s two sides of contributions to the discomfort I feel. One side being the experiences that white supremacy has inflicted upon me. The other being my own internalized white supremacy: I’ve felt the same fear towards other black people that I’ve determined these people I pass feel towards me. I know exactly what they’re feeling. I’ve felt the same thing. It’s engrained in me like it’s engrained in them. So I know exactly what I see in the eyes of each person I’ve passed: It never mattered whether they were actually feeling it. It’s like when I go into a store: I know I’m automatically suspected to be a potential shoplifter whether I am or not. It’s programmed into me. When I was a kid in Kansas, I used to think I could make people see me differently if I acted “less black”. I tried so hard to be the opposite of what I saw in my relatives or the people on TV. Every new interaction was (and still is) about showing the other person how articulate I am. How “white” I can be. That I’m not like the rest. Internalized white supremacy beaten into me since I became conscious of the fact that the pigmentation of my skin was different from 95% of the people I was around. After years of self-reflection, I realize there’s nothing I can do to change the way I’m perceived. There’s no level of education I can attain, no type of clothing I can wear, no way I can talk or act that will change that. My body is and will always be a threat. I’m a fragile, 6’1”, male-passing black adult with dreadlocks. If a 10 year old me saw my current self running behind, I would’ve likely been afraid. I can’t escape the reality of what I am to people even if I wore a mask that exclaimed “Please, do not be afraid of me.” Can I blame them if I’ve felt the same thing? It’s taken me so long to see my internalized white supremacy, but I may have never realized these things about myself if I didn’t have to live in the consciousness of the oppressor and the oppressed.

The conflict I have when I see a yet another one of my siblings taken from this earth is a conflict with my own body. I realize my body will always been seen as a weapon and it’s enough rationale for them to gun us down in every situation of life. They murder us when we’re sleeping, they murder us when we’re walking home from the store, they murder us when we’re playing in the park, they murder us when we don’t drive perfectly, they murder us when we’re jogging in our neighborhood….they murder us everywhere. No one is/can do enough. It’s unachievable. We’re up against the infinite onion. The depth is inconceivable and there are no answers to questions that cannot even be conceived. There is no platform that we have that will give us enough power to have some sway in the system, because the system is made and works exactly as it has always supposed to. It is unsurprising and simultaneously exhausting. The nation’s performative activists get a shock for a week when they hear we’ve been unable to attain justice again and then they forget a week later as if these aren’t lives that are forever gone. I’ve been guilty of this. I’ve been too complacent. I’ve tuned out the stories at times in my mind. It gets lost on me that I have an experience that can allow certain people to take a look into a lens they’ve never encountered before. I feel guilty for not doing what I should, but words pale in comparison to concrete action. So I don’t think I can fully find the words until I act.