The Day After (The Failed US Coup)
Cognitive dissonance. That’s what it was. I woke up, saw that I had 35 text messages and after reading just one text, I knew something had shifted once again in America. Watching the images unfold on TV, and my social media feeds, I was at first amused, then flummoxed, and lastly angry. I never felt shock though. To feel shock I would have had to be living in a deserted place with no methods of communication whatsoever, all of my adult life. Living, breathing within my skin, I knew that race and privilege are intertwined. Watching white skinned people participate in physical violence with the police, and ultimately breaking and entering a FEDERAL building, the Capital no less, left me wondering where was all of the police presence to quell this riotous mob of angry whites?
I couldn’t help thinking that, ONLY white people could get away with this type of terroristic behavior. I knew/know that black people are shot and killed for much less, even killed for DOING NOTHING, other than being asleep in their homes, in their beds. I knew that having black skin and inciting a potential coup to overthrow the United States government and the will of its people, could only end in dead, lifeless black bodies strewn across the lawns of the Capital. There would have never been a way for people of color to breach the hallowed halls of the Capital.
This summer’s Black Lives Matter protests taught me that black lives came last in the hierarchy of police protection vs. police protection of property. The flummoxing came in watching several hours of mostly white men break out windows, scale the walls of the Capital building with the intent to __________. You fill in the blank because I actually don’t know what they expected or what their intent was. I watched as these white terrorists disregarded calls to stop and desist by the Capital police, as if they already knew that the directive didn’t apply to them. Watching as they defiled federal spaces, while chanting and yelling, and sporting confederate flags. All of what I thought about white America was being acted out in real time.
As a black woman I do not have the luxury of trying to figure out which white skinned person has the intent of hurting me, or even killing me. There are no outward manifestations that signal to me that this white person is a “safe”, or “good” person. Even if they’re a Christian. Those terrorists call themselves Christians too. What is clear to me however, is that “good” white people need to make themselves known by their actions and their words. These “good” white people need to meet/address/control/communicate with their white terrorist counterparts. “Good” white people need to say that “Black, brown, red and yellow people” lives matter! “Good” white people need to assert their white privilege in ways that will ensure that people of color are safe and valued. These “good” white people need to force a reckoning that will address systemic racism, white, male privilege with their Christian terrorist brethren. Until this occurs, people of color will never have a real moment’s rest from their worry of death at the hands of white skinned people.
PS: Topeka Kansas: I saw the homemade platform and noose draped with the American flag adorning it, across from our capital. It wasn’t accidental that this imagery was selected. Many people of color hung from ropes just like that, for doing nothing other than looking a white skinned person in the eye. That same flag that white skinned people tell us to respect and to stand for. Yes, that flag.
