“Therapy taught me how to open up. It also showed me I don’t give a fuck” — Kendrick Lamar

“You’re depressed,” I hear a voice softly say on the other end of the phone. My reaction is delayed. I heard what she said, but it felt like my brain took its time, sitting with the words. When the process was complete, an involuntary sigh escaped me. And then the replay. The subtle prods and pokes at my psychological profile. The passive-aggressive pushes to admit I wasn’t well. Lead the witness-type questioning. For weeks, my therapist had been testing their theory. And for weeks, I ignored the hypothesis.

About 25% of Black men seek mental health care. Black men make up about 6% of active therapists in the United States. We’re not a monolith, a saying that almost feels more like a mantra than a declaration. The numbers don’t lie, and neither does the anecdotal evidence — niggas would rather listen to a podcast than sit in front of a therapist. A real nigga doesn’t need therapy. We have barbershops, the short break between pick-up games at the LA Fitness, the text thread with the homies, the smoke sessions with the homies, and a dozen other non-licensed moments of advice.

“I’ve never seen anyone this stuck before,” they say with a subtle giddiness. What followed was a general list of symptoms associated with depression. “You’re experiencing this and that.” “You’re below your baseline.” “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” It was like the first-year college student who had their mind blown in a philosophy class and rattles off every theory they’ve learned to anyone who’s willing to listen. None of what’s said resonates, but I play along. I’m curious about where this is heading. My curiosity is satisfied quickly. We’re talking about the ocean. We’re talking about a metaphorical sinking to the bottom of said ocean.

Was curiosity ever displayed by the enslaved Africans being shipped across the Atlantic? Did they ever think about what awaited them at the end of their journey? Perhaps they figured that nothing could be worse than the iron shackles, cramped spaces, foul air, hellish heat, inadequate food, sexual assault, and constant disease. Even though they found themselves at sea, unrestrained by the limits of land, free to dive overboard into the abyss to find a freedom in death they would never realize in life, they were stuck. I am stuck between being Black and a hard place. But I am not special, for this is the reality of many Black people in America. We are stuck in a metaphorical middle passage, reflective of the Atlantic Ocean, where many of our ancestors’ last breaths were followed by salt water.

And I believe that reality influenced the decisions made. One of the most disingenuous arguments posited against the enslaved is that they had a choice. Stay aboard in misery on something solid, hoping that what awaits at the end of the journey is better. Rebel against your captors; maybe you can overtake them. But does anyone know how to sail a ship or read a map in a foreign language? I don’t know if any of the captives ran through this line of thinking. I am looking backward from a 2026 point of reference. In the moment, perhaps the only thought was survival, the same instinct that fuels me as I hustle to pay a mortgage, wrestle with commitment, and hope the LAPD doesn’t feel like I fit the description.

I have read the descriptions of Africans that were categorized by their enslavers. I read excerpts from John Newton’s journal where he didn’t give names to the humans but categorized them by their gender and the descriptor “slave.” As time moved forward, the sentiment remained, but the descriptors evolved. Black. Negro. Negroid. Nigger. Monkey. Animal. Boy. Thug. Affirmative Action Hire. Gangster. Dirty. Criminal. DEI Hire. I try not to think of myself as any of the new or old descriptors. But I find myself unable to remove what has stuck for hundreds of years. No one told me that the self-realization that the descriptors were a detriment, because discrimination introduced itself to me early. And I know that this world views my self-assessment as an indictment, not against the system but against their belief in it.

In the summer of 1860, the Clotilda illegally transported 110 West African men, women, and children into Mobile Bay, Alabama. Technically, this was the last ship to cross the Atlantic Ocean carrying enslaved Black bodies. I would argue that metaphysically, many of our Black minds are still trapped on those ships, hoping to reach the other side of a nightmare of which we have no point of reference. But there once was a point of reference. In 1619, a ship arrived at Point Comfort carrying more than 20 enslaved Africans. They knew life beyond the new shores they were forced to now look at, wondering just how far the world they had been stolen from was. Their world was now a system that was built to enslave them, but would be shifted ever so slightly, allowing their ancestors to be free.

My world has been shattered several times in my life. Most significantly, the passing of my maternal grandfather on my birthday. Trying to process the moment his body was found by my father through the eyes of a five-year-old was complicated. For years, I had vivid nightmares that I never told anyone about. My mind conjured up shadowy creatures against the walls of my bedroom. It would be decades before I realized why I felt so down on what should have been a celebratory moment. Now back to the moment under scrutiny. I find myself stifled by subtle words, and in the silence between each utterance, there are small revelations. Because attaching emotion to a theory built on circumstantial evidence seemed to perpetuate the accusation. I feel myself sigh, more of a reflex than a reaction. I feel an ancestor place a hand on my shoulder, and know that they had a moment just like this.

But there was no therapist for Lawrence, who could not find value in his life despite being valued by so many. There was no grief counselor for Gloria, who could not find the courage to leave the house where she raised 10 children with Stonie. There wasn’t a substance abuse counselor for Tippy who could not find his place in the white world but turned his life over to the hard white. And as I feel the touch of my ancestors begin to fade, there is a small desire to join them. A stray thought that anything would be better than sitting in the misery of my own doing. This is depression, not in the general sense, but an acute episode that, if not identified, could manifest into something serious.

The conversation between the therapist and me becomes a closing argument, laid before the jury of my psychology in an attempt to deliver a guilty verdict. The judge gives her sentence with absolute clarity, and it feels like the blindfold of justice was removed for a millisecond. It is just enough time to register my anticipation. “You are depressed,” assaults my ears like a child told to be gentle but cannot correctly measure the intensity of their physicality.

The evidence of the case for depression was circumstantial at best to the layman, but in the presence of a therapist, it was substantial. A forensic sketch was drawn, well-defined and particular. It featured all the best things about me but also the worst. There was no denying that I was the guilty party; even I could not conjure a defense against reality.

This is why I was so avoidant of therapy in my youth. I know my own picture. I can draw it from memory, but that picture isn’t accurate. It is a distortion. It is the picture that I believe I deserve, whether that’s true or not. Black men in the United States have been portrayed in many ways. So many that it’s hard to determine what was illustrated by society and what by self. Before becoming Clarence 13X, Clarence Edward Smith was a Black kid from Virginia who moved to Harlem as a young man to live with his mother. Born in 1922, he was a living witness to the process of racism reconfiguring itself from an unspoken but loud societal understanding to an undermining system hell-bent on reminding Black people that as long as white people were in charge, they would never be free.

There weren’t many options for escape from Jim Crow, but institutions like the military offered a slight reprieve. At least abroad, Black men could flirt with the trappings of a world not limited by the American caste system. Clarence Edward Smith left Harlem and enlisted in the armed forces, becoming a light-weapons infantryman. After doing a two-year tour in Korea, Clarence returned to Harlem, coincidentally at the same time Malcolm X arrived. The Nation of Islam presented a picture of the Black man that was so radical, so removed from what had been accepted, that it was deemed dangerous. Elijah Muhammad dared to imagine a reality where Black men weren’t created to serve white interests but their own by seeing themselves for who they really were — the original man. Organized. Disciplined. Focused. The NOI offered tangible change for the Black community.

Clarence found himself in the NOI, but it wasn’t enough. As the NOI fractured following Malcolm’s departure and the honorable Elijah Muhammad’s dishonorable scandal, the teachings weren’t strong enough to hold. So Clarence took what worked and imagined something else. This is the power of self-awareness. I’m not here to argue that the Five Percenters got it right. Clarence found his way to his offshoot of Islam because no one was right. Even the mathematical formula he helped create isn’t a litmus test of holiness. However, young gods would be tested daily by their peers; it was a platform on which young men could stand confidently as they painted a new picture of themselves. Clarence began calling himself Allah, not because he believed he was the creator God, but because he inherently understood that GodGods in him. He would be committed to a psychiatric ward for his beliefs. But he wasn’t crazy; he just had a vivid imagination that turned his musings into a movement that still exists to this day.

Today, this Black man is on the phone with a therapist who has just told me that he is depressed, and the recommendation is that he try medication. I don’t feel like a god at the moment. There aren’t enough mathematics in the world that could make me feel better. This is the moment when the therapy stops. This is no longer an inquiry about how to organize feelings in a manner that leads to being a more productive human being. This is a diagnosis, and the usual question of “How did that make you feel?” is replaced with “How do you feel about medication?” My reaction is this feels like bullshit. This feels like the imagination to reconsider that whatever this moment is, depression is not being applied.

Black men are rarely asked how they feel because we’re supposed to feel nothing. On the rare occasions when we are asked, the response is usually a deflection, a misdirect, or a deployment of deceptive distraction. It’s natural because for me — a collective memory from the many broken ancestors whose blood and belief made my existence possible. I wonder if my Uncle was asked how he felt about medication. I’ve heard the stories that he returned from enlisting as a completely different person, a person I never saw until my teens. He was my favorite Uncle, the one who listened to rap music, drove a black Corvette, and always had the illest sneakers. I don’t have the details; I can only go off what my parents discussed at the kitchen table about him. I also have a hard time believing that my mother thought her brother was crazy because she left her three children in his care over multiple weekends. He would eventually be diagnosed with schizophrenia, and for the last three decades, when he’s off his meds, he has tried to convince us that he is God.

Did enslaved Black people think that their white slavers were schizophrenic? After centuries of violence, colonization, extraction, racism, and xenophobia, the white Christian had the audacity to try to convince the world that they were representatives of God. It wasn’t their Christian duty to be advocates for love as Jesus encouraged, but to be avengers of loss. What do I mean by that? The loss of the belief that they were the center of creation and that non-white, non-male human beings who claimed they had the right to be centered, too, was an affront to God. God is maddening because at not one point in their bible does it mention white people as the centerpiece of the creation. I recently watched an interesting panel discussion led by Mehdi Hasan about the truth of the British Empire and slavery. A white English Oxford professor named Nigel Biggar makes the claim that critics of the empire and its role in slavey ignore its positives. Mehdi catches him in an emotional trap. Biggar cannot justify his position without using whataboutism. His feelings about the British Empire prevent him from being objective, because he cannot see his identity without Britain. No matter how he feels, it cannot change the atrocities committed by the Empire in the past and the present systemic issues it helped give birth to. He refused to feel any guilt for the millions of Africans killed, enslaved, and harmed, but saw no issue with taking pride in the good done by Britain.

I imagine that at some point or many points, enslaved Black people across the colonial world realized that emotion would not free them from their conditions. They realized that the tears they shed, the anger that bubbled up to the surface, the sadness, grief, and depression that weighed infinitely more than the burdens they carried, could not change their reality. The prayers sent up to a god forced upon them and used to justify their station in life must’ve felt like curses bouncing back at them in violent force. Yet, we still pray, hoping that the God who ignored our ancestors' cries for freedom will suddenly hear our requests to stop being killed by the police. So I have learned not to feel disappointed when God, the white-centered God of the bible, returns my prayer requests for a liberated Black community with conservative republicans stripping voting rights, rolling back civil rights, and labeling Black history as divisive.

So when the therapist asks me, “How I feel about medication,” my first thought is, would it matter how the fuck my ancestors felt about being experimented on? Or being subjected to experimental medications? Would there be anything of value to be gained by asking them how it felt to be whipped, beaten, hanged, or shot? I cannot help but to wonder what is the point of feeling anything when there is constant danger lurking around every corner, on every street, and in every building? I have sat with these questions for four decades, unable to articulate how it “feels” to be an American Black man in the modern age. So I don’t. For years, any therapist has tried all types of techniques and theories to get me to open up, to be vulnerable, to feel something. But I don’t feel anything. Let me reframe that: I don’t feel anything beyond the surface-level in-the-moment emotions everyone feels. I go through the gamut from happy to angry to sad and everything in between. I have not detached from life and don’t believe that I could even if I tried.

Maybe there is no God above and no hell beneath me. Maybe the invisible God is visible every day in the faces, actions, and love of my people. Maybe I don’t need medication to help pull me out of depression. Maybe Clarence’s supreme mathematics has the answers, or perhaps the Christians have it right, and Jesus is all I need. Prayer, meditation, and centering — these aren’t exclusive to any religion or belief. As I write this, I feel the depression receding; it’s not because of some prescribed technique or guidelines, because I can imagine myself as a god.

“A corrective to the dominant narrative of central European émigrés shaping modern American design culture, the exhibition will present a new international story, featuring accounts of Scandinavian designers who immigrated to the United States; Americans who studied or worked in Nordic countries; the ambitious campaigns to market and export Scandinavian design to American consumers; and the American and Nordic figures who championed sustainable and accessible design practice.”

As I interrogated the various pieces from furniture to clothing, something began to gnaw at my consciousness. It could have been the residue of the weighty emotion of walking through the Afro-Atlantic Histories exhibit. Earlier during our visit, I found myself standing in front of a piece that featured a diagram depicting the inhumane packing of Africans into slave ships. I described the cruel practice to my 16-year-old son — the claustrophobic conditions, the feces, urine, vomit, and disease that were inescapable. I explain how many people died on the journey and the graveyard at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean of Black bodies — those who would rather drown than suffer and those whose lives ended the moment they reached the Point of No Return.

My boy, my innocent little boy who is reaching his point of no return, from childhood to manhood, the boy who has not a care in the world, simply responded, “I didn’t know that.” Nothing about the piece struck a nerve, nor did it seem to dawn on him that he was more connected to the figures in the piece than the influencers he follows on TikTok. It is the lack of thought beyond what is immediate that my son possesses that I can never hope to achieve that disturbs me.

The itch I am feeling while looking at all the Scandinavian-inspired and crafted designs is not one of irritation but closer to humiliation. The artists, designers, and creators in this exhibit mostly had the privilege of creating without fear of being captured by those who are unable to dream of a different world because the one they inhabit is made for them. My son takes a selfie and for a moment I realize that we are all past the point of no return.

The rope was not so much embedded in his neck as it had become additional veins, too large to not be visible under pressure. His body floated as if held up by my hopes of riding down Imperial Hwy in his truck with no seat belt on. The joy and ignorant freedom of Black childhood in the 80s places you in a pocket between death and discovery.

Decades later we would call this “F*ck around and find out.” When my father found him — my mother’s father, the one I called Paw-Paw, there was a blood-curdling scream that pierced my five-year-old heart and scrambled the synapses of my still-developing brain. Just five minutes earlier, I was enthusiastically searching for Paw-Paw, anticipating his embrace and a present. It was my birthday and the only thing I wanted was to hear his laugh—the one that came up from his pot belly and filled any room he was in. Even outside, you could hear it, so loud that it bounced off walls and echoed.

The grass crunched under my feet as I sprinted, darting from one end of the yard to the other blindly using my voice like echolocation. “Paw-Paw!” When my father found him in the shed, his neck twisted like a micro-braid in the ropes that held up his hammock, he did not answer back. My mother stood frozen in terror, unable to act, unable to process that the man who gave her life might’ve possibly taken his own. This was not my first encounter with death, it was the first that I was forced to process.

Living in South LA in the ‘80s meant death was everywhere. We lived in a small duplex off of Slater St. and Imperial Hwy, across from the Nickerson Gardens, the largest public housing development west of Mississippi and home of the infamous Bounty Hunters. To the east of us was the Jordan Downs, and the rival Grape Street Crips. I heard stories of the violence — for instance, my Uncle told us about a young man who was gunned down for merely wearing the wrong color shoelaces. I saw the conflict in the street, as we sat out on the porch as a family and watched their standoffs. I felt the danger — I vividly remember my mother pulling me and my sister into the house during a drive-by.

I heard the aftermath of their confrontations — the gunfire, sirens, and chaos were a sweet nightly symphony in Watts, CA. The angel of death was always lurking but passed over our house as it did for obedient Israelites in Egypt. I remember waking up many nights, looking for my father or mother because I was terrified that the angel would forget that my parents were members of First Church in Inglewood.

When my father found Paw-Paw, his body was there, but whoever he was had left this world, and the adults' first instinct was to reach out into the ether and pull him back. I didn’t think there was a need for that. I thought he was playing a game, like hide and seek but with his spirit. At any moment his eyes would open and he’d laugh that infectious laugh he passed to my uncles and aunt. This is what we’re conditioned to do, even as children we believe that we are at the center of Creation. Paw-Paw’s state of non-life was just that, a state dependent on his place in my universe. Surely as the centerpiece of God’s creation, my thoughts would inform the rules of immediate existence.

My father spun Paw-Paw out of the death trap and my five-year-old brain unconsciously filed, “Hammocks are bad.” His body was laid on the cold concrete and the adults checked for any signs of life — there were none. Within moments of removing him from the shed, the paramedics arrived. I often think about the apprehension for Black people to call 911, the police are the last people you want to see when someone you love is in danger. There’s also this feeling that emergency responders take their time to get to you and even when they arrive, there’s never a sense of urgency. White people have often framed these “hood” observations as projections, but there is significant evidence to the contrary. But on this day, to my recollection, no police officer showed up, and the paramedics who arrived were frantically trying to revive Paw-Paw.

As I revisit the memory as an adult, could it be that the presence of myself and my younger sister prompted the paramedics to act with care for an old, dead Black man? Maybe it was the hysterical reaction of my mother or the devastation that pressed on the shoulders of Paw-Paw’s wife. Could it have been my young uncles’ inability to make sense of seeing their father unresponsive? Or perhaps the fact that the lead paramedic was a Black woman.

As I stood over Paw-Paw’s body, this woman, this Black woman, confident in her ability to measure the balance of life and death — looked me directly in the eyes, and asked “Is this your grandfather?” I say “Yes” but my spirit, that part of me at the center of the creation is saying “No.” She ripped open his shirt and applied the defibrillator to his chest, delivering electric shocks to his sleeping heart to wake it up.

His heart slept through the noise, and his body decided to do the same — ignoring our pleas for him to wake up. “We lost him,” the paramedic said in a strained voice. I knew that she felt like she let me down, she couldn’t do what she was trained to do. Everything she probably experienced being a Black woman in the ’80s working as an EMS was worth it when she could deliver on the EMS code: To conserve life, alleviate suffering, promote health, do no harm, and encourage quality and equal availability of emergency medical care.

They put Paw-Paw’s body on the gurney and that was the last time I saw him. I don’t remember the funeral, but I remember the repass because they held it in the very yard where he breathed his last breath. There were a lot of people that came out to celebrate his life but I can’t remember their faces. But I can remember the way the sky looked and how the stars seemed excessively bright.

I would learn later in elementary school that every Sun is a star but every star is not a Sun. To be considered a Sun, a star has to be at the center of a planetary system. The tables for the repass were arranged around the place where the Paramedic asked me if Lawrence Henderson was my grandfather. I should have answered, “No, he’s my Sun.”

The city of Fullerton, CA, has a history of racism tracing back to the 1920s when Councilman W.A. Moore, Judge French, and Superintendent of Schools Plummer joined the Klu Klux Klan. Seven of the eighteen council members that served the city were Klansmen. In 1925, a Klan rally was held at what is now Amerige Park. The crowd that day was about 5,000. The key speaker, a well-known Klansman of his day, spoke on the topic of ‘What’s the Matter With America?’

For years, Fullerton was essentially a “sundown town,” a place where it was illegal for Black people to be after sundown. In our broad view of how racism historically has surfaced, California is not one of the regions we associate with systemic racism. But Brea, Orange, Yorba Linda, and Fullerton used forms of Jim Crow to prevent Black people from purchasing homes, establishing businesses, or building community. For years, many housing deeds in Orange County included prohibitions against Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans.

The blatant discrimination would’ve persisted without a growing job market and fair housing laws. When the OC Human Rights Commission was developed in 1971 in reaction to the police brutality, housing discrimination, and lack of health care and education — the tide changed. But unfortunately, the attitudes of the white majority did not. Whispered racism was muted by lawsuits, legislation, and policy changes. But Trump bumper stickers, MAGA rallies in Huntington Beach, and bigoted outbursts in city council meetings have increased the volume to levels that cannot be ignored.

As a Black man born in Los Angeles, I have a complicated relationship with Orange County. As a child, it was home to the happiest place on earth. In my teens, it was a beach day destination. As a young adult, it was a cheap alternative to the expensive nightlife of Hollywood. It was also the first place I had the opportunity to teach professionally. So maybe I don’t have an issue with Fullerton, but rather what it represents — foundational white supremacy and anti-blackness.

Fullerton is no longer a sundown town; it hasn’t been for years. But an anti-black sentiment is drafted in its blueprints and culture. Back in 2015, several residents of Fullerton discovered bags stuffed with Klu Klux Klan recruitment fliers on their lawns. No one ever discovered who was the culprit or why they did it. The fliers stated, “Save our land. Join the clan in California.” Today, in the land of Fullerton, white people account for more than 56% of the city’s population, followed by Asians at about 24%, other race at 9%, mixed race at 7%, and Black a paltry 2%. So who was the Klan saving the land from?

Most of the time that I have spent in Fullerton has been on the basketball court as a collegiate athlete or downtown as a collegiate bar hopper. It was an easy 30 min drive up the 91 East from Compton to get to Fullerton. Reflecting on my experiences, I remember the microaggressions, the unconscious bias, stereotyping, and police harassment. I can recall conversations between myself and an older cousin about how people reacted to our small group of primarily Black men in their 20s. We navigated through it all because we knew we didn’t belong there. We were anomalies, hiding behind assumptions that we were athletes or students from one of the local schools. Most of our lives were lived in the in-between space, not quite discriminated against but not entirely accepted. For our generation dealing with quiet racism was the minimal cost of civil rights, integration, and opportunity.

About three years ago, my family and I were visiting an uncle who lives in La Habra. I’m driving a silver 2010 Dodge Charger; my registration is up to date, my insurance is comprehensive, and my driving record is clean. Pulling up to his residence, the first thing I notice is the police station. So I make a mental note. From experience, I know that proximity to the Police at night can be traumatizing. So I Dr. Strange through scenarios, shuffling hundreds of possibilities as I find parking. In the car with me, my wife, who is Filipino, my 13-year-old son, and my one-year-old daughter. My family is a new variable because most of my “Driving While Black” incidents happened when I was alone. We pull into the complex, and I dismiss the paranoia momentarily. Still, it gnaws at the back of my mind even after we’re in the house belly laughing at my brother-in-law’s jokes. We lose track of time, and it’s getting close to midnight. That’s when the thought of confronting the Police pushes itself to the forefront of my conscious.

As we pull out into the street, I see two patrol cars. I silently pray to God that they don’t see us. I drive slowly up to the light and wait for the light to turn green before I make a right. They’re on me. I pull into the slow lane and drive right at the speed limit. The two patrol cars become three. My heart is racing; I white-knuckle the steering wheel and look back at my daughter and my wife in the back seat — both are oblivious to the impending danger. I look over at my son, who also is not grasping the gravity of the moment. I say, “They need to just go ahead and pull us over.”

Sure enough, the lights flash, and we’re instructed to pull over. The officer approaches — my hands are on the steering wheel, and my license and registration are already on the dashboard. I asked him why he stopped us. He responds, “You were driving slow.” I point to the back seat of the car. “I have a one-year-old.” I’m ordered to exit the vehicle and am seated on the curb. The questions come, and they’re all variations of, “What are you doing here?”

Remember, most cities in Orange County were once sundown towns. La Habra is less than five miles from Fullerton; they share a school district, zip codes, and a history of anti-blackness and racism. Over the years, there have been several things done to disinfect the present from the virus of past injustices. In 2020, the Louis A. Plummer Auditorium was renamed after a unanimous vote by Fullerton Joint Union High School District board members. They didn't “Want the building to be named after someone with possible ties to the Ku Klux Klan.” The same year, Cal State Fullerton released a video series called “The Talk: A Journey Toward Anti-Racism.” The University is continuing the series in 2022.

I politely ask one of the officers to tell my son that things will be okay. But instead, he interrogates my child, peppering him with questions about whether or not I was drinking or using drugs. I don’t drink alcohol or use drugs. After they ran my license and found nothing, they gave me — a 39-year-old man with a graduate degree who works at one of the biggest corporations in the world — the “Stay out of trouble” speech. For Black men involved in unnecessary interactions with law enforcement, this statement is both a release and a reminder. You escape the moment, but you’ll never escape reality.

I recently watched an interview with Daniel Kaluuya discussing his experiences growing up a Black man in the UK. He detailed how the “gap” between his Black identity and English citizenship was often exposed and exploited by his white counterparts. One of the other guests on the show asked him if he believed that his success as an actor protected him from the ills of racism. He responded, “No, I’m Black bro, If I believe I’m that, that’s when I’m in trouble.” He went on to say, “Police stop me they don’t know I got an Oscar unless I’m carrying it out the window.”

Today, I am still wary of driving through Fullerton. My son is older, and my fear is that he could be mistaken for an adult. One Black man driving through Fullerton will elicit unwarranted attention from the Police, so I can only imagine the reaction of seeing two of us. If I’m honest, the site of Police anytime I’m driving gives me anxiety. I’ve thought about going to therapy, but what could they prescribe to shield me from racism, anti-blackness, and white supremacy? Many people will read this essay and claim I am overreacting or interrogate where I went wrong during a routine traffic stop. Someone will read this and point out that Fullerton is the least racist place in the world. But those assertions prove my point. Systemic racism and anti-black sentiment are so deeply ingrained in our lives that we often don’t even recognize it until it’s too late. Much like a gas leak, racism has the potential to kill us slowly or instantly. When I drive now, I keep my company badge close. The Police don’t know that I work for a billion-dollar brand but maybe if I carry my badge, I can survive the next encounter.

I have always been suspicious of white people. I spent the first five years of my life in South LA. We lived in predominately Black neighborhoods, often staying in close proximity to Central Ave. My earliest memory of white people was the police, bankers, and the ones I saw on TV and in movies. When a white person was in my immediate presence, it always felt jarring. They were either there as an act or there to act up — there was no in-between. However, I remember seeing a white woman at a department store working as a cashier and how she never looked directly at my parents in the eye. What was she hiding? I remember hearing my father talk about dealing with “the man” at work and how his nostrils would flare in disgust. It was the same face he made after being harassed by the police. Even as a kid, it was easy to decipher that “the man” was white.

Lively would be an understatement to describe the antsiness of the kids on the playground before the bell rang on my first day of school at 107th st. There would always be kids running around in that small home on Stockwell, but we were never antsy. I found out why after the bell rang. My teacher was a white woman named Ms. Ellis, and looking back, most of the faculty was white. For many of us, it would be the first time being in the presence of whiteness for an extended amount of time. I did not trust Ms. Ellis. However, within a few days, I grew to respect her. She spoke to us like we were little adults. She taught us the fundamentals of education with a sense of urgency. I learned how to read so quickly that my parents thought I was merely memorizing signs in the neighborhood. I got frustrated because I couldn’t turn my reading off. My world was different now, and it was because of Ms. Ellis.

I know why the enslavers of this country prohibited my ancestors from reading. Once you can read, you begin to see the language that governs the world. And if you can see it, you can interrogate it. That’s what happened to Frederick Douglas. The words used to enslave him transformed into an articulation of why he was owed his freedom. Now that I could see the language, I wanted more, and Ms. Ellis recognized it. And for the first time in my life, my suspicion of white people was briefly suspended. When it came time for my first parent-teacher conference, she beamed over my performance. “Eric isn’t like the other students,” she said with a genuine smile. I could unpack this as one of those moments of respectability politics or the good negro theory, but I think she genuinely meant it.

A year later, I would start the first grade at New River Elementary in the suburb of Norwalk, CA. The experience was completely different. My sister and I were two of a handful of Black kids in a predominantly white school. Within the first month, one of my classmates called me the “N” word. I had no context as to why what he said was wrong until I saw the look on my mother’s face when I repeated it. In class, I quickly realized that my teacher, a white woman named Ms. Sweeney, thought our class wasn’t intelligent. She infantilized us, often speaking slowly and incomplete sentences. The work she gave us didn’t feel like work but activities to keep us busy. It was too easy for me. I finished every assignment early and passed the extra time by singing. In our first parent-teacher conference, Ms. Sweeney told my parents that I might have a learning disability. She noted that I was very disruptive to her class. My mom looked her dead in her cold eyes and said, “He’s bored.” Ms. Sweeney was offended; there was no way that a Black boy from South Central could be the most intelligent student in her class. I never trusted that woman again.

And that has been the pattern of my life — singular moments of suspended suspicion of white people followed by multiple moments of white mistrust. But my experience is not unique. For centuries this has been the pattern for Black and indigenous people in the United States. There is a social pendulum that seems to swing from moderately tolerating Black people to wanting to eliminate us outright. I could also argue that the urge to destroy us never truly subsides; it’s one of the lynchpins of our system. We could go down the list of every advancement made by Black people in this country and how efforts to put us back in our place followed. Talks of abolition led to the slave codes. The mention of Emancipation sustained a Civil War. The end of Reconstruction prompted Jim Crow. Gaining Civil Rights was met by the loss of criminal justice rights. Over and over, white grievance looks to impede Black progress.

I think back to the night Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008. The church where my father was a pastor held a watch party in the sanctuary. It was standing room only, and they set up monitors in the lobby where hundreds of us gathered. There was a tinge of anxiety amongst those of us who had gathered. Then, as the votes started to come in, the anxiety turned into anticipation. The crowd erupted with cheers when he hit the electoral count of 270. People shouted, danced, hugged, and cried. It was surreal, and then reality hit — we were still Black. My brother would later say, “They’re going to kill him.” And they did, but it wasn’t physical; it was political and philosophical. What should have been a moment that fulfilled the nebulous ideals of American democracy set the stage for white people to push the pendulum back to 1963.

On the morning of May 14th, 2022, an 18-year-old white man dressed in tactical gear and armed with an AR-15 style rifle opened fire in the parking lot of Topps Friendly Market in Buffalo, New York. It’s important to note that this store is in a predominately Black neighborhood. We would learn that the gunman researched the area, cased the location, and planned the attack. In addition, he kept an online diary where he detailed his plans to live stream his attack that remained up on Discord minutes into the attack and claimed white nationalist propaganda led to his radicalization.

I lived in Beaverton, Oregon a few years ago during the height of the pandemic. My wife, out taking a walk with my daughter, called me in a panic, “There’s a guy out here who looks sketchy.” I knew the “guy” was white. He had been pacing around our complex and it looked like he was casing the area. So a decision needed to be made, confront him, call security or ignore him. Comforting him could be seen as me being the aggressor, calling security would be seen as me being overly cautious, and ignoring him would make me complicit if he indeed was up to no good. He disappeared, but my suspicion did not. 4 in 10 Oregonians believe agree with statements that reflect core arguments of white nationalists and other far-right groups. As a Black person living in a state where two-fifths of the population believes that they “must protect and preserve its white European heritage,” shouldn’t I be the one concerned?

This idea of“protect and preserve” is at the heart of “Replacement Theory,” a conspiracy describing a nefarious plot to minimize the white population. It’s what apparently drove the shooter to his act of terrorism. “Replacement Theory,” is a baseless claim that white nationalists with massive mainstream platforms like Tucker Carson have pushed on their audiences. It feeds into the same white grievances and fears that fuel the republican party to restrict voting rights, ban abortion, attack the LGBTQ+ community, dismantle civil rights, twist history, and blame everything on immigrants. But the GOP is not solely to blame for “white lash.” White Christian Nationals, white moderates, centrists, and even some progressives have fed into the grievances.

There are think pieces that explore how each of these factions uses fear to drum up white voters. The fear of the other, the economy, losing personal freedom, and being called a racist. But every system put in place is designed to protect and preserve whiteness, so what is there to fear? The argument that the government is coming to take something from the very people it was built to work for is laughable. But every day, Fox News, White Christian Nationalist speakers, politicians, and police departments deal fear by the pound. Unfortunately for the melanated those pounds tend to be cashed in with our flesh. Whether it’s brown children in cages, Asian women assaulted, or Black men murdered by police—we’re the ones that have to pay the bill.

When this white gunman opened fire on Black people in Tops Friendly Market, was he afraid of them? Did the fear of Black people who lived 200 miles away from his hometown prompt him to be proactive? Did Katherine Massey, Deacon Heyward Patterson, Celestine Chaney, Roberta A. Drury, Margus D. Morrison, and Andre Mackneil pose a threat so dangerous that it required vigilantism? What about DePayne Middleton-Doctor, the Rev. Daniel Simmons, Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Myra Thompson, Ethel Lance, and Tywanza Sanders? What about Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Emmett Till, and the thousands of Black people killed by white violence?

What is so terrifying about the presence of Black people in this country that drives white people to murder, maim, shoot, burn and dismember us? If they’re so afraid of Black bodies, why did they send postcards of strange fruit to family members? Why did they pay money to be entertained by Sarah Baartman but refuse to pay for the labor of Black bodies? Why did they find joy in watching themselves perform in blackface but detested Black people enjoying life? Why do they paint “n*gger” on LeBron’s property but beg him for an autograph? Why do they love Hip Hop music but complain about stinky Black clubs? Why do they love Black women’s features but hate the way Black women look? Why do they love Black culture but can’t tolerate Black people? Is the unpredictability of their attitudes toward Black people rooted in fear? Or is it something else?

This is nothing new; Black people have been subject to the whims of their white counterparts from the moment the first enslaved arrived in 1619. Yes, I know the mere mention of that date is triggering for white nationalists. If I were a part of the radical left mainstream media, I have no doubt my emails and dms would be flooded with n-words, go back to where you came froms, and you can’t blame white people for black-on-black crime. They can deflect, but they cannot deny. Even their sanitized version of the events that shaped America’s past is a narrative of arrival, seizure, disposal, and erasure. Can I trust an establishment that cannot trust its own origins? If the white establishment is willing to erase entire sections from its narrative, why wouldn't they erase me?

Whiteness has remained at the center of our collective narrative in this nation, no matter what cosmetic changes have been made to its face. Every effort to create balance has been thwarted, and every time it has felt like there will be progress, we are reminded of why America, as envisioned by its founders, was never meant to be inclusive. White conservatives lost their collective minds when Elle Mystal called the constitution trash. But what I read was a reminder of what we all know but often refuse to acknowledge. The constitution “is a document designed to create a society of enduring white male dominance, hastily edited in the margins to allow for what basic political rights white men could be convinced to share.” In the grand scheme of American democracy, how much have white men willingly shared with non-whites and women that have not benefitted their bottom line?

We can go back and forth about how much better things are for us now than they were when the country was founded, but I would counter with this — why did things have to get better in the first place? If the America that was so great back then was truly great, why was it only great for wealthy white men? Why was it so difficult to recognize indigenous and Black people as equals? Why were women not allowed to participate in the democratic process? The “better” is the bare minimum. So is that what the white establishment is afraid of? Is the potential of the real democracy hidden within the constitution margins coming to fruition their biggest threat?

I can recall losing track of my mother in a department store when I was in grade school. When I realized that my mother was no longer in my presence, her invisible barrier dissipated instantly. I was exposed to any and every danger present in the real world. The fear started as a slight worry; my juvenile brain defaulted to yelling out, “Mom!” I never considered that I wasn’t the only kid in the store with a mother who answered to “Mom.” When you didn’t respond, I circled the area with urgency — my slight worry was an actual worry. If it was a whisper of doubt at the onset, now it was my auntie announcing herself with an emphatic “Girl!” at one of our family holiday gatherings. No one bothered to help me, but the store associates — all of which were white — watched my every move. I started crying because their faces were the same face that Ms. Sweeney greeted me with. Now I was afraid. I spotted a concerned associate behind the cash register and said, “I’m lost.” She looked at me with the same warmth as Ms. Ellis and said, “Let’s find your mommy.” As she uses an intercom to make an announcement, “Will the parents of Eric Montgomery please come to the kids section?” I focus on the symphonic melody of the music pouring from the speakers in the ceiling, and it sounds suspicious.

My parents would occasionally have discussions about what it was like before the city of Los Angeles changed Santa Barbara Avenue to MLK Blvd. My dad also never shied away from talking openly about the racism he encountered on a daily basis. Call it a blessing or luck but he was able to get a job as a billposter, spending early mornings putting up billboards from as far west as Santa Monica to as far east as the San Gabriel Valley. His routes often put him in direct contact with police and pedestrians not used to seeing a Black man in their neighborhood. But the company-issued truck, tools, and paper were often the difference from my father “getting beat upside his head” and returning home with hands beat up by the grueling practice of scraping old ads off of billboards standing as much as four stories above the freeway. He was proud of his occupation but he was more proud of the fact that he hadn’t let a good job blind him from systemic racism. Something he would face head-on in an effort to transition from out in the field to behind a desk. My father never got the desk job, he retired as a billposter after almost 30 years of manual labor.

At five, I knew I was Black. I also knew that the world around me looked different than the world that the TV was showing me. In South LA there were Black and Brown people everywhere but TV made it seem like we were scarce. When I first discovered the existence of dinosaurs and their extinction, I was fearful that the Black people I saw every day were amongst the last in the world. This fear was only exacerbated by the gang violence that seemed to always lurk in the shadows of every dark corner and alley. But my father believed that the immediate violence was the result of the violence inflicted on our ancestors. I couldn’t quite understand what he meant until he made me and my younger sister watch Roots. Although the violence and hatred were scripted it often felt palpable, manifesting as a deep pit in my stomach. It was the same feeling I got in the first grade when a kid named David called me a “nigger.”

But if the way Black history was framed up in grade school was to be believed — that pit in my stomach was self-imposed, Roots was based more on fiction than fact and racism was a thing of the distant past. In the version of history we are taught, Africans were brought to the states to pick cotton, Abraham Lincoln freed them and MLK came along with a dream that brought us all together in harmony. The way we were taught, King delivered the “I Have A Dream” speech and the next day segregation ended, civil rights were made law, and negroes became African Americans.

King’s entire life was distilled into four words and a video captured at the Washington Monument in 1963. Even his assassination in 1968 became a footnote to the dream speech, with little to no interrogation about why he would even be a target for violence. By the 80s, King was already a part of American mythology, a martyr for non-violent protest against oppression, and the face of a federal holiday — even though the FBI harassed and surveilled King for years. By the time I was five, King was washed of his dimensions and it would take years before the culture decided that re-humanizing him was necessary.

When I hear, “I have a dream,” I don’t think of Martin Luther King Jr., the Morehouse man, radical Christian visionary, civil rights activist, and pro-labor advocate. When I hear, “I have a dream,” the first thing that comes to mind is not the co-pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church who was jailed unjustly several times. I don’t see the weathered face of the community organizer who was constant the target of COINTELPRO. I don’t think of the Nobel Peace Prize winner who had a 75% public disapproval rate at the time of his assassination. My mind doesn’t conjure the picture of the son of Martin and Alberta, the brother of Christine and Alfred, the husband of Coretta, the father of Yolanda, Martin, Dexter, and Bernice, and the friend to so many who spent time with him.

What I do think of, is MLK. These three letters have been co-opted to bring comfort to White America. The same people who called for King to be jailed or worse, use his words out of context to justify their instinct to lean into injustice. Every year, White Supremacists quote sections of the Dream Speech carefully avoiding the passages where King holds a mirror to their hypocrisy. One of their favorite lines to quote is, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

By ignoring everything King framed around “the content of their character,” proponents of white patriarchy have removed the soul from his argument and left us to wrestle with a giant golem of race neutrality. Every time they vote for racist policies, say something offensive, protect the positioning of whiteness or avert their eyes from white domestic terrorism, they trot out their lumbering golem to put us on defense or scare us away from confrontation. We’ve seen this tactic effectively used in the anti-CRT legislation that seeks to distort the truth in favor of the fictional comfortability of white people.

Of the several things about democracy that make white people uncomfortable, one is pointing out how our version of democracy sounds good on paper but rarely manifests in reality unless in service of whiteness. It’s a kind of subtle white supremacy that cozies up laws or policies that are inherently just but find themselves choked out or smothered. It brings to mind the current fight over affirmative action at Havard. In a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, it was found that 43% of white students admitted to the institution were athletes, legacy students, children of faculty and staff, or on the dean’s interest list—applicants whose parents or relatives made donations to the school. Students for Fair Admissions, a group that is funded by an anti-affirmative-action activist, is accusing Harvard of discriminating against Asian American applicants by using “racial balancing” to help Black and Latino applicants at the expense of Asian American applicants. On the surface, this case seems like a careful consideration of a policy that may have run its course having the opposite effect in a post-racial America. But it’s really an example of white supremacy finding a way to put up barriers on the road to equality by claiming that the way the street is paved is slowing down progress.

One of the most widely used cozy white supremacist phrases is “a bridge too far.” The insufferable Democratic West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin must have a reminder on his phone to use the term every hour on the hour. Whenever we get too close to fulfilling democracy by inviting everyone to share in the “unalienable rights,” it’s too radical. Do they remember the Edmund Pettus Bridge? In 1965 King led a peaceful march for voting rights across the bridge. He and the 400 unarmed protestors at his side were viciously attacked by armed police officers. A bridge too far to cross indeed. Today, voting still hangs in the balance as white conservatives seek to blow the bridge back to 1965. 19 states approved 33 laws aimed at making it harder for people to vote. In yet another oft-forgotten section of King’s speech he says, “We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.” In 2022 we are facing the same dilemma. Republicans intent on reversing progress and usurping power at all costs are being aided by Moderate Democrats who are content with performative gestures and posturing about the rule of law as fever-pitched pseudo fascism erodes the law. We cannot be satisfied, while active white supremacy and its lite passive version threaten to take us back to 1964.

Passive white supremacy has created a fracture between MLK and Martin Luther King Jr. In the same “I Have A Dream” speech that they use to support their white-centered version of a post-racial society — where as long as you don’t wear a white hood or drape yourself in the confederate flag you can’t possibly be racist — is an indictment on white comfort. Early in the speech — the part that most people skip — King addresses the inability of the country to fulfill its promise to people of color. He says, “It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.”

The first check has yet to clear. And every check that has come after included a clause, required a second signature or expired before there was a chance to cash it. Now those checks are being reallocated to uncomfortable white people, who claim that this country looks nothing like the country of their forefathers. We would hope not. If the United States had the same attitude towards Blackness in 2022 as it did in 1776, I wouldn't be permitted to write this essay. When the MAGA crowd yearns for how things used to be, it’s a clear desire to resolidify whiteness as the center of American culture, legislation, politics, and religion.

The problem with that—Black, Brown, Asian, Indigenous, LBGT, Disabled and other marginalized groups have autonomy in this country. So instead of inviting others to join the ‘Dream,’ policies are being out in place to police and restrict our movement. MLK allows white conservatives to shield themselves from the criticism of upholding white supremacy. Because MLK had a dream that race was a null factor in determining who democracy works for—it’s about character. It’s not race that has kept Black people from advancing, it’s the characters in their community. You know the Welfare Queens, Thugs, Ghetto Princesses, Crack Babies, Gangbangers, and Pimps—the characters that make allegedly up the Black community. You know, characters like the “real suspicious guy,” that George Zimmerman spotted in his Sanford neighborhood or the “threat,” Amy Cooper came across in Central Park.

Martin Luther King Jr. was a man, who despite his flaws, used his gifts to rally an oppressed class to organize and push for change. A man who was not satisfied with the performative, nor the shift in policy that he was charged with provoking. A man who stood defiantly against the Vietnam war questioned the class system, allied with the labor community, and was outspoken about the effects of modern capitalism on the under privileged. His character can never be called into question, despite the FBI’s efforts to reveal his alleged affairs and martial misdeeds.

Character never seems to come into question for the white evangelicals, conservative republicans or protectors of white supremacy. Their favorite twice impeached President is quite the character—a person so morally reprehensible, racists, sexist, and self-centered that he feels like a white villain pulled directly from a blaxploitation film. More and more the right champions corrupt people, destructive causes and insane conspiracies. It is as if, white supremacy is saying that the worse they can do is better than the best we could ever imagine. Dr. King was our best, but instead of following the path he envisioned, they intentionally failed to transform the country and opting to make small adjustments—many of which we see being readjusted. That doesn’t feel like a dream to me. It feels like the reality of a country willing to sacrifice the lives of dreamers in order to keep their nightmarish reality. For them it may feel more comfortable to live in a world of darkness as long as they have control of the lights.

I knew from an early age based on how my father navigated the world and how he talked about it, that the American system was designed to keep Black people in check. If you dared to believe you were uncheckable they made an example of you. Malcolm X refused to be checked by the establishment and paid with his life, the same could be said for Martin Luther King Jr. The two icons have often been positioned as the polar opposite when in fact they were both the scorn of white America because their positions were in fact similar. James Baldwin would observe, “I watched two men, coming from different backgrounds, whose positions, originally were poles apart, driven closer and closer together.”

This country has tried so hard to create a simplistic contrast so we can “take sides.” America is a mythology and in our need to validate the stories we tell, there is an instinct to revert to the archetypes we are comfortable with. Conservatives love quoting Martin Luther King Jr. to fit their narrow views but are quick to vilify Malcolm as a radical segregationist. This is ironic because many of the laws being supported today by the right like voting suppression and anti-CRT policies are radically segregationist. It’s really hard to achieve equality when you don’t have a say about it and can’t talk about what prevents it. But until the plot of Fahrenheit 451 becomes reality, we’re still capable of speaking truth even as the lie of white supremacy attempts turns the volume up on false narratives. The truth is Martin Luther King Jr. was viewed as a communist threat by the FBI for his affiliation with Stanley Levinson. In a 1968 (the year of his assassination) Harris poll, King had a 75% public disapproval rating. Malcolm was also viewed in a similar light by the FBI, tracing back to a letter he wrote in 1950 declaring himself a communist. I don’t need to reference a Harris Poll to tell you how the white public felt about Malcolm X.

The redefining of Malcolm and Martin by America is a microcosm of what my man Professor Jody Armour describes as the “Good Negro. Bad Negro” dynamic. These polar opposites are framed by archaic beliefs, modern stereotypes, respectability politics, and a lack of imagination. Having a fixed point to the known magnifies the fear of the unknown. White America is afraid of a Black existence outside of their collective definition. Black people have learned over and over again that if we cross into the unknown willingly or accidentally, the potential of death Is ever present — socially and in the most extreme cases physically. So my father and his generation walked up to the line but never dared to cross it unless it was unavoidable. They tried to convince my generation that there isn’t a line until they need to remind us that there is.

James Baldwin sat with host Dick Cavett and Yale Professor of Philosophy Paul Weiss in 1968. Baldwin eloquently danced the line, brilliantly indicting white supremacy for its crimes against Blackness with his measured delivery. In the interview, which has since become one of Baldwin’s most iconic moments — Cavett is clearly uncentered by the writer’s observations. Weiss as the western philosopher comes to Cavett’s aid and in a broader sense, comes to the aid of the white audience. “Each one of us, I think is terribly alone. He lives his own individual life. He has all kinds of obstacles in the way of religion or color or size or shape or lack of ability, and the problem is to become a man,” Weiss argues. Baldwin, undeterred by Weiss’ white-splaining fires back in defense of his perspective. “I was discussing the difficulties, the obstacles the very real danger of death thrown up by the society when a Negro, when a Black man attempts to become a man.”

There is an ever-present fear that if Black humanity is found out to be real, the construct of whiteness evaporates. So blackness mostly remains a realm of otherness and the glimpses of our humanity are deemed as exceptions. I was texting with a friend today about the idea of Black Excellence, and how being exceptional allows us to be a good as a mediocre white cis-gender man. Ta-Nehisi Coates, my generation’s Baldwin wrote, “But that is the point of white supremacy — to ensure that that which all others achieve with maximal effort, while people ( and particularly white men ) achieve with minimal qualification.” We’ve been conditioned as Black men to do the most in order to be considered the least. One’s mind may venture into the Sunday best traditions, the material opulence of our public presentations, and respectability politics. However, on the most basic level, doing the most is proving over and over again that you are a human being. My friend left me with this question, “Can we just be normal and not amazing every day?”

To be amazing every day requires a certain mastery over fear. Like the tightrope artist performing night after night — the impossible becomes routine. That doesn’t mean there’s no pressure, because any wrong move means certain death. But what if the ability of the tightrope artist was dependent on half the crowd wanting them to succeed and the other half wanting them to fail? Adding to the complication is the component of fear motivating the crowd. The half that wants the artist to succeed, fears that if the artist fails — they didn’t get their money’s worth. The other half fears that it the artist succeeds — they’ll have wasted their money because they came to see someone die. That is the amazing adventure of being Black, routinely doing the impossible knowing the probability to succeed or fail is in the hands of someone else. And the uncertainty of whether or not we fail or succeed produces a particular fear centered in our Blackness.

Not because of anything we individually do, but because of how anti-blackness frames us. Anti-blackness produces a level of uncertainty, stretching all the way back to 1619 when “a ship arrived at Point Comfort in the British colony of Virginia, bearing a cargo of 20 to 30 enslaved Africans.” To capitalize on the Black body for gain meant that America had to disembody the African soul from the flesh and create the distinct American slave. The lies that had to be told to rationalize slavery created the tightrope of uncertainty. At any moment the Black slave would rediscover their humanity and achieve the impossible.

The enslavers tried every measure to prolong the inevitable and even when the 13th Amendment was ratified, White America continued its assault on Black humanity by prematurely ending Reconstruction, instituting the Black codes, legalizing segregation, embracing Jim Crow, turning a blind eye to domestic terrorism and sanctioning state violence. After putting pressure on the establishment for years it would be the all-seeing eye of the television that would dispel the mythology of American democracy, leading to the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. But laws do not legislate our conscience, they merely give us pause to consider the consequences of our actions in service of the greater good. Laws are fueled by fear — our fear of the consequence of breaking the law and the fear instilled by those who enforce them. But what if you have no fear of the consequences? We can apply Ta-Nehisi’s observation of the minimal effort provided for whiteness to how white people navigate a country of “law and order.”

I went to a predominantly white high school, 60 miles east of Los Angeles and I could not fathom how my white classmates constantly disrespected teachers, school security, or anyone in a position of authority. I was taught to avoid confrontation with authority at all costs, to be “amazing” to the point that I would render myself invisible. There was a police officer assigned to our school, for the most part, he parked his squad car in the front of the school as a deterrent. I can count on one hand how many times I actually saw him outside of his car. One day after school I joined a large group and loitered in front of the entrance. I don’t think our resident officer liked that, he was used to us being in escape mode and vacating the campus. He began confronting us, telling us to disperse and go home. One of the white students got into the face of the officer and screamed, “We’re not going anywhere, dude! My parents pay your salary!” There was a gasp from the Black students, followed by laughter because we realized at that moment how preposterous what we just experienced was.

That white boy had no fear of that police officer. Why should he? In his world, the police were created to protect and serve his interests as a taxpayer. In my world, the police were enforcers of anti-blackness and instigators of violence. My parents paid taxes too, but the price for my protection under the very laws that police were made to uphold was much too high for their middle-class salaries. Most Black people can’t afford to pay for approximation to whiteness unless you’re like Orenthal James Simpson who once said, “I’m not Black, I’m O.J.” We’ve been convinced that if we can acquire enough money it can be used to mask our stereotypes, hide the preconceived notions and protect us from the gaze of white supremacy.

Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote, “We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, — This debt we pay to human guile.” I will never be able to afford to pay the debt of my blackness or hire a dream team of lawyers to defend me against the system. For me and others like me, this glove fits.

I moved to Beaverton Oregon three years ago after accepting a job working for my favorite athlete of all time. I knew what I was walking into. The state of Oregon is 87% white, with a robust 2% of the population identifying as Black or African American. I also knew that the 2% were mostly concentrated in the city of Portland and the surrounding areas. I wasn’t coming alone, my wife and my newborn daughter also made the trip from Los Angeles to the Northwest. I felt unsettled from the moment we crossed the state line and prayed my wife’s Prius could make the trip with as few stops as possible. I was leaving the world I knew behind and entering into a place I knew wasn’t inviting our Asian and Black blended family with open arms. But Portland, according to a colleague, was a growing blue dot of liberals in a sea of red conservatives. We could at least feel safe in the city, so that was my focus, get to the safety of the city as fast as possible.

I knew that the state had a history of anti-blackness and was a breeding ground for white supremacist organizations. In 1844, The Provisional Government Of Oregon passed the Black exclusion law, prohibiting black settlers from Oregon’s borders — a law many believed was passed out of fear that Blacks and Native Americans in the region would conspire to challenge white expansion. Added to the biased legislation was the “Lash Law”, a cruel provision that authorized a punishment for any black settler remaining in the territory to be whipped with “not less than twenty nor more than thirty-nine stripes” for every six months they remained. When Oregon was finally added to the union in 1859, it was the last state in the union to ratify the 13th and 14th amendments. In 1887, a group of Chinese gold miners was murdered by a gang of white horse thieves. In the 1920s one in every 20 Oregonians were members of the Klu Klux Klan. In the 60s the city of Portland was charged by NAACP for having segregated schools. In the 70s, a group of white separatists created the “Northwest Territorial Imperative,” a proposal to transform Oregon into a white ethnostate. It wouldn’t be until 2000 when Oregonians would vote to remove racist language from its constitution that read, “No free Negro, or mulatto, not residing in this state at the time of the adoption of this constitution, shall come, reside, or be within this State, or hold any real estate.”

My older sister and her family moved to Oregon in the late 2000s. For the most part, their experiences were par for the course for a Black family, they enjoyed the liberal attitude of the city and rarely ventured out into the former Sundown Towns. Until my sister started noticing some of the economic and educational disparity in Northeast Portland. My sister was born in LA but raised in Austin, Texas, and has a keen sense of systemic racism. It was all too familiar to her, which is why she could put up with the micro-aggressions, the lack of intentional spaces for Black life, and the mistrust of law enforcement. But she’s a mother, and no one messes with her kids. This is why when she was riding on Portland’s public transport system and a white man called her and my niece, “Niggers” she was done. The family packed up and moved back to Texas, which isn’t exactly a bastion of Black liberty but still has intended spaces for Blackness. On that same train line, in 2017 a man fatally stabbed two men and injured a third after he was confronted for directing racist and anti-muslim slurs at a group of young Black women.

We settled in a small townhome about 8 miles outside of Portland where the office I worked in was located. On the first weekend after moving in, I went to pick breakfast up for the family at a local restaurant. When I stepped inside I was met with stares, which I chalked up to being a 6’7” human being. In the few days we had been in town, several people mistook me for a Portland Trailblazer — is that racist? Or was it the result of the “Good Negro. Bad Negro” polarity. I stood at the counter waiting to be helped, while the white female cashier averted her eyes away from me and pretended to be busy. I asked politely for a menu, telling her that I wanted to order something to go. No response. I took initiative and grabbed for a menu, I saw her nervously retreat slightly. A young white man emerged and asked me if I needed help and I explained that I had been standing in the lobby for almost 10 minutes. I saw the white female cashier’s eyes dart in my direction and quickly back to her busy work of rustling through old receipts. The young white man apologized for the wait, took my order, and disappeared into the kitchen. I knew what had just happened but I also knew even as I type this out how people might react to my sharing of this particular story. I would be accused of being “ too sensitive”, excuses would be made for the white female cashier, or I would be asked to apologize to her for being “too aggressive,” I grabbed my food, walked out to my car, and never once ate at that establishment.

In the two-plus years, we lived in Beaverton, there were several incidents that had me question why the hell I put myself and my family in a compromised state. There were awkward conversations with church pastors seeking to make sure their church reflected the diversity of the community, morbid curiosity about what my daughter looked like, the classic, “I have Black friends” commentary, and the constant “What are you doing here” looks. There was a point where our existence was centered around the Nike WHQ because it was the safest and easiest space to connect with the small Black and Asian community. Everything changed when the pandemic hit. Most of our spaces of safety were shut off and even worse, some of the spaces that remained open were not as accommodating as we assumed. We also didn’t have the ability to board a plane and travel back to Los Angeles.

Things got more complicated when George Floyd was murdered and Portland was at the center of the protests for equality. A Trump rally drove through the area, and the Proud Boys were cozy with local law enforcement. We were trapped in what felt like a volatile witches brew of white supremacy, liberal ignorance, anti-Blackness, Asian hate, a global pandemic, and perhaps the most consequential election of our lifetimes. We were mentally exhausted like many of the other people in the small community we were a part of. We were tired of having our pain put on display for our white counterparts at work in “listening sessions.” We were drained from having to wake up every day in anticipation of another name being added to the list. We were fatigued by the performative activism, the BLM signs in gentrified neighborhoods, and social gimmicks. So instead of waiting for someone to call me a “Nigger” or having to defend my Filipino wife from being attacked — we packed up a Pod, jumped in our car, and headed south for Los Angeles. It was not out of fear of what they could do to us, but a fear of what the fear was doing to us.

At least in Los Angeles, I knew the fear, I had lived with it my entire life and knew how to navigate it. In Oregon, I had no idea how and when that fear would surface, so I was constantly on defense, hyper-aware of my Blackness in white spaces. Being back home in Los Angeles for the last year has helped me reset my mental capacity. I have better tools at my disposal to deal with passive-aggressive racism. I know how to navigate through white spaces here and I rarely consider the white gaze unless it’s the police. Southern California isn’t a post-racial paradise by any means but it’s home. My family is here, my community is here and I don’t have to seek out my people. The thought of having to relocate back to the Northwest feels the like when I cut the skin between my pinky toe — you can act like it doesn’t bother you until it’s time to run.

22-year-old Barry Washington Jr. was murdered in Bend, Oregon on September 19th, 2021 by a 27-year-old white man named Ian Mackenzie Cranston. Washington was said to have complimented Cranston’s girlfriend, which offended Cranston leading him to pull a gun from his waistband. He shot and killed Washington — was arrested at the scene on suspicion of second-degree manslaughter posted $10,000 bail and was released. The causality of how Cranston murdered a Black man and was walking free in less than 24 hours is unnerving but not surprising. In 1844, Cranston would’ve been applauded for upholding the law, in 1887 he may have had a posse with him, in the 1920s he may have had members of the Klu Klux Klan at his side, and in the 70’s white separatists might have celebrated his release as a victory. In 2000, the murder potentially flies under the radar and 20 years later the incident is explored in a Netflix special. On September 30th, 2021 a grand jury indicted Cranston with a charge of second-degree murder and five other charges. As of this writing he is being held without bail. I hate the fact that we have to add Barry Washington to the growing list of names so he can finally be known. I wonder if Portland Trailblazers guard Dame Lillard was in Bend on September 19th and complimented Cranston’s girlfriend, would he have pulled out a gun or his phone for a selfie?