Today as I was helping my son pick out his favorite pink shirt for school he noticed my rainbow wristband. He asked what it was for and I explained that I got it when I went to see my friends yesterday. Our parenting rule is that we never lie to our kids when they ask us direct questions. No redirecting, no white lies, we answer it as fully as we can in that moment.

I explained that I had some friends who were camping outside and that I was worried they weren’t safe and wanted to check on them so had to put on the bracelet to get closer to their tent. He then asked why they were camping outside instead of going to class. I then tried to explain solidarity to my five year and help him understand that sometimes it’s not as important to go to school if you feel like you need to stand up for what you believe is right.

He looked at me blankly.

After giving him too much detail on how I worry for all of my friends who are impacted by the ongoing genocidal war and hostage situation in the Middle East he calmly looked at me and asked, “do you think I can get a rainbow wristband? It’s pretty.”

In that moment, I realized that there is so much that is heavy in the world causing my heart to constantly break. Yet, I have two little kids who love pink and rainbows, and who get worried at the thought of anyone they go to school with being hurt or sad. For their sake, I knew I needed to get on with my day.

After all, I’m a PhD student and I had an assignment due at noon. I dropped them off at school, gave them hugs tighter than they thought were necessary and headed home to submit my reading response to the two articles I read for my racial capitalism course.

As I started to type about the obvious ways our readings on this week’s topic, Black & Indigenous Life: The Debts of Slavery, are tied to everything we’re experiencing today, I couldn’t stop thinking about a quote from the assigned piece by Katherine McKittrick. In “Plantation Futures,” McKittrick writes:

What stands out are the ways we can trace the past to the present and the present to the past through geography. The historical constitution of the lands of no one can, at least in part, be linked to the present and normalized spaces of the racial other; with this the geographies of the racial other are emptied out of life precisely because the historical constitution of these geographies has cast them as the lands of no one. So in our present moment, some live in the unlivable, and to live in the unlivable condemns the geographies of marginalized to death over and over again. Life, then, is extracted from particular regions, transforming some places into inhuman rather than human geographies.

I wanted to just be a student and use this assignment to speak directly to what we’ve all been witnessing. But as I read the quote over and over I was stuck. I couldn’t write my academic posting where I sounded smart while clearly articulating the arguments of the articles and sharing my questions or critiques. Instead, I just stared at my screen.

Many friends and family who have reached out to ask how I’m doing. I keep going back to what I am feeling. I keep going back to the fact that I am so much more than just a student. I’m a Black, queer mother and daughter and sister and friend and colleague and person fully experiencing all that is around us. Sometimes I can’t and don’t want to compartmentalize and just shut everything off. I want to bring my full self to all spaces I inhabit. So I decided to write what I could. What I am feeling.

Below is what I have been able to put together and shared on our class website for my weekly reading response.

Continuing my trend of honesty, I want to acknowledge that I will likely be late with my posting this week. I promise to try to get it in today.

It’s just that every time I sit down to write something I find myself struggling. I know this week’s readings tie to so much happening in the world and on campus, but at this moment I’m unable to put together meaningful sentences. I was in the encampment yesterday helping with legal stuff for a student (and dear friend) that was injured when detained by police. Like many of us, I have been glued to watching what’s unfolding on campus and seeing images of students and friends being vilified and physically harmed while fighting for justice. I’ve been reaching out to friends still inside and spiraling into panic when I can’t reach them.

Beyond that, I’m disgusted by a “both sides” narrative that is spreading when anyone watching or who has been present has seen the aggressive attempt to escalate by agitators outside of the encampment. It’s also not lost on me that if Black or brown students were caught on camera by multiple news sources throwing fireworks, assaulting, and spraying pepper spray on anyone that it wouldn’t take hours and a mayor flying back from DC to stop it. We would be and have been stomped out violently and swiftly. It’s tough to see police presence increase, Jewish students hurting, and our comrades in the encampment terrified and facing physical and mental harm.

I keep hearing that a campus is a learning environment and that the encampments and protests across the country are a distraction. I keep hearing that we should just get back to class. But what we are seeing is a learning experience in real time. We’re all learning much about ourselves, others, and decision-makers who idly stand by and blame students instead of taking accountability for how they govern and lead. Why claim this is a great democracy when many of our rights are being rolled back and repressed? Why speak out for our democracy when speaking freely is impinged?

Underlying all of this is a deep concern that rather than students being a distraction, decision-makers are centralizing what’s happening on campuses to distract from their lack of leadership. My deepest concern is that the people in Palestine who have no university to protest at and are fighting for their lives are lost in this. That the families waiting to hear about the status of love ones are being forgotten. That’s what should be centered. It feels like so many in positions of power and influence have lost that thread. News programs reporting that the encampments are like war zones are talking about campuses like UCLA and Columbia in ways that indicate they have not taken the time to actually understand the violence of settler colonialism and imperialism that has left generations of war torn countries in their wake.

Hurt people hurt people. Militarized police forces will not protect us. I want to have some eloquent ending to this, but I don’t. I’m just at a loss. I grieve for my Jewish friends in Israel now and here in the US who are deeply impacted, have lost friends and family who are hostages or dead, and are facing increased acts of antisemitism. I grieve for my Palestinian friends who have lost and continue losing their people, their homes, and their land. I don’t know where or how this ends. But I grieve for all of us.

I am especially dismayed by those who naively refuse to confront that none of this should be surprising or unexpected. Those who fail to see that some form of violence is always utilized by those in power to justify their suppression of those they have deemed as “other.” This is the settler colonialism and violence our country was built on. For so long college campuses have been places to confront this, dialogue, and pledge to do better than our ancestors. Rather than trying to shut down students who seek to remind us of that and push us with a hope and love to do better, we should protect them, celebrate them, and listen to them.

Some of the best years of my life are the three years I spent at Stanford Law School (SLS). From long nights in the law library to even longer nights on the dance floors of weddings from Tel Aviv to Sante Fe years later.

The friendships I forged while there have forever changed me. There are professors and Deans who continue to mentor, support, and encourage me. There are professors who cared for me deeply whom I’ve lost and mourned. No matter where I am in the world, I always feel tied to Stanford Law School. It will always be home and my Stanford Law friends will always be my community. In many instances, they are now my family.

That’s what has been so hard about the last several days. As my phone buzzes across time zones on group chats and my social media notifications alert me of another non-SLS friend asking me about what’s happening at SLS, I have been forced to confront what happened to this community I so deeply love and fondly remember. Academic institutions have always been and will always be a microcosm of society. As legislators at every level of government have decided that classrooms and campuses are now a venue for their crusades against wokeness, cancel culture, and critical thinking, students, educators, and administrators are caught in the crosshairs of ideologic wars lacking all civility and that many fear are slowly inching closer towards a civil war.

As I have watched the video of students and U.S. Circuit Court Judge Kyle Duncan several times, I’ve had to confront the fact that my beloved law school is the newest battleground. I’m not interested in who is “right” or “wrong” in this situation. In fact, something I learned at one of our country’s leading legal institutions is that what’s right and wrong is rarely black and white. Yet, we’re living in a country where reducing things to false dichotomies that can be summarized in 140 characters or less is the new norm.

Part of why I’m not interested in adjudicating who is right and wrong in the situation is because this is not some far away battleground where the casualties are nameless, unknown moral crusaders. This is my family. Like all families, some of these relatives are more distant and I don’t know them — but we are family nonetheless. I could go on and on about what Dean Tirien Steinbach has meant to the civil rights legal community in the Bay Area for decades. The battles she’s fought, the lawyers she’s mentored, and the rights she’s defended. I could go on and on about Dean Jenny Martinez who is funny, kind, a legal expert, and always makes time for students. She did it when we were students, she does it now for alums, and she has always been a beacon of light for women of color at SLS and beyond who see in her something once viewed as unattainable, unimaginable.

Perhaps the family members I could go on less about are the current students. Whether it’s the students protesting Judge Duncan’s talk or those who invited him. It has been a while since I’ve sat in those seats or gone to lunch talks to support friends and their student groups or because they offered the best free lunch that day. But I do remember being Black and queer at SLS. I remember being the only queer out woman in my class. I remember the isolation and the otherness I felt when certain cases came up in constitutional law. I remember camping out in administrators’ offices pleading for more support for queer students, students of color and Indigenous students. I remember running for student government president with my gay, Mexican best friend so that we could fight for the SLS we believed in.

I remember being the only person that self-identified as gender-nonconforming in a time before pronouns were something people cared enough to ask about or rally against. But I do know that I had friends in some of the groups that would have invited someone like Judge Duncan to campus. I might have walked by and swiped some free food, but I would not have dared entered the room. Later that week I’d probably meet one of those classmates on the dance floor. We’d laugh. We’d commiserate about the homework and reading we weren’t doing. We’d disagree about the speaker, but there would be no hate exchanged. It was a time before I felt comfortable with the discomfort of standing up for my right to dignity, especially if it created conflict.

Things have changed.

I’m not interested in telling students they are wrong for inviting someone into our family who denies my validity as a person, opposes my right to choose what to do with my body, or thinks my right to vote doesn’t deserve the protection my ancestors were whipped, spit on, and forever scarred fighting to secure.

In fact, I think I’m supposed to remind them that what they did is justified because we all have the right to free speech.

I’m also not interested in telling students who look like me and love like me that their protests were too much. I know that, for them, showing up every day — in class, at a lunch talk, or in a courtroom — is an act of courage. Those in power who deny us our rights have never given them to us because we talked nicely. In fact, they police our tone, style, and method of speech as if somehow doing it differently would magically make us worthy of their love, protection, respect or power.

In fact, I think I’m supposed to remind them what they did is justified because we all have the right to free speech.

Instead, what I am interested in is continuing to fight for justice. What I am interested in is following in the footsteps of the great women of color — specifically Black women — who have graced Stanford Law School with our intelligence, our graciousness, and our respect even when the institution didn’t offer those same things to us. As a Black woman, I love a place and call it home despite the fact that no one who has ever looked like me has been tenured at the institution. I love a place and call it home despite the fact that whenever I’m there I have flashbacks to being stopped by police, asked by students what sport I play, and being told by instructors that I couldn’t enter the classroom where I was volunteering to help at-risk youth because they mistook me for one of the students and demanded I remove my “gang paraphernalia” (which was actually blue clothing bearing Greek letters that proudly signified my membership in a historically Black sorority).

I could care less about a petulant, taunting Judge who already has power or students with extreme privilege who will go on to have their selection of dream jobs no matter where on the political spectrum they fall.

What I do care about is the calls I’ve seen for Dean Martinez and Dean Steinbach to be fired. To be clear, I think the apology letter from the university was the wrong move. How do you apologize for students and staff utilizing their power of free speech against someone who is saying that free speech is important? How do you cower to media pressure to denounce protest as inappropriate when the very core of the lessons I learned there are to always stand up when something is wrong or unjust. How can we buy into a false narrative of cancel culture and liberal snowflakes when the only person I saw on video throwing a true tantrum was a grown ass man who has somehow landed in a position where I am supposed to respect him as a Judge when my multiple identities keep him from respecting me as a human being?

How can we apologize to someone who himself chose not to see through his planned remarks and who kept demanding to see an administrator because he couldn’t fathom that the Black woman in front of him could be a Dean?

I’ve seen students on Fox News basking in their 15 minutes of fame and being celebrated as champions of free speech who feel wronged by one afternoon and one protest, but could never imagine the trauma of being at an institution or part of a profession that was set on the premise that you are less than and that rules, policies, standards of behaviors, and laws exist to keep you othered.

I am a woman of color. I am a Black woman. I am also someone who has had the pleasure and burden of being a woman of color in leadership and a woman of color in a senior position with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in my title. I can only begin to imagine the immense weight and pressure Dean Martinez feels as the first woman of color to be Dean of Stanford Law School. She had to be exceptional to get there. Her every move, email, and apology letter are scrutinized at a level that no white man would ever be held to if he had the job. The stress of always being told you’re doing too much or not enough, the pressure of being told that you’re only there because of boxes you check, and the weight of the immense sense of pride others feel because you are the only one who has ever been there — can be crushing. So, while I may not agree with the letter, I support Dean Martinez. I have seen her tireless fight to make Stanford Law a place where all students can feel at home. I have seen her push to balance her history-making position and power with humbleness and a willingness to be challenged to raise the bar for the law school in every single aspect. I do not agree with the apology letter, but this disagreement will push me towards more dialogue with her and the school, not a demand that she steps down. She is still a beacon of light.

Selfishly, most of my concern over the last several days has been focused on Dean Steinbach. I say selfishly, because I have been in her position far too many times. Hired by a white organization as part of some promise to care more about race, equity, and justice. People doing everything they can to show that I’m welcome in a white-centered space, that I’m needed and that they are happy to have me. Beyond that, we’re often offered up as some sort of Hunger Games tribute and asked to put ourselves out there. To be public facing. To attend events. To speak up. To do everything we can to show how much our organization really means it when they say equity and diversity and inclusion matter. But the same thing always happens with us DEI hires, at some point we start doing our job. Often, we do it well because we weren’t able to ascend to such a position without being on our shit. But the rub always comes eventually. We start pointing out issues, asking for accountability, and asking questions like “is the juice worth the squeeze?”.

Then people start complaining about our approach, we start getting feedback about our communication style or culture fit. As the organization and longtime stakeholders get defensive, we get targeted and attacked.

This has happened to me too many times to count. This is now happening to Dean Steinbach. Like many of the Black women I have talked with over the last few days we see a far too familiar pattern playing out. Dean Steinbach is being set up to take the fall. And for what? For being inappropriate? For saying the right thing but at the wrong time? For standing firm in the face of an invited guest…a Judge no less?

For too many of us, we know that the Dean was simply doing her job. I cannot sit by and listen to people say it’s not what she did, it’s how she did it. That’s bullshit. The reality is, Dean Steinbach should have never been put in that position. Knowing the volatility of the student body and the topic, why was a Black woman put out front as a shield yet again? To say nice things about an institution that could have offered countless other administrators to be that shield? The least the institution could do is to support the warrior they sent to the frontline. Doing true DEI work is a matter of life or death for so many of us. We know that the ability of so many students to believe in themselves, to keep pushing despite threats of harm, and to live as their authentic selves is challenged every single day.

We are often people in organizations with very little power but the best understanding of the fact that to do true “equity” work we have to talk about the redistribution of power. We have to confront and challenge privilege. That’s what students were doing at Stanford Law School. That’s what Dean Steinbach was doing when supporting those students. I choose to center their experiences, not that of the white man at the front of the room whose experience is centered in almost every single one of his daily interactions in ways he does not even notice. Dean Steinbach was doing her job. She was doing what she and so many DEI professionals are hired to do. I hope she keeps her job. I hope all the Stanford students involved, no matter their political leanings, get the dream jobs they so desperately want.

In a few years, some of the students will be judges. Some of them will be deans. Some might even be DEI professionals. I hope no matter where those students land, they look back on this experience and see it as a disagreement amongst family that has gotten out of hand. I hope no one loses anything they truly want. I hope they have time to reflect on the fact that in their positions as future leaders, the things they say, the legal decisions they make, and the free speech they exercise has real world impacts beyond an elite university. People are dying seeking medical care, trying to participate in our democracy, and just trying to go to the bathroom in peace. I heard Dean Steinbach acknowledge that and try to center that while encouraging free speech. If she loses her job it won’t be some victory of the anti-woke mob or anti-critical race crusaders. Instead, it will expose that once again, an institution loved and graced by the patience, service, and compassion of a Black woman failed to offer it back to her. This would not be surprising. But it would not be right. It would not be just. It would not do anything but keep the status quo and remind us that white men in power with hurt feelings have the ability to destroy lives, hurt people, and maintain power.

November 8, 2016

Donald Trump was elected by our electoral college system. Many people will mark that as a day in history when everything changed.

My wife and I got the alerts on our phones that he was likely to win as we were walking to the celebration party for the brand-new Senator Kamala Harris. We were so excited about voting for her, her campaign, and her political future and we somehow lost all of that as it begun to sink in that Trump won. Despite telling anyone who would listen that I was sure he would win, it still hurt. It didn’t surprise me that white people chose whiteness over reason and, in many cases, their own self-interest, but it still hurt. At the time, I struggled with the anger and fear of knowing that it was a historic day when things would change — but also a day where so much would stay the same. I remember talking to my white wife as she panicked through tears and lamented this state- and voter-sanctioned acceptance of white supremacy and racism at a level never before seen in this country.

I did not shed a tear; I just calmly added an addendum to those thoughts of despair: never before seen or believed or accepted — by white people and people who treasured their proximity to whiteness and power more than listening to the Black people, Muslim people, people with disabilities, queer people, immigrants, women, and other oppressed groups of people who have been living our whole lives knowing all too well what this country is built upon.

I went to bed that night struggling to fully catch my breath. I knew the next four years would be full of anxiety, tense anticipation of what could come next, and unfiltered hate. I wanted to do my breathing exercises, calm down, and be wrong about it all. But I knew I wasn’t. I will never forget the panic attack I had that night — like many nights since — I just could not breathe.

December 18, 2020

I attended my first COVID-19 memorial service. The pandemic has been long and dark. Most of my family are essential workers. Yet, I had somehow been spared from anyone close to me being lost to this virus. I was thankful for that, because I had lost so many Black people as police and this country continued its genocide of Black folks. I was not sure how I would handle a loss of someone close to me from COVID-19.

Even this service was not a direct loss for me, but rather it was for the parent of two of my best friends. People I chose as family when I left the Midwest and moved out to San Francisco. People who I laughed and cried with. People who I have far too many NSFW stories with. People who were a part of my wedding. People I truly love with all of my heart. They lost their dad. Despite only meeting him a few times, that memorial was the hardest thing I experienced in 2020 to that point. Watching your family cry at the end of a dumpster fire of a year causes many thoughts to run through your head. But in the middle of thoughts of anxiety, fear, and sorrow is the deep helplessness that you cannot just be there to hold them. To sit in silence and say nothing, but be there. Being on the other end of a phone and hearing the grief. Sitting in a Zoom room thousands of miles away. Sending flowers or gift cards. None of it seems adequate. None of it feels real.

Somehow, as we started to normalize talking about sorrow and grief, we have yet to truly talk about the deep guilt. The guilt that someone you love is hurting and suffering an immediate family loss while your family — my immediate family — is lucky. We were working from home. We were in a position to afford a nanny so we could both work while we kept our son home from school to wait out the post-Thanksgiving surge. We walked by people experiencing homelessness on the way to our $15 a cup coffee shop and have seen neighbors facing evictions, we’re in that group of affluent people who seem to be thriving. We sold our house, made a profit, and bought an even bigger more expensive house. On December 18, 2020, I turned off all the lights after the service and cried uncontrollably. I struggled, yet again, to breathe, through the tears and snot, as I cried for my friends and family that lost and I cried for this country and all that we lost in 2020 and over the last four years.

On December 19th my family was moving into our brand-new house with our huge yard and swimming pool. Our whole family was living the Los Angeles dream and we were excited about settling into our new place before the holidays and before our new baby arrived just 12 weeks later. How could we find joy knowing there was so much despair around us? Were we horrible people for seeking joy in this darkness?

I am Black and queer, I’m oppressed. I’m also successful. I’m my ancestors’ wildest dream. I was happy. But also broken. Destroyed. Devastated. More than anything I was sorry. Sorry that in the face of so much pain and sorrow for so many, after such a horrible year, I was crying for a loss that was not quite mine, while also celebrating all the riches I was able to amass in 2020.

It was certainly a rough year for me. My struggle with mental health and isolation have been life challenges that were amplified during this unprecedented time. The anxiety of whether “peaceful transfer of power” was a concept that the white supremacist in chief could even comprehend kept me on edge every single day. The way in which many people started saying that we could just get back to normal with Trump gone terrified me because “normal” was never good for Black folks. I left a job with people I admired who tried really hard, but never seemed to be able to completely grasp or own that they perpetuated systems of white supremacy, devalued me and other staff of color, and allowed racism and anti-Blackness to harm people as long as whiteness and white fragility were respected and protected.

But 2020 was also amazing. And honestly, I feel guilty saying it. I traveled less and got to see my baby boy turn into a full-blown toddler full of jokes, opinions, and questions. My marriage was stronger than ever as we tackled the year and struggles together. We got pregnant and were excited about the life we were building for our strong Black kids. I voted for the first Black woman Vice President. I saw Trump lose a popular vote for the second time. I started a business and got to be my full self professionally for the first time in my life, and I made more money doing it. My grandmother was still alive and with the announcement of vaccines I started to feel like she would get a chance to meet her new great-grandchild in person one day. When Trump was elected, she was unfazed, saying she grew up in segregated South Carolina and had seen many horrors and outlived many racists and would outlive this racist presidency. She promised me Trump would not be the last white man in power in this country, but promised he also would not be the last president she would live to see. In 2020, still alive and as feisty as ever in her 80s, she made good on that promise.

My life in 2020 was pretty, well — 2020. Dark, long, and confusing, but with many moments of beauty, hope, and joy.

As a Black person in American, I have always had to balance the knowledge that I was vulnerable, a target, and more likely to die, but still find a way to keep going. In that sense, 2020 felt amplified and harder, but not different. The reality is 2020 was another year where I did not stop being Black. White supremacy did not stop either.

As December ended and we sent out our annual Kwanzaa card we ended it by saying:

“In a year with so much loss and suffering, we are grateful — and honestly relieved — to see another year….

Even with all of the change, distance, and difficult good-byes we endured, what remained consistent is our love and appreciation for family and friends…. We’ll see you soon. Hopefully. Probably.

Yay 2021!”

It felt like a fitting way to end the year. It felt like we were finally finding some balance between grief and hope. It felt like we made it through the year and could finally take in and let out that deep breath, fortified, and ready to move into 2021.

December 30, 2020

Anyone who has a toddler knows that bedtime is a whole hot mess. This bedtime was made worse because my pregnant wife was not feeling well. She was sure it was just a cold and being super pregnant, but she had taken a COVID test at the suggestion of her OB. Just to be sure. After all, LA is facing our “’worst disaster’ in decades as coronavirus rages unchecked” and we had just moved. During the move, we followed all public health protocols, never stayed indoors with any movers or delivery folks for more than fifteen minutes, and stayed masked up. We did have more folks in and out of the house after we realized that the movers had accidentally packed a lawnmower in our storage pod, on its side, and gotten gas all over a bunch of clothes and furniture. This moving snafu was another moment when our privilege and resources was so evident as so we replaced as much as we could by ordering new stuff while we waited for the insurance payment. It just meant a few more deliveries and a few more exposures. But we were careful.

It was definitely just a cold. And a toddler outsmarting us to escape an on-time bedtime.

Then her phone buzzed. A notification. Her test was in. She was positive. Fuck.

A lot of historic important things happened in 2020, but on the eve of the eve of this difficult year ending I was hit with the day I will never forget.

I know my parents struggled, worked multiple jobs, and sacrificed all they had so I could get the college degree they never had. They wanted to make sure I had the opportunities and successes denied to them because they did not have money or white skin. Thank goodness they did. Because they had nothing, but always made sure I had something, I am privileged to have access to information and a very patient friend who works in public health and who answered my texts with a call immediately, sent us an oximeter (with a warning that it might not work for my Black ass because you know, racism), and walked us through what we needed to do for the next 14 days.

My wife and our unborn baby immediately went into isolation — thank goodness for the privilege of having this new larger house. Once our son realized she was not reading his stories that night he cried uncontrollably. And then in that way kids do, he saw in my face that something was wrong. He saw that I was scared. He stopped crying immediately and asked if I was sad. He then looked over my shoulder and asked where she was going. Explaining to a 2-year-old that mom is sick and has germs and we cannot see her for a while was challenging and heartbreaking. As I sit here this morning, I know he’s waking up any minute and will start today like he’s started every day since December 31, 2020: asking if Mommy is sick or going to be able to see us today.

The next morning was supposed to be his first day back at daycare. We were right about our predicted post-Thanksgiving surge at his school. An outbreak was reported after Thanksgiving. Friends asked us how an outbreak happened and who at the school was careless. But an outbreak at a school is not proof that his teachers do not care or that his school and all the parents are not taking every precaution they can, it’s just that in LA — like many communities in America — those “essential workers” we rely on the most are the ones we force to expose themselves to the most harm with the least pay and fewest resources. With unaffordable housing, evictions raging, and people having to work to survive, the virus keeps spreading. Every single staff person at my son’s school is Black or brown, and in LA — like many communities in America — Black and brown people are getting COVID-19 at a higher rate than white people.

Too often during this pandemic people who get COVID-19 are described with adjectives like “careless” or “selfish.” We like to paint broad strokes about how much they could have done to prevent it. Think about it, when you find out someone you know has it, how long does it take you to ask, “Well, um, how did you get it? What were you doing?” We convince ourselves we are asking because we are curious or concerned, or to make sure we don’t put ourselves in that situation. But we quietly, sometimes unconsciously, think to ourselves, “Well, I’d never do that,” or “well, that wasn’t essential, why were they doing that?”

I know it happens because I watched people do it to us. Most of our friends, colleagues, and family were overly generous, we could not have gotten through it without them sending food, well wishes, kids’ books, and supplies. But others could barely hide their judgement about what we must have done to deserve this.

No one deserves to get COVID-19.

No one deserves the nights I spent alone on the couch crying and wondering if my wife who was wheezing in another part of the house would be there when I went to take her food the next morning. After initially testing negative and taking care of my son for several days while we both wore masks inside as I was feeling great and he slowly started to get sick, I eventually tested positive. That meant that I was able to move back into our room with my wife, but I haven’t slept a full night since December 30. No one deserves falling asleep thinking about where the life insurance documents are and cursing yourself for not finishing that will. No one deserves to have to talk to someone they love about what to do if one of you stops breathing in the middle of the night when it is unclear if an ambulance will get you to the hospital or have enough oxygen to keep you alive on your way. No one deserves having to consistently leave your child alone in a room so he does not see you cry when he asks for the 100th time in the last ten minutes where his mommy is and then looks at you and says he misses her. No one deserves to contemplate a life without ever getting to meet your unborn child or that child being born but never meeting their mother. No one deserves to sit alone looking at family pictures and wondering if the last family picture is the last family picture.

No one deserves any of this. COVID-19 has brought us all of this. Despite lingering exhaustion, debilitating headaches, general brain fog and inability to focus, no sense of taste or smell, and the occasional inability to catch our breath after exerting ourselves minimally…we are still alive. We are here. We think we will be okay.

But too many families never got to this point. Too many families have lost someone because of COVID-19. Too many families are mourning that loss with shame, in silence, and with guilt. Too many families did not get the same ending to their COVID-19 story as my family did with ours.

Beyond that, too many families faced all of those things that no one deserved before COVID-19 was a term many of us had even heard. Too many families that are people of color, too many families that are poor, too many families that lack access to privilege, power, information, and whiteness know all too well what it is like to fall asleep every night wondering if they will wake up in the morning. They wonder if they will be okay. They wake up knowing they may be alive, but may have been disregarded in this country with a feeling that no one cares about their lives or their deaths.

I have seen and heard about that feeling whenever I talk to my grandmother about living through the Civil Rights movement as a Black woman in the South. I have seen and heard about that feeling when I talk to my dad about growing up in the projects with his 14 brothers and sisters and cousins and friends all in one spot and selling drugs to get by and get out. I have seen and heard about that feeling when I talk to all the Black moms in my life, including my mom, whenever they talk about the concern they have for their children just trying to live — just trying to breathe.

People in this country deserve so much more. In particular, Black people in this country deserve so much more. I thought 2020 was ending in the worst way possible. I thought I might lose my wife, my everything. I did not know how it could get worse, but I had a feeling it might. Then 2021 started, turned to 2020 and said, “Eh, bro. Hold my beer.”

I never caught my breath at the end of 2020. I make my living from speaking. Speaking up. Speaking out. Speaking truth. But I ended the year relatively quiet. I started 2021 quiet. I was in bed, unsure if it was COVID-19 finally taking its toll on me, 2020 finally taking its toll on me, the Donald Trump reign finally taking its toll on me, or being Black and queer in America finally taking its toll on me. I am still not sure what it is. I just know I still cannot take that deep breath I have been craving. I cannot take the deep breath I need.

I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.

I cannot put my finger on what is causing it, probably a combination of all of those things. I just know that it has been incredibly hard to breathe in a year where so many Black folks hear those words playing over and over again in our heads, on the news, and in our communities as Black people continue to be killed by the systems of racism, white supremacy, and anti-Blackness in this country.

Four years after Trump took office, I still can’t breathe deeply. But I am still alive. I am forever grateful for that. I know I have to keep fighting. For those who took their last breath in 2020. For those who took their last breath due to COVID-19. For those who took their last breath because of this country’s commitment to white supremacy and protecting whiteness.

I still can’t breathe deeply. But I am still alive.

January 20, 2020

A country founded by stealing land from Indigenous people has always sanctioned settler colonialism with a mix of white supremacy. November 8, 2016 was not the first time white supremacy won. We have to clearly see that and be honest about it if we want to build a more perfect union. We must disabuse people new to seeing injustice and inequity of the notion that white supremacy will magically end with today’s historical inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. As we saw mere days ago, whiteness pushes people who fear losing power or their perceived proximity to it (no matter how delusional that belief) to do everything they possibly can to hold onto it. Whiteness allows us to value Black lives less than we value property and ideals that are only real for certain people in this country. That will not change on this historic day. We cannot simply erase our history — and present-day realities — with the taking of one or two oaths.

I know that truth to be self-evident. But I also know that the last four years, 2020, and the beginning of 2021 have been tough. That is an understatement. They have been ridiculously fucking hard.

But today, I plan to sit in front of my television and watch history. I plan to watch President Joe Biden preach unity as he brings dignity and respect to the office that has sorely lacked it for the past four years. I plan to watch Dr. Biden look on proudly as the backbone of a family that has endured much loss. I plan to watch a Black woman of Asian descent with her beautiful blended family make all of us proud as she looks like someone who could be my Auntie making it through one more layer of that glass ceiling. I plan to text my women of color friends and tell them how much I love them and share how happy we are while we comment on all the Black women who saved us and still found time to buy the perfect outfit for today and are slaying our screens with Black beautiful fierceness.

I plan to watch the witty banter between Chrissy Teigen and Meena Harris online and pretend we are friends and all there in person celebrating together. I also plan to send all the positive vibes, prayers, energies I can towards our nation’s capital and hope that they are both protected and make it through this day safely and are able to find joy in small moments they have with their loved ones today as they prepare to take on the major crises that face our country.

More than anything, I plan to allow myself to feel the joy of still being here, with my family. I plan to be happy to be alive and breathing. My lingering COVID-19 symptoms and my being Black in America still will not allow me to take that deep breath and sigh of relief that I so desperately crave. But I am still breathing.

I am still here and I will keep fighting to dismantle white supremacy and anti-Blackness in all that I do, every single day. We have a new President, a new Vice President, and the most diverse administration in history. These are all reasons for celebration. But this is still America. There is still a genocide of Black people occurring in this country. COVID-19 is still raging throughout the nation and people are still dying. Disparities still exist, with race being the number one factor in determining your likelihood to live a long life, breathe clean air, get a good education, have access to quality transportation options, and achieve some form of economic stability and mobility. None of that will change today.

Many people will mark 2020 as a year when “we” finally woke up and saw the way that racism, white supremacy, colonialism, and all the other isms impact historically — and currently — oppressed people in this country. The only thing is: believing that “we” are finally seeing these things is still centering whiteness. We have to stop using “we” when we mean white people. Because a lot of us have always seen what this country is, what it is built on, and who is valued. Many of us have committed our lives to changing that, and were doing so long before November 8, 2016. Many of us will work to hold our new leaders accountable to the promises made during their campaign and during generations of campaigns by people appealing to us as voters, but forgetting us once in office.

I am excited about today. I could not sleep last night. I am genuinely happy for the potential of what this country can do. Today I celebrate.

Today I eat lots of fancy bread and cheese and enjoy the sun as it shines bright on a new day in history. But I am cautious, I am strategic, I am tireless in my fight for justice, and above all, I am Black. There will be an urge today to say “we” made it. I do not want to minimize what we all collectively experienced the last four years. We are still here. Still breathing. Still alive. But every time you say “we” made it over the next few days, I urge you to think about who “we” truly is. Beyond that think about who did not make it. There is still much to be done, so think about who will not make it if we don’t stay committed to dismantling and changing our structures, systems, and policies. There is much work to be done to acknowledge, address, and change the hate, anti-Blackness, and white supremacy that have been deeply rooted in every single institution in this country.

But tomorrow I plan to get back to work on changing that. I hope you do, too.

This is the moment we hoped wasn’t coming. This is the moment we knew was coming. This is the moment that never really left.

For months I’ve been present on panel after webinar after phone call after socially distanced hangout with people optimistically asking if this time it was different. Breonna is trending and on the cover of a magazine. George Floyd’s face and name are etched into the thoughts and prayers of everyone you know.

Your favorite company and your least favorite company have both released statements saying they care for their Black employees, they care for the Black community, are hiring a new diversity Black, and that they care about Black Lives. Shit, we even have a Blasian woman reppin a Divine Nine sorority trailblazing a path to the White House.

Many people wanted to believe this time was different. Many people wanted to believe we reached a tipping point. I have had countless Black colleagues exclaim that FINALLY, white people had seen what it is to be Black in this country.

Did they? Did it matter?

I’m not sure white people really saw it. I know many saw a video. But they didn’t see the pain, sorrow, and the agony we had before, during and after the video — even Black people like me who refused to watch. I don’t need to see a video to believe that pain. I certainly don’t need a video to feel it. My pain lasts longer than the 8 minutes and 46 seconds it took to extinguish George Floyd’s last breath. My pain has more endurance than it requires to run 2.23 miles in support of Ahmaud Arbery. My pain spans longer than the 162 days since Breonna Taylor’s killers murdered her as she slept.

My pain is less fleeting than the mention of Tony McDade’s murder by mainstream media. My pain is deeper than the thought process that results in one believing that shooting a man 7 times in the back could ever be justified. My ancestors built this country with that pain. My mom navigated a segregated childhood in South Carolina with that pain. Blocks from Malcolm X’s birth site, my dad navigated drugs, guns, and violence protecting his family in the projects with that pain.

Did white people see that? Or did they just see “everything going on” and hope to get back to a world where we did not have to think or talk about race as much. Really, a world where they didn’t have to think or talk about race as much. Really a world where they didn’t have to think or talk about Black people so much — or our pain. I’m not sure white people saw it or fully wanted to because “how are you doing…you know…with everything going on?” is just a rhetorical question that they politely ask at the beginning of a Zoom call or text exchange. Often, it’s something uttered before the request they have for a Black person to put it all aside and focus on the work that they need and expect from you. I get that. Remember, it’s etched into my very being. My ancestors put in that work. We built this. We have learned how to get on with it.

So, let’s get on with it. Let’s tell the truth. I am not sure that seeing a video, any video, matters to non-Black folks. In fact, I’m sure my life doesn’t matter more to them than before they watched. I am honestly too exhausted to tell you why or how I know. Plus, I don’t have the energy to dig up the data from some academic journal to prove it, just my lived experience. We already know who won’t believe it: those who never believe what Black people tell them because they themselves don’t experience it.

I am exhausted because being Black is hard. No. I’m exhausted because white people make being Black hard because of their own insecurities and fears. Not just at my job, not just in my relationships, not just in this country, and certainly not just as a concept in my mind. Literally everywhere. I can’t escape the fact that while the color of my skin makes me breathlessly beautiful, it also makes others want to take my last breath. It makes others afraid, makes me a target, makes having just one bad day or making one bad decision impossible, and makes it impossible to ever believe that simply reforming something built to destroy me will save me.

So, did the George Floyd video matter? It mattered to me. His life matters to me. But I didn’t need a video for that. And the people who did; did it matter to them? By now we all know what happened to Jacob Blake a few days ago. By now we all know what Kyle Rittenhouse did a few days later. By now we know how Black athletes — men and women — went on strike and spoke out when too few of our colleagues, neighbors, and leaders uttered a word.

But now what?

In the past few months when people asked how I was feeling or if I had hope or what was different as a pandemic and a genocide of Black people ravaged our country, I said the same thing repeatedly: everything and nothing.

Everything is different. Forced inside by COVID-19, protected by their privilege and skin color and with nothing to do but consume current events, non-Black people have seen us hunted. They cared. They were in the streets. They were reading books. They were checking on the Black people they knew. They were making donations. They were posting black boxes. They were posting statements. They were kneeling. They were crying. They were angry. They were with us.

Yet my chest was tight. It was heavy. I never could release the tension I was feeling.

I knew that I was supposed to have this feeling of hope that as BIPOC people, united with our white accomplices, we could envision a different reality for our children, fight for justice, and force a country to see the humanity in the Black lives that have been normalized to mean less than nothing. As a genderqueer Black woman I was surrounded by people telling me that now was the time, that I needed to support a ticket that did not fully reflect my values for dismantling the status quo and uplifting my life, that the lack of acknowledgment of Black trans lives and the overwhelming and exhausting reliance on Black women were all worth it. Because this time everything was different. Now that white people were doing all these things: kneeling, crying, being angry, being in the streets…now they’d be okay with us doing it. Everything was different.

But how?

I have asked myself that question repeatedly the last few months and days. Because honestly, a lot feels the same. When we kneel, cry, get angry, or take to the streets all of a sudden we deserve whatever we get. We’re animals. Nothing has changed. This last week I’ve laid awake each night thinking of the 3-year-old in a car seeing their father shot and wondering how I would unravel if my 2-year-old, sleeping down the hall, ever had to witness such brutality. I wrestled with needing to find Black joy through the sorrow, but feeling guilty about those moments of joy.

I know that I want Kamala to go harder on race. I know that I want basketball players to keep striking. I know that I want Black people to keep resisting and fighting. But who am I to define what that resistance looks like? Who am I to ignore the challenges of being the first or only Black woman to do something and prescribing what that should look like? Who am I to determine if striking for justice is more important than seeking joy in one’s work? Who am I to think that Black people have to be responsible for fixing the racism, anti-Blackness, and white supremacy that we didn’t create?

White people will always strive to define us. They are taking our lives or standing by and letting it happen. Systematically. Deliberately. Genocidally. So how is everything different this time? It feels the same. What’s different? Nothing.

This is the moment we hoped wasn’t coming. This is the moment we knew was coming. This is the moment that never really left.

This is the moment that feels worse. Allowing myself to believe, even just for a second, that it was different this time hurts. Letting that heavy, tense tightness in my chest go was a mistake. Because when you have no expectations and someone lets you down, you teach yourself over time to feel nothing. But when you take a chance and believe in someone or something only to have it be revealed that the last few months were all an elaborate performance — that hurts. When you realize that many folks just performatively marched, read, and allied for the moment, but not the movement — that is crushing.

It’s not defeating. I’ve always been Black. I knew this moment was coming despite my hopes. I knew this moment never really left. This white momentary movement won’t stop the movement and fight for black freedom.

But I would be lying if I didn’t say it was weighing on me. It is.

It is hard for people who are not Black to truly understand the trauma we carry. It does not just go away. Non-Black people don’t believe it if they can’t see it. They stand by and cheer us on and lament that they wish they could do more, but then don’t. We are in a world where our lives and our trauma and our pain is real. It’s valid. It matters.

We need space for that to be true. We need space to create joy within those realities, and if all you have to offer is performative support, then please step down and get out of the way. Because you say you’ll be there, but when something pops off, too many people disappear. How many statements made months ago were revisited this week? How many companies made commitments to their Black staff that were met this week? How many new diversity hires were left to handle it on their own while putting aside their own pain? How many people put into practice anything they read in those books? What burden are you carrying? What work are you doing? Where are you?

Here we are as Black people. We sit with the knowledge that a 17-year-old boy is dead, called dangerous, suspicious, and on drugs because of skittles, a hoodie, and Black skin. But another 17-year-old boy is alive, hailed as a hero, a savior, and a future President because of an assault rifle, a love for police, and white skin. We sit with the knowledge that non-Black folks see our main purpose as continuously serving them, entertaining them, and fighting against social injustices as the moral and coolness compasses of society. But non-Black folks get to self-define their purpose, ignore things that are too hard, and rely on others to fix things. We sit with the knowledge that every aspect of our lives will be policed — where and how we move, how we emote, and how we fight to live. But non-Black folks get to live in a reality where policing is there to protect, serve, and keep them safe.

Why don’t I get to be safe? Why doesn’t my black son get to be safe? Why don’t I get to sit on Twitter all day sending out fun memes, commenting on threads about things that don’t matter, and pretending that saying I care about something is enough even if I don’t do anything?

This is the part where I am supposed to wrap it up and offer something about how we move forward. My life and my existence are at stake. My son’s life and his existence are at stake. But I am tired. I am broken.

I am not defeated.

But I need a nap. I need to restore. I need to fortify. There is a long fight ahead. I know some of you who are new to this are already exhausted. I can only imagine awakening to this horror of anti-Black racism after a lifetime of not seeing it. I feel for you. But I will not center you. I will not put your growth and fragility above my future or my survival. I will not put whiteness or white comfort before my liberation.

What does that mean for non-Black folks? What should you do now? Do what you would do if your life and existence were at stake.

Don’t do it performatively. Do it intentionally. Do it with purpose. Black people have been lifting others up, leading us through darkness, and uprooting injustice for centuries. We hoped it would be different this time. It will be different at some point. But until then, stop talking about what you would do if you could and just fucking do it. Black people already are. We’re dragging society towards justice and light kicking and screaming. You may not like how that looks. You may not like how that feels. But buck up. You know what I don’t like? That to do this work, we’re out here getting killed. We’re going to get free or die trying. With or without you. You choose. Take your moment. We’re in a movement.

We won’t wait.

I’m just so tired. Every single time I sat down the same thing kept coming out: Stop Killing Us.

I’ve been on texts and calls with black friends all day and it’s been the same. We’re scared. For our families. For ourselves. For our people. We’re exhausted. For our families. For ourselves. For our people.

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We can’t stop thinking about this and move on like nothing has happened or just go on with our regular daily tasks. Some folks are talking and posting about this nonstop — and honestly, I don’t want to see people posting their run on social media or going on and on about bird watching and how a birdwatcher would clearly be an okay black person (I’m actually an avid birdwatcher and a pretty great person though), or resharing videos reaffirming the entertainment value of black death. I also don’t want people just playing the part they think they should play by day and being Becky or Karen by night. It feels like everyone wants to tweet or post something because it’s becoming part of some performance or show where people play the part of outraged bystander or virtuous savior or blue checkmark clout-chaser.

What I want is for people to actually start being about what they say they about. It’s easy to say you care and that you understand or that you don’t understand but you want to help. But what are you actually doing? What are you doing every single day to stop the killing of black people? What are you doing every single day to make yourself think about race and racism and white supremacy and oppression and colonialism? What are you doing to make change in this revolution towards a more just society?

Yeah, you.

The person who might not have to think about it. The person who may be able to go through the day and watch a video or tweet the hashtag but then just move on. The person who has never experienced it so just can’t believe it’s real — without a video. Some of us don’t have that luxury. This seeps into every bit of our being and weighs us down and keeps us on edge because every morning when we wake up, we realize that the start of a new day doesn’t mean the nightmare has ended. We look at our to-do list for the day and don’t know if that totally innocent thing we have to get done is going to be the end of us.

I keep having this dream where I’m running scared and I’m screaming. I’m keenly aware of my inability to breathe.

I’m keenly aware of my imminent death. I turn and can see a face. I don’t know who it is, and I can’t quite recognize the voice. Is it someone from a job who once told me I was angry? Is it someone from a store who once told me I didn’t belong? Is it someone who told me I hated white people because I was asking my life to be valued? Is it the cop who pulled me over and asked if the car belonged to me? Is it the concerned citizen who saw my nice bike and asked if I could afford it? Is it the cop who pulled me over as a teen and asked my white friends if they felt safe and knew me? I’m not really sure, but in the dream I always end up going into some long speech trying to save myself.

I say to the voice I can’t quite place:

Please stop! Stop hunting me! Stop trying to kill me! Stop trying to murder me! Stop trying to lynch me!

Stop killing us.

You don’t know me, but it doesn’t matter. I deserve to live.

I deserve to live without having to constantly wonder if I can do basic things without risk of death.

I deserve to be able to plan for tomorrow without constantly wondering if tomorrow will come.

I deserve to be able to wake up and fully live without worrying about being called names or told that if I changed other people wouldn’t be so scared of me.

I deserve to get old. I deserve to see my son get old. I deserve to age gracefully without wondering if today is the day that getting old is a luxury and privilege I don’t have access to.

I deserve to not have to relive the murder, lynching, beating, and genocide of my people every single day so that others believe racism, colonialism and white supremacy exist.

I deserve the same things as Becky and Karen. I’m Tamika. You don’t know me, but I am owed a full life and deserve to feel like my skin color is not my death sentence.

Stop killing us.

I don’t want a hashtag with my name. I don’t want endless debates online about whether I deserved it or was somehow a good enough black person that this shouldn’t have happened to me. I don’t want to have my friends who knew me have to speak on my behalf to defend my humanity. I don’t want my family to have to suffer the repeated trauma of seeing videos of my last agonizing moments. I don’t want any of this. I just want to live.

Usually at this point I wake up in a sweaty panic. Whimpering. And hoping that I didn’t wake up my wife or my son. I don’t want them to see me like this. I wake up more scared than I was when I was dreaming because I know the nightmare of this racist world is worse than any dream. Opening my eyes doesn’t change anything in this nightmare because there are others who refuse to ever wake up, open their eyes, and see the truth of injustice. There are those who say they want justice but fail to realize that real justice isn’t putting someone behind bars because that doesn’t bring back the black life lost.

So, you have to understand in the morning when I get up sleep deprived, raw, and on edge, it all seems like it’s too much. I can’t fathom how anyone else is getting through every day without this consuming them. I can’t process how some people say that now is just not the time. I hear from my non-black friends that this is just too hard or overwhelming to imagine or think about. But for so many of us it’s hard to think about anything else. Yeah, we find a way to keep going because we always do. We find a way to find joy because we always do.

We find a way to keep fighting for others to see our humanity because they never have.

I feel like in another month (or probably less) there will be another death. Another black man trending just like George. Another black woman lost and overlooked just like Breonna. And countless more black trans folks whose names no one ever even learns. If not another death, then another instance where a white person thinks calling 911 will save them from someone whose only threat was the blackness of their skin.

I’m exhausted. I’m out of words. I really need white people to do more than just say they’re fighting for justice. I need them to get up every day and repeat and ask themselves five questions and really face themselves and their answers. I want them not just to lean in, but to live in, to an urgency to do more. I want them to sit with these things and not turn away when they hear themselves say the answers:

1. Do I understand that not being racist isn’t the same as being anti-racist?

2. Why am I so afraid to be brave enough to confront my power and privilege?

3. What am I waiting for to decenter whiteness and realize just because I have never experienced it (or seen the research to prove it) doesn’t mean it isn’t real?

4. What am I doing every single day to force myself to think about racism and white supremacy?

5. What am I doing every single day to stop the killing of black people?

Maybe one day I’ll figure out how to come up with more eloquent words. None of this seems like it’s enough. It didn’t help. I’m still hurting. I’m still crying and unable to move. I’m still stuck in this nightmare. Black people have carried us for so long, I hope other people decide it’s time to wake up and actually do some of this heavy lifting. We’re exhausted. This must end.

Stop Killing Us.

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My hope is that for everyone, this is a time to think about the systems in place that rely on racism, oppression, and white supremacy to keep us apart. I hope we all allow ourselves the space to let out some screams.

You may be thinking about a lost year, but for so many Black people in this country, the year doesn’t matter…we’re always thinking of lives lost. We are always aware of what lives don’t matter. Ours. The news of more Black lives lost has been weighing heavy on my heart and raging deep in my soul.

I wrote this to share those feelings. I wrote this for my son. My son who loves to run.

You Better Run, Boy

Blackness is your crime
Whiteness is the judge

The witnesses?
A list of traumas, pains, and sorrows

A list too long
Full of names that never got to see today

A few: Sean, Ahmaud, Sandra, Trayvon, Emmett
All bear witness

You better run, Boy
Outrun their fear

They need comfort
They must feel safe

Change this
Change that

Talk like this
Don’t talk like that

Change your approach
Don’t approach

Don’t move so fast
Why are you moving slow?

Be polite
Yes, sir

Don’t yell, don’t cry, don’t feel
Yes, ma’am

You better run, Boy
Just run

Run toward freedom
They say they want that

But our ancestors know the truth
Sometimes we hear their screams in our dreams

We march, we tweet, we yell those fears
We cry tears of generations past

We cry tears for what’s ahead
We cry tears to make it through today

How can we run towards freedom?
Run away from death or hate or supremacy?

Run away from fragility?
Run away from their fear of a loosening grip on power?

They say to trust them
Imagine having the privilege to trust it will be okay

They say we must listen
Imagine having confidence you will live to listen another day

Trust brings death
Confidence breeds fear

They say: you better do this
They say: you better not do that

But what can I do?
I will always be Black

They say: don’t play in the park
Don’t stand on sidewalks

Don’t claim the streets
Don’t take a knee

Don’t eat candy
Don’t walk

Don’t run
Do. Not. Breath.

Just be articulate
Be a class act

Change your approach
Change who you are

Do it like this
Do not do it like that

What’s this?
What’s that?

Does it even matter
Everything is a risk

Risk comes from threat
Is he a threat?

Are we a threat?
Is Black a threat?

In times like these we share humanity
Times haven’t changed, they never saw our humanity

Pandemics stop everything
Except Black death

Pandemics lay inequity to bare
Inequity was always in plain sight

Did you see it?
No? Then you looked away

The sheets, the whips, the noose from a tree
They are invisible

The sheets, the whips, the noose from a tree
They have changed

The sheets, the whips, the noose from a tree
We still see them

Did you see?
No? Then you looked away

So much remains the same
All lives matter

Except when Black
You better run, Boy

Outrun the shackles
Outrun the oppression

To my Black son
Run, my love, run

Run towards our ancestors’ hopes
Run towards our ancestors’ dreams

Run towards your excellence
Run towards your joy

I will keep in this fight
I will work to protect you

But know, they will never be done
Until they no longer see us run

Last week I wrote a piece called: Not Interested in Your New or Old Normal: This Shouldn’t Be Normal. In that piece I wrote:

“The reality is, I don’t want to get back to normal because just being better than it is now shouldn’t be enough.”

Specifically, I questioned then, and continue to question today, whether the preexisting inequities laid bare by this momentary pandemic are forcing those in power to truly confront the timeless vestiges of colonialism, white supremacy, and racism.

In my gut, the answer to that question is a clear no. But I hope that as this thing continues and we continue to lose lives of people of color — particularly black people — at a disproportionately high rate, that people with power start to think about how they can do things differently.

I especially hope that is the case in the field in which I’m lucky enough to work: transportation. Over the last several weeks, people in the transportation space have been wondering what we can do to contribute as we all try to get through something none of us could have imagined. Whether it’s by closing streets or allowing transit to be free — it seems like everywhere I look in the transportation industry, people just want to help. It’s one of the things I love about this work. People who are in it truly want to serve others. Whenever I think of transportation and the people I know and respect in this field, we care about mobility and freedom — helping people get to the things, places, and people they want to get to with dignity and as their full selves. That means that transportation, like every industry, must use this time to “look at old problems in new ways.” This means being “willing to assess the problem honestly, deeply, and thoughtfully — even when it reveals things in ourselves and in our society that make us profoundly uncomfortable.”

When I think about transportation equity, this ain’t happening yet.

If you look at the social media of those who identify as BIPOC in transportation — or even better, talk to them — right now, it looks very different than the social media of white folks talking about the exact same things. I tend to operate from a place of assuming the best and believing that everyone in this work truly wants to help others. But take any topic in transportation right now and I see BIPOC folks saying, hold up…what about the people most often impacted by inequity, racism and oppression. I see non-BIPOC folks saying we’ll get to that, but we don’t have time for it right now. I see BIPOC folks saying, let’s talk about the way transportation intersects with some other basic human needs; let’s do some rapid surveying and outreach (in healthy social distancing ways) to actually reach out to historically oppressed communities and figure out how transportation is impacting them and what they need. I see non-BIPOC folks applying a savior-minded framework — even if what is being saved and who needs saving is in dispute.

Now I’ll admit this is an oversimplification. All BIPOC people aren’t the same and don’t share the same opinions nor are all non-BIPOC folks the same with the same opinions.

But it doesn’t change that the differences, on average, are striking. The thought seems to be that BIPOC people are making everything about race or just don’t understand what’s happening given how crazy everything is with this pandemic. BIPOC folks are being asked to show empathy for decisionmakers without any empathy being reciprocated. (Just check the personal attacks on people speaking out about transportation equity the last few weeks.) BIPOC folks are on the frontlines of this crisis — and most crises. I’m pretty sure they understand what’s happening. But if we don’t talk to them, ask them, and listen to them until after transportation decisions are already made, then we’re just doing things exactly the way we did them before. We are trying to retrofit equity without having to confront the role our industry plays in maintaining the status quo of racism and oppression.

So what should transportation professionals do to change? I’ve said this a million times: start by listening to women of color. We’re often the most impacted, but also the most ignored. We’re told to calm down and painted with stereotypes because we just don’t know how things work. Start with first considering that we do know how things work, we have ideas, and we’re here to help. We might do things differently than you’re used to, but different isn’t always wrong.

In October of 2018, one of the people I respect and admire most in this work, Sharon Roerty of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), believed in the power of women of color to have powerful ideas, and was willing to listen to those women, even if it felt different. I was lucky enough to be part of a diverse group of individuals that she and RWJF invited to participate in the Salzburg Global Seminar program Building Healthy, Equitable Communities: The Role of Inclusive Urban Development and Investment. During this seminar, people involved in the health professions and people involved in urban planning got together to talk about equity. As a final project, I ended up in an amazing group of talented and diverse individuals from all over the world working to create a framework to help people confront power and privilege for inclusive, equitable, and healthy communities. This group, led by women of color, fought long and hard to get this framework published and continues to support one another as we push others to consider this framework, often at our own professional and personal risk.

I invite all transportation professionals wondering how to think about equity — and those trying to ignore equity — to think about this framework, integrate it into your work, and make yourself realize that the time to do what’s right, just, and equitable is always right now. That’s why this framework, written over a year ago, is still perfectly apt today. When health and urban planning professionals from all over the world got together in 2018, we never could have imagined the moment we find ourselves in today. But we certainly imagined a moment where we’d be told that equity was too hard, or that it was the wrong time. That’s why our focus went deeper to power and privilege. I invite you to read our statement on why and how to interrogate power and analyze privilege as you do your work.

This is a call to action. It’s aligned with the calls of action by others in the mobility justice space (like here, here, here and here). Are you going to answer the call or keep saying that equity in transportation is work for another day and for someone else — often BIPOC people?

You can read the framework, with full citations, here, but I’ve also included it below to make things easier.

According to the World Health Organization, inclusive, healthy and just communities are places that continually create and improve the physical and social environment to enable all people to be mutually supportive in all functions of life and to develop their maximum potential. It is suggested that only 16% of health outcomes are determined by the quality and availability of health care; and the social and economic determinants of health, including where people live play a more significant role.

This goes beyond the quality of physical structures in the urban environment or the space inside a home. It is about understanding neighborhood conditions and the availability and quality of other determinants of health, such as employment, healthy food, childcare, schools, transport and recreation space. We know geographic disparities in health, which often fall along lines of ethnicity and socioeconomic status, are growing and can exist even between people living in adjacent neighbourhoods. Health professionals and urban development practitioners therefore have an important role to play to ensure the practices and processes governing the design and development of our urban environment are inclusive and equitable for all and ultimately contribute to improved population health.

A call to action: interrogate power and analyze privilege to create and sustain healthy communities

The scale of current and potential inequalities in the urban environment demands a revolution of purpose and accountability. The challenges we face in building and sustaining healthy and equitable communities demand new forms of thinking, problem solving, governance, and decision making. Most importantly, it requires that we learn the skills of interrogating power and analyzing privilege.

Whether resources do, or do not, flow to communities is a direct product of both individual and institutional power. Power is defined as the ability to direct laws, policies, and investment that shape people’s lives. Privilege is the accumulation of benefits of special rights. Both power and privilege have been extracted and hoarded, consciously or not, by certain groups at the expense of others based on social categorizations including, but not limited to, class, ethnicity, religion, physical ability, and gender.

We call on health professionals, planners, public servants, developers, financiers, and engineers — in fact, all practitioners working at the intersection of health and the built environment — to shift their normal course of business towards adopting practices that recognize privilege and cede power. This requires pushing against conscious and unconscious practices and the societal beliefs and norms that marginalize, exclude and perpetuate inequity. We charge this community of practitioners to dismantle the structures, systems and practices that reinforce inequity. Even with best intentions, data-driven interventions, and evidence-based improvements, we will inadvertently perpetuate inequities and widen disparities if we are not conscious of our own power and the power structures within which we work.

We know that power and privilege can be complex and sometimes overwhelming concepts, but we can and must engage with them. We have proposed steps below for health professionals, policy makers and urban development practitioners and other stakeholders to begin the journey. We make this call to action to fundamentally shift the way we plan, build, program, advocate, and legislate our communities to ensure the health and quality of life for all. While it may seem a daunting task to connect this aspirational call to on-the-ground practice, we urge that this not be a reason for inaction since “professional silence in the face of social injustice is wrong.”

Steps for examining power and privilege in support of healthy and inclusive communities

1. Create and/or seek out “Brave Spaces” to explore the role of power in your work

Confronting power and its role in our work begins by creating “Brave Spaces”. Brave spaces are intentional environments and settings that facilitate the courageous, uncomfortable, and honest exploration of social categorizations such as physical ability, race, ethnicity, class, and gender identity and the privilege or marginalization that is extended to individuals based on these categorizations.

Brave spaces are created and maintained by a transparent commitment to practices that allow difference and celebrate new forms of action and strategy. You create brave spaces when you:

Speak your truth and listen deeply to the truth that others speak

Learn the truth about historical trauma and accept its impact on yourself and those you serve

Understand and honor your own experience and the experiences of others in equal measure

Bring your vulnerability to the table and create the space for others to be vulnerable

Invite yourself to make mistakes and be generous with the mistakes of others

Acknowledge the limits of expertise — an expert frame can shut down learning

Hold yourself and others accountable to practices that affirm diversity and inclusion

2. Understand the role that power plays in your current work

Within the brave space created above, consider as an urban developer, policy maker or health professional, a program, policy initiative, or other effort that you are working on to improve the physical, social and economic conditions of communities and ask the following:

What is the problem I’m trying to solve?

What decisions, policies, and practices have historically contributed to the problem? What is the root cause of the problem?

What is the formal and informal, the visible and invisible, decision-making or governance structure shaping the problem?

What would it look like if the problem is solved?

Who consistently benefits from the problem not being solved?

Who consistently suffers from the problem not being solved?

Are the people most affected by this problem represented in the decision-making process?

In seeking data, what sources of data are considered legitimate, and by whom? Are there credible sources that are being suppressed or dismissed because the power structure has deemed them unreliable?

3. Analyze and Challenge Privilege

Privilege is the accumulation of benefits of special rights, often over time, to a certain group. Think about your work and your role in your community of practice and ask:

What are the areas of life in which you hold privilege?

Despite your work to change outcomes, what remains the same?

Despite changes in the wider professional or sociopolitical context, what remains the same?

What are the cycles, actions, and processes we repeat regardless of the outcome?

Does a new protocol or procedure worsen or help existing disparities?

Privilege often shows itself when the status quo is challenged. When such a challenge is presented, and conflict ensues, ask yourself:

Who or what is blamed for the conflict in the narrative describing the challenge?

Who or what is sacrificed to resolve the conflict?

Are there any patterns that you can observe?

If the problem was “resolved”, did the group or process return to the norm or status quo?

Who or what restores things to what they were before the conflict?

Talking about race, power, and privilege and normalizing it is difficult for many people. The fear of getting it wrong or being called a racist is crippling for many. But we can’t operate from a place of fear with the ultimate goal of simply not being called a racist. People who aren’t racist do racist things all the time. We always must remember that being anti-racist is different than not being racist. Doing racial justice, mobility justice, and transportation equity work isn’t easy. It also is not always understood or respected. That doesn’t mean it’s not work that we all should be doing. The next time there is an idea, project, problem, or program you are considering. Remember this framework. Pull it out and run that idea, project, problem, or program — and yourself — through these questions. Reflect deeply on them, even if it makes you profoundly uncomfortable. We all have a role to play in confronting power and privilege. We shouldn’t need a global pandemic to help us realize that. But it’s here, so take this framework constructed by a global community — led by women of color — to start doing things differently and deeply integrate power, privilege and equity into your work.

The following people were involved in writing the “Confronting Power and Privilege for Inclusive, Equitable, and Healthy Communities Call to Action and I thank them for their vision perseverance, and bravery in writing and publishing this piece: Ascala Sisk, Deputy Director, Center for Community Investment, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy; Odetta MacLeish-White, Managing Director, TransFormation Alliance; Vedette Gavin, Principle, Verge Impact Partners; Tamika Butler, Director, Equity and Inclusion and Director of CA Planning, Toole Design; Liz Ogbu, Founder + Principal, Studio O; Veronica O. Davis, P.E., Managing Partner, Nspiregreen LLC; Nupur Chaudhury, Program Officer, New York State Health Foundation, Urbanist in Residence, University of Orange; Sharon Roerty, Senior Program Officer, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Hanaa Hamdi, Director of Health Impact Investment Strategies and Partnerships, New Jersey Community Capital; Kelly Worden, Director, Health Research, U.S. Green Building Council; Noxolo Kabane, Deputy Director, Western Cape Department of Human Settlements; Shelly Poticha, Managing Director, Natural Resources Defense Council; and Hedzer Pathuis, Strategic Project Manager, City of Utrecht.

Acknowledgements: We would like to thank the all sixty-five fellows who participated in Salzburg Global Seminar Session 595: Building Healthy, Equitable Communities: The Role of Inclusive Urban Development and Investment, whose vast and varied experience helped to shape our call to action. We’d also like to thank the Salzburg Global Seminar and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for creating the space to make connections and cultivate bold ideas.

This is really hard. Not just trying-to-think-of-the-last-time-a-whole episode-of-Saturday-Night-Live-was-good hard. Not just trying-to-remember-the-last-time-a-Drake-song-was-fire-except-as-a-viral-Tik-Tok-dance-craze hard. Not just trying-to-have-just-one-more-bite-and-then-realizing-you-ate-all-the-damn-ice-cream hard.

It’s a whole different kind of hard.

Often when I’m dealing with anxiety, stress, and depression, I try to write. I try to put the things in my head down on paper. My wife and I were doing that by writing one another a short note every night. We decided that we’d remember this time — our fears, the things we were grateful for, and the stresses that the unknown brought to us — through our shared COVID log. We started to share what the days were like and the things we wanted to remember, like the cute way our son spontaneously started saying, “thank you, mommy” and does a little dance when he’s overcome with happiness. Things that stress us out to no end like the drains that seemed clogged and the windows that seemed to leak all of a sudden (we leave out how they’ve been that way for months, but we’ve been putting it off until next weekend for lots of weekends). Or the things that are our pleasant escapes like Tiger King…until they aren’t because they remind us that exploitation and privilege looking down on poverty is more than just a guilty pleasure, but a way of life in this society. But the COVID logs ended a few days ago when we both realized that trying to fit in all the work and all the parenting and a minute or two for ourselves or our relationship (not both) meant we had an impossible schedule with not enough hours in the day. That schedule of waking up at 4:30 every morning and going to bed after midnight every night simply meant we were too tired to do something so non-essential.

Speaking of which, this hard place we’re currently all in is teaching a lot of people new ways to look at old words like “essential” and “normal.” In this “new normal,” we’re supposed to be focused on staying home, staying healthy, washing our hands, and only going places that are essential, staffed by people who are essential, when it’s essential. But more than anything, we’re all being told to adjust to some new normal that involves asking people to do more than just work from home. What we’re actually being asked to do is work from home during a pandemic like many of us have never seen and that may be followed by waves of sickness, that may be followed by a depression, that will definitely be followed by many people suffering from depression, that will definitely include the death of someone we know closely or tangentially, that will definitely include your kids popping up right when you started concentrating, that might include eating a whole bag of chips in one sitting but forgetting to eat lunch, that won’t include drinking enough water, that will include feeling fear every time you have an allergy attack now that nature is thriving, and that might include having a panic attack about what to do when your home doesn’t feel safe for shelter, or when you don’t have shelter or when you do but got laid off and can’t pay rent so might lose that shelter.

I mean, you get it. This new normal is awesome.

We should all just adjust. That seems easy enough. That seems like something that we can normalize through Zoom meetings (racist bombings be damned) and Instacart orders (safety and health of employees who aren’t called employees be damned). Don’t get me wrong. In this “new normal” I am on Zoom or ordering things from various insta services daily. I’m also keenly aware that there are people getting rich off of this crisis and that the people getting squeezed in the middle — those just trying to make an honest living so they don’t get evicted and end up unhoused or so their small business can survive — might not be so ready to normalize something that is only amplifying the disparities and inequities they already knew about intimately and lived with daily.

Which is what’s been sitting with me in such an awful way. This situation may be teaching us new ways to define old words. But it’s also teaching us new ways to preserve the old normal. What I want to know is: Is it teaching us new ways to look at old problems? I want to say yes, but I’m not convinced. The reason I’m not convinced is because to look at old problems in new ways, one must be willing to assess the problem honestly, deeply, and thoughtfully — even when it reveals things in ourselves and in our society that make us profoundly uncomfortable.

The last time we were in a recession, I was graduating from law school. I walked out of an elite institution with a law degree and I was literally my ancestors’ wildest dreams.

I felt like I had reached my pinnacle of privilege. Despite my extreme privilege, I never forgot why I went to Stanford in the first place. I wanted to help people. My people. During a fellowship at Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center, I got to be unapologetically black each and every day while starting a legal clinic to help Black workers in the Black parts of San Francisco where the tech industry was already emphasizing the haves and have nots. In that work, we had no choice but to center people at the intersections of ability, race, gender, national origin, status (immigration, HIV, you name it), and every other protected class. We knew that the recession was a moment in time, but that the vestiges of colonialism, white supremacy, and racism are timeless. These things made whatever the majority were experiencing as temporary seem permanent and intentional for those already confronting structural oppression daily.

Now, like then, I frequently hear “we will get through this.” This is the new normal, but it shall pass and then things will get back to old normal. I’m sorry. That sounds just like Make America Great Again to me. Normal for whom? Great for whom? People who meltdown and rant about how they do everything perfectly? People whose response to dissent is defensiveness and fragility?

It’s hard for me to believe that when we get back to normal everyone will feel much better. Who is going to feel better? The people being harassed for trying to get some fresh air because as an interracial gay couple they look like two friends breaking social distancing rules, not partners? The unhoused folks being kept from grocery stores because they don’t have masks, even though we refuse to invest in adequate resources to make a dent in what’s needed on Skid Rows across this country? The student being told to make sure they participate in online learning so they don’t get behind despite being a victim of the digital divide and not privy to the benefits of fast WiFi or any internet at all? The 65-year-old delivery driver with underlying health issues working for some company that refuses to provide her with what she needs to feel safe — let alone benefits? The renters who have no protection from evictions, or the families who depend on that rent? What about the doctors drowning in educational debt, who are forced to potentially say goodbye to their loved ones as they go to work without proper equipment just to help try to save others? The street vendors who have been feeding us all for years without the policies in place to ensure they can thrive and build the lives we say this country and our dream promises? And what about the Black folks who continue to die at higher rates much to the surprise and awe of so many who can’t figure out what about the Black experience in America puts us at a higher risk…for…COVID-19…I mean, everything?

The reality is, I don’t want to get back to normal because just being better than it is now shouldn’t be enough. As a Black person in this country, I knew that the old normal meant my life was expendable. Look at the stats. As a Black person in this country, I also know that in this new normal my life is expendable. And honestly, nothing has been said or done by folks in power to make me believe otherwise. Bringing some Black person (or other nonwhite person) out to co-sign whatever they are putting forth (regardless of whether that person is a health expert or not; policy expert or not; expert on anything or not) doesn’t tell me that they are even thinking about my life or the lives of my people other than how we can help them get back to normally making their money.

This frustration is something that so many of us nonwhite folks feel. We’ve been talking to our therapists, reaching out to our friends, and creating virtual healing spaces to hold one another in this time. So many folks hear our concerns about the racism that will outlive this pandemic and keep asking what they can do to help. Start with joining the conversation, seeking understanding of our anxiety, and having the urgency that nonwhite people feel about how we ensure that we just don’t rush back to normal. Start by asking what normal is and for whom? Start by realizing that so much of what makes this pandemic so tough was already in existence. Then ask why? Is that normal?

I had a lot to say and this is already too long. I have many thoughts about what this means specifically for people doing transportation work. I’ll share those thoughts next week in part 2. Thanks for reading and hopefully, next week I’ll have figured out how to keep it a bit shorter!

But let’s be honest…

I did my civic duty in this primary. It was amazing to look around the country, my county, and my City and see so many talented women of color candidates, women candidates, and POCs who I could support. But as the Dem party looks to consolidate and everywhere you look you’re hearing that there are only two viable, electable candidates left…I have not stopped being hit by this nagging feeling. I’ve read this story before. My family has starred in this sitcom. I’ve seen my friends play this game and lose. If you’re a woman of color, a woman, a BIPOC person — you know what I’m talking about.

To the [insert basic white man name here…I’ll use Joe] Joes of the world. I’m glad you’re doing better. As we saw yesterday, many believe our nation depends on it. But I hope in the bask and relief of victory you take the smallest, quietest moment to think about something: No woman — don’t even get me started on women of color or queer women of color or trans women of color — could ever be this mediocre leading up to yesterday and wake up this morning as the front runner. I’m not saying your best days aren’t ahead of you and with this renewed energy, momentum, and money you can’t change your narrative this campaign season…you already are…and that’s amazing.

BUT every woman of color, person of color, and woman I have interacted with today has this feeling of knowing about this feeling I’m talking about. Knowing it intimately. We can vividly think of the times we’ve been the best, the most prepared, are putting in that work…and some mediocre white dude comes along fumbling and bumbling and somehow still succeeding.

As a black woman, we know the story too well of putting that mediocre white man on our backs and carrying him until he can get it together and stand on his own. We know that when we do that work, people will minimize it, call us uninformed, dumb, or scared. Shoot, we know they won’t even see us. As I woke up today, I knew that there was likely a vote ahead where I would need to push that nagging feeling aside and forget about the talented people of color, women of color, and women who have done the work this political season and will go unseen, forgotten, belittled, used for pandering or pushed down to hold up a mediocre white man.

I won’t forget.

Again, I want to believe the best days are still ahead for all Dem candidates and will be out there supporting and voting for whoever is nominated. But how many times have BIPOC folx and women of color had a few bad days or performances and just needed people to hold on and believe our best days were ahead? How many times have we needed the white people with power, access, and funding who say they share our values to drop everything to support us and make sure that people give us a second look, don’t write us off because of a few bad days, and put their own interests or feelings aside to make sure we knew they supported us and get us back to the front runner status? Shoot, how often have we been able to count on that without being weighed down with the worry that our few bad days would be counted against everyone that looked like us?

I’m voting Dem come November.

My life depends on it. But I just wanted all BIPOC and women of color to know that the feeling you’re having, that nagging one, the “Oh! I’ve been there, I’ve seen this before.” It’s not in your head. It wasn’t when it happened to you and it isn’t now.