Where Were You When I Needed You: A Plea to the Non-Black People in My Life
This article and it’s graphic were made by BGC politics writer, Julia Waddles.
A couple of years ago, (a vague timeline, yes, but it really all blurs together) my father approached me to share a story. I cannot recall whether this was after Michael Brown, Philando Castile, or some other Black man who died at the hands of police, I just remember the wave of outrage which followed. I say “wave” because that is the best way to describe what happened. The tide came, did its damage, and receded right back into the ocean.
To put it briefly, my father’s story went like this:
Image via Matthew Cherry’s “Hair Love”
He was in middle school. He was hanging out with his white friends. They (meaning his white friends) decided to go ding-dong-ditching. Someone called the cops. Next thing he remembers: he is alone, in the night, being held down and beaten by a white policeman. He goes home and tells his mother that he fell off his bike. He goes to school with bruises and cuts but pretends that nothing happened. He tells nobody because he is afraid.
My father tells me that his mother eventually found out, marched over to the school, and demanded that the police be held accountable for what they did to her son. My dad never saw that policeman again. Whether he was removed or relocated, he was gone. But my father’s fear never left. Hearing my father recount this story was heartbreaking to say the least. Even more so, he told the story so casually in passing; he shrugged his shoulders and said “yeah, that happened." But he told his story and we moved on from it because I understood.
This is simply how the world works for us. This is our reality.
For me, and many Black Americans alike, our Blackness is not a subtle reminder or fleeting thought. Perhaps in the early stages of my life, shortly after I was birthed into this world with the gentleness and care of a young hospital nurse, I did not think about race. But as the gentleness and care began to fade away, it swallowed my existence.
Before I learned the concept of addition and subtraction, before I learned the names of all the months, before I learned the colors in the rainbow, I felt the hands of my kindergarten teacher playing with the curls on my head. I had experienced my first micro-aggression at the age of five, despite not knowing how to define a micro-aggression until the age of fifteen.
As I reflect on this, I am not saddened or angry or hurt. I am not seeking sympathy nor do I want non-Black people to feel bad. Frankly, I—alongside many Black people—exhibit the same mental “shrug” that my father did, because we are so conditioned to living in a different world. We live in a world where blackness is not an on/off switch. It is who I am, and it will never go away, regardless of which setting I prefer.
As high school came around, I did what many young Black girls do. I spoke up.
I organized. I demanded change. I was known to be the activist of my peers, so much so that they dubbed me “Most Likely to Be President” in the list of senior superlatives my graduating year. I was fine with this. I was fine with being the activist because I knew that in my tiny, private, predominately white and wealthy high school, that if I didn’t speak up for Black people, nobody would. And for the most part, nobody did. My experience in high school forced me to assume the worst: that nobody was ever going to care about Black people except for Black people. I am still unsure of whether I fulfilled this role because it was a desire or because it was a necessity. I am, however, more confident that it was the latter.
“ I was known to be the activist of my peers, so much so that they dubbed me “Most Likely to Be President” in the list of senior superlatives my graduating year. ”
So, when I watched the murder of George Floyd, when I witnessed the protests rise in cities across the nation, when I read the texts that my non-Black friends sent me to check-in, I was admittedly shocked.
Image via Afropunk.
I received floods of messages from people I had not talked to in years, saying things such as “let me know if there’s anything I can do to help” and “how can I be a better ally?”
And despite the semblance of hope these people may have created in my increasingly hopeless mental state—despite the revolution taking place before my eyes—I can’t help but reflect on my younger self and beg the question: Where were you when I needed you most? Where were you when the Black History Month assembly was consistently being mocked and labeled as propaganda? Where were you when the dark-skinned black girls in your class were being gaslit and labeled as angry? Where were you when the principal asked me what white privilege had to do with black history or diversity? Where were you when posters made by Black affinity clubs were defaced and ripped to shreds? To this day, I can maybe recall two of my non-Black friends ever attending a Black Student Union meeting. But I’m supposed to trust that you care now? Because the world is burning?
If I look back to my life in high school, it was a positive experience for the most part. But the negatives? They almost always had to do with the racism that constantly filled the hallway air but only suffocated the Black students.
Even I was complacent in the silencing at times. I was complacent because I felt that if I was not, my education—the only reason my parents could give for enrolling me in such a place—would be sacrificed. It was easier to stay quiet than causing a fuss for administration—otherwise known as the attendant to rich white parents.
But the death of George Floyd has caused me to reflect on times when my apparent “allies” during those times chose to remain in a comfortable silence rather than standing up for their Black peers.
It caused me to remember times when I fought so hard, only for my friends to make jokes like “Julia hates white people” or “Guys be careful Julia might call you racist,” when in reality, I was simply shedding light on the things people claim to be “outraged” about now. All these memories force me to reconsider whether white people are serious when they say Black Lives Matter. I oftentimes see it as an attempt to maintain the credibility of their outward appearance.
With the mass of black squares that filled my Instagram feed for #blackouttuesday, it was more socially acceptable to stand in “solidarity” rather than stand out. In other words: it’s easy. It’s easy to show “solidarity" behind a screen. It’s easy to take less than ten seconds and repost a photo or thread. Though I commend social media for its swift and widespread outreach, it has allowed my non-Black peers to hide behind a veil of ignorance. It has allowed them to believe that a hashtag is activism. It has allowed them to believe that their swipes and taps can be equated to my screams into the void—a lone black voice treading in an ocean of white.
But treading water is exhausting. And the fact is—I’m exhausted. I’m so tired that I have no room to be outraged, surprised, angry, or any of the other emotions that white people are just now beginning to feel.
I’m so tired that I shut my phone off for hours just to provide myself with a semblance of peace. I am tired; I’ve been tired since I can remember. But I still continue to fight because if I do not—if Black people do not—it seems that nobody will fight for us. For us, this wave does not retreat. For us, we have been stranded in this ocean forever.
