Let’s talk about this shall we?
Let me talk you through the last two days –
Tuesday was a good day and I had a great evening tuning into the last night of Wildfires Festival. It was a joy to see over the three days the wealth of wisdom and to see diversity in the speakers, worship teams, and the interaction on the chat features over the duration of the festival. I was on a high!
Then the next bit was a blur.
I just quickly went on Instagram and saw a hashtag with a name and the picture of George Floyd on the floor with a white police officer kneeling on his neck. I honestly can’t remember which one came first. My instant reaction was to sigh… “Not again”. Not too long ago we heard about the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, and then I had heard of two more people, one of them being a lady called Breonna Taylor and just refused to accept. My brain PHYSICALLY couldn’t take it. So when I saw the image of George, my mind couldn’t process it. I had a discussion with one of my white friends who had spoken about it on her Instagram stories and though frustration from both ends on these kinds of injustices came out, I just felt numb.
Anyway I went to sleep and got up yesterday morning, did a few things and then I saw the picture again. Then it HIT me. This has ACTUALLY HAPPENED AGAIN. I couldn’t bring myself to watch the full video but I read of accounts of George AND people around pleading for the police officer to get off his neck and all I could do was see it in my head – firstly because I had a vivid imagination, secondly because of this fact – due to stuff like this happening so often, I already know what it’s going to look like.
I want you to understand the depth of that statement – I already know what it’s going to look like. WE as the black community already know what it’s going to look like. What a life to live.
I could not stop crying for 6 hours. Even when I tried to stop, tear kept flowing down my face. I couldn’t find a way to even articulate how I was feeling. I could just imagine George’s family and the grief they must be going through. I thought of friends and family who have loved ones in the States. I thought of my black favorite musicians, worship leaders, pastors, YouTube personalities. Tasha Cobbs-Leonard, one of my favorite female Gospel artists, put up the following and this is the worry for many:
Welcome back to Instagram. Sign in to check out what your friends, family & interests have been capturing & sharing around the world.
There was some research that showed that during this COVID-19 pandemic, we are suffering a collective grief. Those words completely describe what us as the black community feels EVERY TIME someone is killed because of the colour of our skin. It is like cutting a wound that was healing even deeper than it was cut before. Yes this is happening in the US BUT Black people in the UK (yes even on home soil) are still being discriminated against IN MANY ways, (e.g. unnecessary force whilst not resisting here), blatantly and subtly. I had conversations with a few of my black friends here in the UK and saw their Facebook and Instagram status and messages – we are all hurting in one way or another.
We are hurting.
We are burdened.
WE ARE TIRED.
We are tired of our brothers and sisters being killed due to racism.
We are tired of entitled people crying wolf and trying to get us arrested for no reason whatsoever or because they don’t think we are entitled to our opinion or the space we are occupying.
(See this article of a man calling the police on 3 black guys here, a woman calling 911 on a man in the park here, and these two videos about a group getting kicked out of their office and an update here and here. These are all things that have happened within the last 6 months – the first two in the last few days.)
We are tired of our African brothers and sisters in China being mistreated in this Coronavirus outbreak.
We are tired of schools and workplaces calling the way our hair grows out of our head “unprofessional” and “unacceptable”, as well as other hair styles within our community.
We are tired of employers seeing our names and not hiring us.
We are tired of people being dismissive and not bothering to try and pronounce our names correctly.
We are tired of trying to have conversations with our non-black counterparts only to have our feelings, experiences and realities shutdown with “All lives matter” (yes they do but can we focus on the house that is burning please?)
We are tired of being followed around in shops.
We are tired of not being taken seriously by doctors and nurses in relation to health in general and pregnancy.
We are tired of people loving and adopting our cultures but our lives not seeming to matter that much.
We’re tired of feeling like we need to shrink ourselves in order to "look" like everyone else instead of standing proud in how we were made.
We are tired of not seeing justice, having to continuously cry out for it and fearing losing someone else.
We are tired of seeing how well other people are treated when they are arrested for something worse than “probably” cashing a bad cheque.
We are tired of having to have “that talk” with our sons and daughters from a young age about having to be twice as good and the possibility that they may be treated differently and automatically pre-judged because of the way they look.
For those of us who are black Christians, we are tired of some churches and leaders crying “unity” and “diversity” but they don’t share in our pain or speak up.
We are tired of labels: we are not angry black women and violent black men.
We are SO tired that words fail us, and all we can do is cry, shout, sing and play through the pain.
WE ARE TIRED of ALL this and so much more!
For some of you reading, you may be burdened, confused and wondering what to do:
Speak. Share the stories of injustices. To start with, make friends with the “share”, “retweet” and “repost” buttons on Social Media. Amplify black voices.
If you see a friend of yours posting about it, check up on them.
Cry out with us because we are TIRED of carrying this burden and doing it by ourselves.
