Might Be Wrong
9:07:00 AM
"We
look at them, we see somebody that could help but they look at us and all they
see is a nig**r."
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| photo © Aga Putra | |
I've been listening to Vince Staples' Summertime '06 -- a powerful articulation
of the black experience in America. Here’s a sample from Might Be Wrong:
Justice is supposed to be blind, but continue to cross color lines. Hands up, don't shoot. Shot. Stand your ground. Blacks don't own no ground to stand on so we stand on our words.
Black
and hooded is the official probable cause for cops to keep weapons on. I can't
breathe through the chokeholds and gun smoke. Slain in society by sworn
protectors. Protected by their peers, grand juries full of friends. No charges
brought against them. They kill and arrest us, transgress and oppress us.
Recently a white (presumably, suburban) mom broke down in tears while
reading out the lyrics to one of the songs on Summer ’06 because she was so
disgusted with her local radio station playing it, and the story made me wonder about the multiple (contradictory) realities that make up
America.
Perhaps this misunderstanding is what's contributed to our
current electoral climate. Perhaps it's a function of a world and a country
that is slowly coming together a little bit more, brushing up against each
other's realities and slowly trying to grapple with each other. We don't all
have to agree or be friends but we do have to try to understand each other.
In Mississippi Goddam Nina
Simone sings "you don't have to live next to me, just give me my
equality" [*technically speaking, gentrification proves that certain
people living next to others might lead to better public services—not equality]
and in the past I have always echoed her sentiment. We don't have to be
friends. We just have to acknowledge each other's realities and respect them.
Yet, in recent times, I wonder where we draw the line. At which point do others’
realities become too uncomfortable, too narrow, too dangerous, racist, misogynist,
intolerant, financially unstable, predictable, etc., to deal with? When do we
turn away to focus our attention on the people who are like us. The people who
vote for the same people we do, the ones who are as educated as we are, the
ones who grew up attending Sunday school like we did, the ones who live in
houses instead of nycha projects, at what stage do we turn away and keep our
realities ours.
Refusing to acknowledge other’s realities is a function of wanting
to control our world. We didn’t want to believe that people who would vote for
Trump actually existed as real human beings with feelings, hopes and ambitions.
We don’t want to acknowledge that people who supported Hillary suffer economic
hurts as we do. We refuse to think Staples sings “I ain’t never run from
nothing but the police” because that’s his actual reality. When we deny the
things we don’t understand, we keep our world safe and predictable. A safe,
predictable fantasy.
I don’t know where we go from here. But I do know that I don’t
want to be surrounded only by people who are as educated as I am or care about
the same things I care about. I don’t want my words and actions to add to the
meaningless cacophony the permeates our realities. I don’t know where we go
from here, but we need to not just copy, retweet, like or upvote. We need to
think, really think, about the gaps in our realities, if we’re comfortable with
them, why we’re comfortable with them.
Summertime ‘06 is a good place to start
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