The reality is that this is the way things are and after 45 years I understand the unlikely prospect that things are going to change. I’ve lived in this body, this skin, this America for all of this time knowing and understanding the reality. My skin, my melanin, my existence is unwelcome.
Knowing this doesn’t make things better.
For the past 72 hours or so I’ve struggled with containing a level of rage. There are things within my life that doesn’t make this better, in fact it makes it worse.
By now there are many of you who have either seen or heard about the arrest and release of 2 Black men, who committed the crime of existing while Black in a Philadelphia Starbucks coffee shop.
What I also understand is that there are many of you who have no knowledge of this, which is one of those things that make it worse.
In my lifetime the ability to obtain information has gone from door to door encyclopedia salespersons to 32 gig smartphones and unlimited data plans.
If you don’t know something it is because you choose not to know and that is just as big a problem as existing while Black.
It’s a thing really ______ while Black. Just fill in the blank and do a google search and you can find some article someplace which describes how ______ while Black is dangerous. In this instance 2 men were at a Philadelphia Starbucks waiting for a third party to arrive. One of them asked to use the bathroom. In center city Philadelphia it is not uncommon to lock restrooms to prevent homeless people from using them or prevent addicts from shooting up in them.
The man who requested to use the bathroom was told that he was not a paying customer so the answer was no.
Right there is problem number one.
People sit in Starbucks all of the time without making a purchase. While the ‘official policy’ of the company might be pay to pee, every franchise can modify that as they need to to deliver service. They always do.
While the policy of this particular franchise at this particular location might be pay to pee, I assure you that the franchise has modified that as needed for service. It what businesses do, for yt people .
At some point between being told no you cannot use the restroom and when a bystander started recording the happenings the Philadelphia police were called.
Multiple officers arrived and the eventual result was the two men were arrested, they were detained for hours. These men were fingerprinted and placed in a holding cell. Their rights and liberties were infringed just because they were Black.
There is speculation and conjecture from the pubic and even the PPD [as spoken in a Facebook Live video by the police commissioner] that the men were vocal in their position that they should be afforded the same privileges that is extended to other people in the coffee shop. These men were not wrong. Regardless of what words they used, or the volume and tone of those words, the men were not wrong in their position that they should be allowed to do what thousands of other men and women do daily, sit inside a Starbucks.
There is speculation that the men when approached by the police refused to leave, possibly even tossing verbal jabs at the officers.
To that I say so what.
Seriously so what.
If you are not thick skinned enough to hear words tossed at you then you do not belong in a uniform with a gun.
What happened was disgusting.
The only reason why these men were singled out and went through this nightmare was because of the color of their skin. I’ve had enough of it.
I also am stuck in the location where I do not understand what course of action I can take to change things.
Feeling impotent is never attractive, but in this current climate and in my current location where I can go a quarter mile up the road and see a confederate flag waving, all I feel I can so at the moment is work to contain my rage.
Anything else seems like it won’t be beneficial to me, no scratch that, could be harmful to me.
My roommate doesn’t understand my anger. I don’t understand her acceptance.
While I do not hate yt people, I can say without exception that I don’t want any new yt people in my space. I’m punch drunk and triggered and I no longer trust myself to not do something if one of those new yt people goes 45.
What’s even harder is that I have to go into an office tomorrow, full of yt people, and act like I don’t want to scream and throttle them all just because I was powerless to stop 2 more Black men from suffering the pain of existing while Black.
My roommate welcomes them, yt people, into her presence.
I cannot do that.
We had a talk after the last munch we co-hosted where I made the comment there were too many of them there, yt people.
She said she didn’t share my view that they shouldn’t be around.
I never said they should not be around I said there are too many of them and I do not really fuck with them. I watched the difference in the month before and last month and it was not appealing to me. The chemistry was different, the atmosphere was different, and it wasn’t just because I am not currently fucking with yt people. Yes some of it is me, but also enough of it is their never ending colonization tendencies to use my Wakanda voice.
I’m gonn go try to calm down, I need this new job and the things that come with it. I can’t lose it because of yt people and my inability to slap the privilege out of them.
I also cannot protect the other billions of people of color on this earth and the millions in this nation from their whiteness.
I’m not confused as to why I have rage.
Aphrodite Brown