Broken Stairs
The Friday fix: Listen
The apartment downstairs was flooded. Carpets soaked, mouldy walls, ruined furniture, cold and wet occupants. For 400 years, 8 minutes and 46 seconds, the pipes had been leaking. A faulty system in the upstairs apartment.
The people downstairs came out, looking up the stairwell with broken stairs. “listen,” they shout.
The prompt for this week was ‘listen.’ As Justin wrote, we need to treat one another better. My story was inspired by an Instagram post written by Banksy, an anonymous England-based street artist after the death of George Floyd. He wrote:
At first I thought I should just shut up and listen to black people about this issue.
But why would I do that? It’s not their problem. It’s mine.
People of colour are being failed by the system. The white system. Like a broken pipe flooding the apartment of the people living downstairs. This faulty system is making their life a misery, but it’s not their job to fix it. They can’t. No-one will let them into the apartment upstairs.
This is a white problem. And if white people don’t fix it, someone will have to come upstairs and kick the door in.
(Bansky 2020 -https://www.instagram.com/p/CBFyA8iM15Y/ )
Reflection
I wanted to add a reflection on the image I selected for the story. The apartment in the picture is not just wet, it has been vandalised. Things broken and thrown around. At first glance, you would scorn the people who lived in the apartment.
We would judge them. Call them names and blame them.
But think about it. They live in an apartment flooded by a leak they can do nothing about. Here is what I think.
They would stop caring about decorating the apartment. Why should they? Any new items bought will be ruined. (Tulsa Race Riots)
They will stop caring about life. No matter how hard they tried, out in the streets, they would look different and be treated different. (Discrimination, a soundbyte)
Some parts of the apartment would have a trickle, perhaps even dry. The people from these parts will be accepted on the streets, even celebrated. (African-American Rich List)
Other parts of the apartment will be completely flooded perhaps with sewage. The people from these parts will be locked up, not fit for the streets. (13th, the documentary)
When the people on the apartment turn on each other, it’s an instinct to survive, but the upstairs apartment only hear the fights. (Harvard Kennedy School Report: Black on black violence)
As a black person, I see and feel this analogy deeply. The pipe upstairs is leaking and we have lived like this for years. Every person with his own story.
People from upstairs have come down to help. But it feels like one step forward, two steps backwards. Maybe now in 2020, as we shout, the apartment upstairs will listen and fix the system.
