In Search of the Token Black Friend.
After all, it’s fashionable, Insta-worthy and trending, right?
Wrong.
Early this morning- early my time is REALLY early but by then New York is having its first of many lattes- I left a message for my buddy Rosennab. The moving van arrived at her newly-sold house yesterday to pick up all her stuff.
My god, it feels like just yesterday that we sat for three hours in her kitchen in Colorado.
No answer. She’s either sleeping in, exhausted (unlikely) or already on her way to the airport to rejoin her husband, another Black PhD, in New York.
I left her love, and knew that it would be a few days before we caught up. She’d be, um…preoccupied. Covid’s kept them apart. This is a very successful thirty-year marriage. Kindly, she cannot wait.
Then, it’s back to work. We are slowly but surely building a potentially very impactful work relationship. I cannot wait to see what we might create.
That I know this much about her life and that it matters a great deal to me is part of this year’s story arc. She’s not the only POC I care about, and hardly the only one whose writings captured my attention on Medium. Others like Marley K. and Rebecca Stevens A.,Deborah L. Plummer, Sharon Hurley Hall and many more have become part of my regular reading.
Marley is a Floridian, as I am by birth. I told her recently, and meant it, that I wish I lived closer to her. I love her work, her fire, her energy, her in-your-face-like-it-or-not truth telling. To wit:
Like me, Marley is not everyone’s cuppa. But precisely because she speaks hard truths, I totally love her shit. It gets in mine, and what I love about that is that it invites me to do some shoveling. I do not have to agree with everything she says to not only laugh out loud but also learn a great deal.
Rebecca and I share Africa, my love of it and her personal history of it in her genes. She writes with great emotion about Life While Black, with a biracial child, married to a White man. I share this with her too, as one of my closest lifelong friends back in Denver, also Black, last year married a White man. Their struggles align, and speak to me in deep ways. To that:
Dr. Plummer works in diversity, designed an excellent Anti-Racist instrument which was, to my mind, exceedingly valuable. Please see:
On top of that, she and I share Southern (racist) Catholicism. She was a nun, I went to Catholic school, right about the same time, in fact. Her recent article on being a nun in a racist religion (which ones aren’t if run by Whites?) spoke directly to my own experiences:
Terribly painful to read. Again, this aligned precisely with what I saw and experienced growing up.
Sharon’s work is terrific, both funny and business-savvy. She dances back and forth between writing whip-smart pieces about the writing business and selling yourself to what it’s like to Work While Black, and have others be both surprised and insulted by your Black Excellence:
I could go on. Forever, in fact.
This is just a sampling of those Black women’s voices which have woven themselves into the fabric of my life. I constantly find more things in common with all of them than what we don’t share. Not only does that strengthen the connection, it also creates those deep tap roots that exist in all the great forests. All the trees hold hands underground. And many, after they have fallen, continue to feed and nurture seedlings, including those not of their same kind.
There’s a lesson in that for all of us.
Some of these people have become quite important to me off Medium. All of them are important to me on Medium. The why should be self-evident but for those shy of that second latte, lemme lay it out for you.
As Rebecca and others like her have noticed, the emphasis on, and coverage of the Black Lives Matter issues have already been swept aside (until someone else is shot, then it’s back but only if someone is bleeding). That means that while the Moment may have moved on for some, the impetus for those of us who give a rat’s patootie about such things remains. Those Moments will return, guaranteed. After all, America.
And guns. And racism.
For those White folks, and there were many of them, who openly wailed about what to do: while I can understand their sentiment as well as the sentiment of those Black writers who were frustrated enough to say WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?, there is still a Moment.
Said Moment has always been right now, and will always be right now.
That Moment, kindly, is not a ‘gram shot of your marching, shouting, and holding a placard. If that solitary moment is the only thing you give, then frame it along with all the degrees and photo-ops of Celebrities Leaning As Far Away From You As Possible, and move on to the Next Big Thing.
For those of us who do care, I might recommend a story from back in June, which I loved, I took the test, and learned a lot from the answers:
Michelle Silverthorn’s piece has had nearly six thousand views, for good reason. It’s smart, revealing, and it offers a road map. By taking this assessment, I got a fine look at why I do what I do, think the way I do, and have the reference points I do around race. While — if I can hijack my PhD friend Rosenna’s point here- that is simply a cognitive instrument, that cognition is useful to a point. Most of have an inkling of who we are and our whys around race. Mostly, anyway.
As with any cognitive instrument, though, it’s useless, kinda like those useless and now extinct black squares, unless you and I translate our yak into action. Michelle’s piece makes how to do that achingly obvious.
We are most useful to POC, and in my case to those Black sisters and brothers whose work I read, follow and link to on Medium when we really and truly understand and practice allyship. To that, I wrote this:
As we slowly but surely begin to witness the changing of leaves, here in Eugene that would be my maples trending red, a life without football season, and we begin the long, slow, weird slide into silly season, I might offer a suggestion.
The best thing to happen to me all year long, shy of this enormously challenging move to Eugene, was Dr. Bakari. That was thanks to Medium. I’ve added other voices to my life, to my world, to my constant learning, through Medium. It has been a year of gifts, of growth, and of gains. Losses, yes, for all of us. But as it pertains to, and in this piece I am only speaking to the issues around race- we have a Moment. It never passed.
For me, Christmas came early in the middle of chaos, pain and sadness. Friends. Real friends, the kind who help you forge a better you, who challenge and force you to think, to consider, to grow, to evolve.
To be a better human. Such gifts don’t come with ribbons. Sometimes they come only when pain has made ribbons out of the fabric of your heart. But those friends also help you heal, especially those for whom such pain is altogether too common.
Such things rise out of riotous change. The gifts of these voices are just as much yours as mine. Our gifts in return include sharing, promoting, linking to and uplifting those voices, but above all, learning from them.
And letting those truths sculpt you.
You have no idea where you can go. For my part, and as in all things I can only speak for myself, diversity and inclusion are not “nice to haves” when things are good. They are life-essential, particularly in the tough times.
Because kindly, I have never met a Black person who didn’t live in tough times as a way of being. They were born right into them. You and I have much to learn about resilience, community, patience, and love.
Nothing token about any of that.
