THE FEAR FACTOR

Be the change.

Although I’ve been relatively silent on social media the last couple weeks or so, I have not been idle. I have been having conversations, both online and offline. Great conversations. Hard conversations. Conversations full of awkward silence, along with moments of beautiful insight and revelatory sorrow. But in all of them, I’ve seen progress. I’ve seen us pushing things forward… together.

In looking back over the events of the last few years, one of the recurring statements that often preceded a POC’s loss of life by an LEO was that the officer “feared for their safety”, or the safety of someone else… a neighbor, a store owner, a colleague. While we can endlessly debate the validity of that assertion, we can and should look at the part fear has played in the history of violence against people from different cultures.

It seems the from the very beginning, white Americans (and to a lesser degree, Americans in general) have been conditioned to fear those who were different from them. Or at least view them as what I call “necessary adversaries”. It reminds me of the quote, “Nothing brings people together like a common enemy.” I remember playing “Cowboys and Indians” as a child. And although no one sat me down and said, “The cowboys are the good guys, and the Indians are the bad guys” It was just understood that this was true because everything we saw reinforced this belief. From toys to books to TV shows… the kids were upset when they had to be the “indian”. When I go back and watch “Old West” films, I find that they’re rife with the indoctrination of Native American savagery. “Indians” steal food and livestock. They rape and kill and have no concern for what’s fair or honorable. A false narrative.

Conditioned to FEAR.

In much the same way, the portrayal of African Americans in media (television, film, books, advertisements, etc.) has served to reinforce the stereotypical dangerous stranger. No one may have said it straight out. But to look around is to understand that “Here are the many reasons you should be afraid of black people.” We are gang bangers who live to terrorize communities and kill indiscriminately for sport. We sell drugs to support our own drug habits, and will kill family and friends if they interfere in this process. We steal women from other races and dominate them in defiance of the authority and superiority of other races. We are lazy, seeking only comfort and convenience, to the detriment of our futures or concern for anyone other than ourselves. Another false narrative.

Conditioned to FEAR.

For too long our country has been living in denial of the underlying traditions of xenophobia that support our current racial divide. Until we acknowledge the truth of our own biases, we cannot effectively address the immeasurable damage of this “fear” that has rippled throughout history.

How then do you retrain someone to no longer fear those of whom they’ve been repeatedly told to be afraid?

In some of my conversations, I’ve heard people say that education is not the solution. To a degree, I agree with that statements. We must understand that education was never meant to fix the problem of discrimination or systemic racism. But education provides the light that exposes an issue, so that we can fully understand and see clearly what it is that we’re attempting to fix. EDUCATION becomes the antidote to fear.

The solution then becomes replacing fear with COURAGE and DETERMINATION.

Embrace COURAGE.

Show DETERMINATION.

Together we can be the catalyst for CHANGE.

BLACK IN 2020 AMERICA

I thought that it would be a good idea to maybe paint a picture for some of you who are genuinely interested, or just curious, about what minority life looks like in America, at least for me and my family. So here are just a few of the very real considerations I have to take into account daily.

– When I mentioned that wearing glasses makes me appear less threatening to some white people, this was not just conjecture. This is from personal experience. I can see people visibly relax when I enter a room and they notice that I’m wearing glasses. I’ve had white people actually say things TO MY FACE about my apparent “harmlessness” because of my glasses. If it was just once, I could pass it off as an exception. But on several occasions white people have “jokingly” said variations of, “Bro, your glasses totally kill the gangster vibe.” Yep. Gangster vibe. Really. Did they mean any offense by the statement? Not at all. But they still got the super eye roll. 🙄

– I’m acutely aware of the substantial risk I take every time I leave my house. Not sometimes, during holidays, or on the weekends. No… EVERY. TIME. There’s an ever-present anxiety because I never know if this will be the day when I’m pulled over by the police, not because I did anything wrong, but because I “fit the description”. I would venture to guess that if you polled a sampling of black people, a majority would tell you that “fit the description” is a trauma trigger. When I get in my car, before I put it in drive, I place my cell phone in a holder attached to my dashboard. Why? Because I want to be able to call my wife or start a live-stream within seconds of being pulled over by the police. It’s on my Driving While Black checklist. It may not keep me alive, but it may bring some justice.

– There’s some weird notion that being “other” is preferred to being “black”. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been asked “Are you Cuban/Dominican/Puerto Rican/Non-Black?” by white people. It’s as if believing I am something OTHER THAN black, will make me more… acceptable? If I’m NOT black, maybe they somehow think I’m okay to like or believe or trust or befriend? Just a guess, but when I say, “No, I’m Black/African American”, there’s a noticeable sense of disappointment.

Again, I’m not speaking for all black people. I’m just sharing my personal experience. And if you take nothing else away from this message, please understand this… no amount of data, statistics, or reports should ever invalidate someone’s personal experience. We’ve lived what we’ve lived and we often see life through the filter of those experiences. Remember that before attempting to trivialize someone’s trauma.

Act Like A Girl aka I’m Overthinking Again

I have no problem admitting that I like Demi Lovato’s music. I think she’s a pretty good singer, not to mention very attractive. But that’s beside the point.

What is my point?

Lyrics. See, she has this new single out called “Heart Attack” which basically talks about her fear of falling in love again. She sings that if she ever did that, she’d probably have a heart attack. Yeah, cute. 😉

Anyway, there’s one part of the song where she says “But you, make me wanna act like a girl…” and every time I hear that part it kinda bothers me. What bothers me is the implication that there’s something wrong with a girl acting like a girl. She says nothing specifically about being a tomboy or perhaps a butch lesbian. But in the context of the song, wanting to wear perfume, high heels or paint her nails is considered a bad thing. Or at least something you would only do to impress a boy.

Yeah, yeah… I’m overthinking the lyrics for sure. I KNOW that she simply means that being around this guy makes her want to do things that she doesn’t NORMALLY do. I get that. I just don’t understand why she chose THAT particular phrase as a way to demonstrate  uncharacteristic behavior.

I mean, c’mon… the truth is that if the gender tables were turned and a guy sang, “But you, make me wanna act like a boy…” it would be nearly impossible to spin that implication into something trivial. You’d probably have ongoing debates about social emasculation, metrosexuals and discrimination against effeminate heterosexual men.

And yet, with songs like this one, girls are being told that you don’t NEED to act like a girl as if there’s something inherently wrong with being girly. I’m not knocking girls who prefer trucks and army men over dolls and dress-up. I just think there should be positive reinforcement of either choice instead of making one out to be better than the other.

The irony? In spite of all that I’ve said, I really, REALLY like the song! lol

Okay, okay… I’ll stop now. Turning my brain off. 😛