Pissed and Peaceless

Before I start, let me establish a few things:

I am a white father to 4 Black children and a Latina child.I am actively working through addressing my supremacy and my racism.
I can openly admit that I did not understand the weight of my decisions concerning transracial adoption. I thought I had an understanding, but I realize that I genuinely
didn’t.
I know that I am complicit in perpetuating the system that continues to offer oppression, inequity, and death to Communities of Color.
I understand my white feelings are inconsequential.

* * *

The journey through my racism has been and continues to be embarrassing, freeing, eviscerating, rewarding, tiring, and at the very least necessary.

As I continue to accept and work through my complicity in these systems, I find myself angry. The fuse was lit after George Floyd’s death. I have hidden my anger safely beneath my whiteness over the years, but the top blew off, and the gloves are off, and that is how I have chosen to move forward.

I choose to move forward in anger, righteous indignation, fury, and any other synonym that describes pain and anger, and my choice to do so is based on the love I have for my children.

Closet Skeletons

Since many of you don’t know me, I need you to know that I am finding the value of genuineness more than ever during this time. With that said, I need to be honest and speak about my racism. It is something that I hate about myself. It is something that I will have to account for down the road when my children ask me about my past beliefs. It is something that I have to be open about because too much of social media allows us to paint an unrealistic picture of who we are to the masses, and that is merely presenting a lie for the world to see.

With that said, this is one (of many) racist ideologies that I continually try to scrub off of my soul, but I know the stain made its permanent home here many years ago:

The only value I found in speaking about racism was its ability to provide me with a punchline in a joke.

It was not until I became a father to Children of Color that I realized how much destruction I caused. The flippant flaunting of my white supremacy was poisonous, and it was recklessly flung around at anyone in my path. At that time, I didn’t care. I was self-destructive and focused on being the “funny guy” by any means necessary because I couldn’t even deal with my mental health issues. However, that’s a story for a different time.

Regardless, I wish someone would have broken my jaw back in the day to help me understand how dangerous I was with my words and my beliefs.

I needed to share that quick bit so that you understand I am not hiding my racism and so that you know that if this challenges you, you aren’t alone, but that it is also not a time for you to feel sorry for yourself.

No Justice.

I had silently sat back for years and have only offered commentary when prodded when it came to the deaths of People of Color at the hands of the police or other white citizens who felt the need to play police. I watched the trends of people offering condolences for 72 hours and then disappearing into the void again once it felt comfortable to do so. I remember times where I sat back and said: “well yea, if he/she is resisting the police, then, of course, they are going to die, and that’s just how it plays out”.

I had a fully developed sense of white justice.

Now my understanding of justice keeps me consistently over the line of what the majority thinks is appropriate. I frequently have to check myself now so that I don’t go around screaming “LIFE FOR A LIFE” any time someone discusses the most recent murder perpetrated by cops. Yet, that is what burns deep within my soul.

I see people assassinate the character of men who have had their lives taken away in front of the entire world for nothing more than a cop needing an ego stroke. I watch white America vehemently aim their “All Lives Matter” responses at every person who demands that Black Lives Matter Period. I watch racism ooze out of people I know; because they simply cannot grasp that they are part of the problem.

The small fraction of the weight of injustice that I now feel is enough to separate the vertebrae in my back and leave me paralyzed.

No Peace.

I see the expectations for peaceful responses to violent circumstances. I hear white voices telling me that I need to change my approach when I choose to actively and angrily address racism. I see many white people scrambling to batten down the hatches of their white fragility. I hear a lot of people trying to control how Communities of Color respond to instances of trauma.

I see and hear those cries, but I reject them every single time. It no longer makes sense in my head that peace be an option. The request and expectation for me to remain quiet when I am watching people who look like my children murdered without a second thought in these streets are not only unacceptable, but it is violently suppressive. At this point, peace might as well be a bystander. Peace can watch as the frontlines assemble and prepare for something new. There is a shift coming in society.

I feel the storms of change in my bone marrow and the option for silence has been exiled from my consciousness without regret.

Radical change must happen. Setting cities on fire has led to change. I no longer care if people don’t like it. The value of material possessions over lives continues to play itself out, and it is suppressing forward progress.

There is a time and a place for peace.

Now is not that time.

Now is not that place.

Battle Ready

The fuel to this fire is the love I have for my children and the love I have for Communities of Color. If all people see is anger, that’s ok. If all people take away from their experience with me is a lack of peace and a lack of my willingness to adjust my tone, that’s ok. My vision is focused on something much more significant.

I will do my best to achieve peace and equity for my children by any means necessary. If that makes a lot of white people get angry along the way, good. I hope they get mad enough to join me in working out how to handle the cancer of white supremacy that riddles our bodies and minds. I see people crazy about cities in flames, but the entire System needs to be doused in gasoline, lit from afar, and turned into a hefty pile of ashes.

* * *

Peace no longer resides inside of me.

Peace can be the job of someone else.

Peace can be reimagined once equity is brought about.

* * *

Until then, there have to be boots on the ground providing an unbridled and unrelenting assault on the Systems that kill and oppress People, Children, and Communities of Color.