No Place Like Home
A Perspective! and Reality!AU
Word Count: 2.2K
Warnings: Raw honesty and social justice themes
A/N: Personal experiences ahead. I call it an AU because sometimes we’re so into escapism that reality feels like the fantasy.
6:20 pm
“OMG, social media is so dead today!”
It’s Tuesday after the protests have begun, and my roommate is bitching and demanding his privilege. I like to believe that he means well, but he’s also a diva, and complaints are his forte.
“Well, it’s Blackout Tuesday-” I begin, but he cuts me off, eager to make his point, true to form.
“No, look, I get it. Really I do. But all I keep seeing is a black screen. I keep my phone on dark mode for a reason. I don’t want to have to keep downloading games because I need something to occupy my time today.”
Need. That’s definitely a feeling I’m familiar with. I need a sense of false security in order to leave my house and interact with others in a way that meets social expectations. I need a keen sense of self and social awareness and nimble cultural reflexes in order to ensure that I’m not perceived as angry or bitter in my responses to the way the world treats me. So what if I actually am, in fact, angry. Society has taught me that it deems my anger irrelevant, unworthy of notice, and I have been conditioned to recognize that showing it doesn’t get me what I want or need. Which makes me think again about my roommate’s commentary. He needs social media to be more lively, despite the fact that entire people groups are protesting unjust and inhumane treatment. And I need hope that my brothers won’t occupy body bags simply because they exist today.
I guess each person has their own struggles.
I’m a fiction writer. And at the risk of sounding boastful, I’m pretty good at it. But that’s just because good fiction requires a healthy dose of imagination, and I’m a master.
I have to be.
Every day since I was a little girl, I wake up and imagine that the fair rules of engagement apply to me. I imagine that I may expect the same level of courtesy and respect as my fairer-skinned counterparts.
In school, when my teachers would unspokenly expect me to work twice as hard to receive the same level of acceptance, I imagined that they did the same with all the children. When my scores indicated that I was a highly gifted student, multiple grade levels above my peers, but was frequently accused of cheating, plagiarism, and other forms of academic dishonesty because my superiors were unable or unwilling to accept that a little black girl could have possibly produced such results, I imagined a world where education systems were tailored to students and where teachers and administrators saw the value in children rather than just their preconceived notions about them because of the color of their skin.
When people granted me interviews because of the “normal” name on my resume and the professionally “white” sound of my voice, only to thank me after minimal interviews and promise to call once they saw me, I imagined that they recognized that my professional experience and qualifications were worth more than the wage that their budget permitted, instead of acknowledging that they often chose to hire someone who was less qualified but whiter than me, and when they paid said person more, I imagined that I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed doing that type of job anyway or working at that company anyway. Even though it was the same at many companies.
When people tell me that I am “pretty for a Black girl,” or “too pretty to ‘just’ be Black,” as though being Black isn’t already the most blessed form in creation, I imagine that what they’re really saying is, “you’re so fucking gorgeous that I don’t even know how to compliment you properly, so please forgive me while I babble like a moron and potentially insult you. I’m so awestruck that I just can’t help myself.”
I wrote my first smut during one of many unjust police stops, when the only purpose of the detainment was to harass me and remind me who was in control. I imagined that it was really a sexy roleplay and that I liked it. And when the trauma and anxiety of constantly wondering if I’m about to be stopped once again for Driving While Black threaten to be too much, I imagine that I’m really just in my house, writing it all down for a story. Even though the stories carry too much shame for me to comfortably share. I imagine that’s all just part of the process.
When I interact with the world, and no matter what, am told that I’m either “too much” or “not enough,” sometimes both at the same time, I imagine that what they’re really saying is that because I originate from the beginnings of creation, because I have both the secrets of the Earth and royalty in my blood, I don’t fit the mold, and they don’t know how to process my greatness. And this enables me to smile when I feel like shattering into a million pieces, when I’m reminded of how I don’t meet the social standard, how I don’t fit in.
Most of all, every day I imagine what it would be like to feel like I truly have a place on this vast Earth that I can safely call home. Home is where we are safe, where we are welcomed, where we belong.
I was born in Germany, but I don’t belong there.
I’ve lived in Mexico and Guatemala, but it’s not safe for me there.
Some of my ancestors were from Africa, but it’s a large continent, made up of many countries, all foreign to me because of cultural eradication, so I could visit, but really I don’t belong there.
My forebears were brought to the Americas as slaves, worked like dogs, and treated as less than animals, and although early settlers were considered “Americans” relatively quickly, after four centuries, I still don’t belong here.
I’m not even 40, but I was born during the Cold War, in a country that has successfully recovered from antisemitism, but not from antiblack sentiment.
Both of my parents were born before the Civil Rights Act was passed, in the middle of the Civils Rights Movement.
My grandparents were born near the end of the Great Depression and lived under Jim Crow law. My grandparents. The ones who told me stories while holding me on their knees, the ones who spent their lives sweating and striving for me to have better.
My grandma’s grandma was a slave. My dad remembers an aunt (a great-aunt) coming to his school in elementary to talk about the fact that she had been born a slave.
I think that people forget that it wasn’t that long ago, forget that the tyranny and oppression has gone on for so long.
They forget that Europeans have been enslaving Africans since the 15th century. For those who hated school, that means the 1400s. Slaves were brought to the Americas as early as 1503. The only reason we didn’t reach the country we now call the U.S. until the early 1600s was because it took England that long to decide to colonize the area.
They forget that in my great-great-grandparents’ time, in my great-grandparents’ time, in my grandparents’ time, at the time my parents were born, I could have been beaten, raped, falsely accused, cheated, ignored, taken advantage of, or killed just for the color of my skin.
They forget that, 401 years later, 155 years after the Civil War, 157 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, 152 years after the 14th Amendment, 57 years after MLK marched, 56 years after the Civil Rights Act was passed, nothing has changed.
They forget that it is our American right to speak out, to decry our oppression.
The First Amendment says that we have the right to freedom of speech and press, that we have the right to peaceably assemble and ask the government for a solution to our complaints of unfair treatment. But we are silenced, gassed when we protest peacefully, and our cries for justice have been ignored for generations.
The Second Amendment says that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Yet time after time, legally armed, law-abiding Blacks are arrested or shot just for being a person of color in possession of a gun, while white gun owners can brandish their weapons freely without fear of being shot or unjustly detained.
The Fourth Amendment says that citizens may not be subject to unreasonable search and seizure. It’s where the concept of a search warrant comes from. Yet Blacks and other people of color have been subject to racial profiling and racially motivated searches, frisking, and seizure of property for as long as we have been citizens of this country.
The Sixth Amendment says that citizens have the right to a public and speedy trial, by an impartial jury, to know what we’re being accused of, to be confronted by the witnesses against us, and to have the opportunity to gain witnesses in our favor, and to have the right to an attorney in our defense. This is one of the biggest jokes. People of color remain in cells for weeks and months before trial, and are often coerced into plea bargains for crimes they didn’t commit in the first place, just so they can get out of jail sooner rather than run the risk of being remaining in jail for months, only to face a courtroom that is predisposed against you because of stereotypes and shady police records, with a public defender that is overworked at best and disinterested or corrupt at worst, resulting in extremely long sentencing with little to no account for the time the individual has already been incarcerated, seemingly as a penalty for refusing to take the fall and essentially “wasting people’s time”.
The Eighth Amendment says that “excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” I could laugh if it weren’t such a blatant lie. Bail is disproportionately higher for people of color than for whites, as are the fines, and while cruel and unusual punishments may be subjective, I would argue that legalized slavery for a criminal population that is disproportionately comprised of Blacks and people of color AND murder by law enforcement before even reaching a judge BOTH qualify as cruel and unusual, particularly since it’s extremely notable how many white people, even accused or convicted of especially heinous crimes do not meet this fate, while a Black person could do so for merely moving wrong during a traffic stop.
The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime. However, the only thing this changed for Blacks was the beginnings of racially motivated mass incarceration, starting from 1865 until the present.
The Fourteenth Amendment says that anyone born or naturalized in the United States is a citizen of the USA. It also says that “no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
There are 20 other Amendments as of 2020, but this Amendment alone is the root of the problem. Black Americans are just that- Americans, and yet, we are DENIED equal protection under the law. We are DEPRIVED OF LIFE, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, without due process of law.
But people seem to forget that Blacks are American citizens, too. And so, they seek to preserve their peace and forget to care.
So, as I turn up my headphones to tune out my roommate’s irritatingly ironic assertions of oppression, I turn my attention to the places where I have a voice, to remind people that this movement is more than just a lofty idea or the overreaction of a group of people that’s too sensitive or hung up on the past. I remind them that the problem is that the actions and attitudes, the injustices and imbalanced systems are still happening NOW, in the present, mid-2020. That’s why we can’t stay silent. Why no one can. I use my influence to remind the world what those who came before me died to obtain:
“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. The Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the [blatant racist or the white supremacist] but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice. Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., excerpted out of order from sections of a letter from Birmingham Jail, Alabama, 16 April 1963
I remind those who care to listen that I exist in this world, hated and unwelcome. My very existence is one of danger and risk, especially if I choose to be myself. For me, there is no place like home.
I remind the world that I can’t breathe, and that for me that’s not just a catchphrase; it’s not just a concept to use for merit mongering or fitting in. It’s the fear that chokes me, the anxiety that suffocates my hopes and dreams. For me, it’s a reality.