#RIP(s)

My previous post to the blog was a year ago.  A brief wary note on the comparison of Trayvon Martin to Emmett Till and what I see as a danger in flattening history. Now, I write to process, to fight against this numbness brought on by the recent killings of Eric Garner, John Crawford, and Mike Brown.  As I look for a link, I find that officers of the LAPD last night killed Ezell Ford, another unarmed black person.

I seethe. Racial equality is a pretense.

I want to hold to the idea that historical comparisons to the Civil Rights Era do little to reveal, address, and dismantle race-based oppression in the present.  I want to think in terms of how I want things to be, instead of defaulting to how things were. I want to believe that the Black Freedom Movement helped to improve the life chances and lived conditions of black Americans, and that addressing racist oppression in the present calls for rethinking how it works and formulating new strategies and tactics for how to address it.

But current events (or my exposure to them) leads me to acknowledge that there is a continuum.  This nation is founded on and continues to bank on systematic racist oppression.  The law of the land does not afford black people equal protection.

So, what to do?

Allow myself to be mournful. To deny the impact that these killings have on me is to deny my humanness and my blackness.

Be active. There is work to do. Read. Write. Learn. Teach. Use myself as an instrument to work for justice.

Get connected. Find people and groups working locally to address oppression and lend energy to the efforts.

Breathe.