At first it is the unbelievable realization that the brutality that is written in books and the horrors recounted from those who quietly posses a knowing run deep in your own blood. There is no random, no name African that came to this land through the middle passage. That no named African is deep in your spirit and in your flesh and bones. That is one layer of understanding to grapple with. Then to understand the deliberate dehumanization for hundreds of years, far more than the amount of time that there has been none, well that is quite a reckoning. It is a realization of just how comfortable America is with this enslavement of the mind, body and spirit of us, and how comfortable we have grown with this abusive relationship we were born into.
Then there is sitting in the Emergency Room with a loved one. A room filled with people, who are suffering from everything from a broken toe to an obviously intoxicated young person who doesn’t know where they have pain, they are just aware that they need some medication for it. There are three patients of African descent, three. You watch as everyone else in that crowded waiting room is attended to, except for those three people for four hours. All the while wishing there was something you could do to take away the pain of the older woman of African descent who cannot even sit upright due to belly pain. You watch helpless as her body tenses with the waves of pain and tears fill her eyes. This is a place you know very well, because so many times you were turned away from the emergency room with no answer to your own belly pain. Labeled as a drug seeking black woman because your cries of terror were seen as dramatic, and no physician cared enough to do significant diagnostic tests. Offering you narcotics and becoming frustrated when you refused them. “Why come here if you won’t take the treatment we are offering you?” scheduling appointment after appointment. Waiting months to see someone who doesn’t test you for what is ailing you because the doctor says that you don’t fit the criteria for the condition. Only to find out years later that you were in fact suffering from a chronic and serious auto immune condition. When the physician who finally diagnosed this condition said, “How is it possible that no doctor saw this level of damage?” How can you respond that it is because you are a black woman and your health simply does not take precedence over the biases against you that have been rooted deeply in the hearts and minds of those who have been placed in a position to care for you as a human being, as an ill person, as a citizen of this land worthy of quality healthcare?
So, when you are faced with the reality that the racism has once again proudly reared its head and given permission for life to be snatched away from those who are the children of the enslaved, you resist the temptation to fear a simple task, such as going to a grocery store to shop for your family. You take a deep breath and continue to do all you can to remember not to forget.
We cannot continue to pretend that this ugliness has disappeared over time. We cannot continue to believe that because we have come to accept the values of our oppressors above our own that we are past the era of subjugation and tyranny. We cannot give up hope for finding a way to truly live in peace as equals in this land. We must find our way out. We must harness the courage to wake up and see what is going on. We must speak up for ourselves and do what we must so that we can end this inheritance of dying at the hands of those who believe, uphold and support every system that was designed to keep us enslaved.
Ifayinka 