get up and try to do something
Botham Jean died, and then Joshua Brown died, and this keeps happening, will keep happening, and we rush to valorize the appearance of forgiveness without doing anything to earn it.
Throughout the first half of the 19th century, male students studying at Southern universities regularly mistreated, beat and raped the enslaved men, women and children who catered to their everyday needs, Taylor said. The brutal behavior was ignored or accepted by professors, administrators and local authorities.
I say we; I mean you.
On Friday night I learned about the Stockton Universal Basic Income Experiment; I learned what the key characteristics are of UBI from Juliana Bidadanure; I learned about Dr. Zea Malawa and her work at Expecting Justice. This all happened in an absolutely beautiful space; a home with books everywhere and windows that let in the light and art on the walls. The kind of space in the kind of neighbourhood that I have access to by dint of a rented privilege: I work with the kinds of folks who can live there.
And in that beautiful space and amidst those excellent discussions a thing happened that always happens: various women of colour (and Stockton’s Mayor Tubbs himself) were called upon to explain the existence and effects and pervasiveness of racism and structural inequality.
I didn’t say anything, that evening (which I know disappointed my host). I was too tired; I have been running too hard for too long and I was entirely out of the particular kind of energy and empathy these interventions require. And I wanted, mostly, to listen. Afterward I thanked each of these folks for doing the work, knowing what it takes and what it takes away.
One of the very last things I did on the very last day of my previous job was edit push notifications about the death of an unarmed black man at the hands (and guns) of police. It was not the first such death that month. It was the second in two days.
That summer felt like being stalked by a very specific kind of danger.
Within months, the threat would grow and evolve. If I left the country, would I be able to get back in? Becomes if I don’t leave the country, how long before they come for me? Becomes what can I do with the time I have left?
It is a strange thing to write sentences like this after you’ve spent 100 hours during the week working to make sure the [project] for [company] will be [appropriate superlative] and used by [desired market size] and then while you’re spending your Saturday on more of the same another unarmed black man dies.
Anne Helen Peterson wrote this week about the “seemingly small practices” that “made work less shitty, less of a life-sucking slog, or just more enjoyable”.
And as she observed:
Once you’ve internalized a standard of work, no matter how shitty, as just the way things are, it’s natural to express gratitude when it’s ameliorated in however small a way.
Sometimes this “small way” is predictable schedules or giving people real time off or not requiring doctor’s notes (!?) for sick days.
And then: for some people, bringing their whole selves to work means feeling betrayed by the criminal justice system; means feeling dehumanized by the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government; means being the only one in the conference room for whom these things are true.
How do we make work better for them?
I say them; I mean us.
Attribution:
You can pray until you faint, but if you don’t get up and try to do something, God is not going to put it in your lap.
— Speech by Fannie Lou Hamer in September 1964 via ‘'God Is Not Going to Put It in Your Lap.' What Made Fannie Lou Hamer’s Message on Civil Rights So Radical—And So Enduring’ by Dr. Keisha N. Blain