How Intangible Losses Affect the Lives, Love, & Happiness of Black People
When it was announced that Carrie Underwood would be singing at Trump’s inauguration, that was an emotionally neutral moment. However, someone on social media dug up a past video of her mocking Obamacare whilst now stating to People Magazine that it is time for us all to “come together in the spirit of unity and looking to the future.” I became instantly incensed. I do not enjoy the volatility of emotions wherein one moment I can be ”just fine”, and the next moment, upon hearing news I find disturbing, I must utilize multitude modalities to restore a sense of peace and joy.

This is clearly not the first time that someone has used their platform to say something divisive only to turn around and call for love and peace for all mankind. Knowing this type of cognitive dissonance exists, some question why bother to be affected emotionally by it. Well, my response can be found in yet another pivotal quote from James Baldwin:

“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost, almost all of the time — and in one’s work. And part of the rage is this: It isn’t only what is happening to you. But it’s what’s happening all around you and all of the time in the face of the most extraordinary and criminal indifference, indifference of most white people in this country, and their ignorance. Now, since this is so, it’s a great temptation to simplify the issues under the illusion that if you simplify them enough, people will recognize them. I think this illusion is very dangerous because, in fact, it isn’t the way it works. A complex thing can’t be made simple. You simply have to try to deal with it in all its complexity and hope to get that complexity across.

Trump’s re-election did not consciously activate any emotion until two days later. My delayed reaction is a habit that began in my childhood where I would pretend that everything was good when it was not. “Everything is okay,” has been my personal mantra to circumvent having to acknowledge and process what I am actually feeling.

After the election, I spent the first couple of days in group text threads and social media posts getting a pulse on how people were feeling. The few people who chose to talk about how they were feeling were met by commenters who were incredulous to any emotion felt and spent. The responses shifted away from emotion and towards intellect and planning. “You didn’t see this coming?!” “I wouldn’t waste one precious ounce of energy on that clown.” “I’m going to sit out these next four years.”

One of the most significant complexities I know of concerning the Black experience in America is the habitual circumventing of the emotional impact of living in this country. We can witness and gather together with collective outrage over moments in life that are expressions of anti-blackness and never get around to acknowledging and processing our uniquely personal losses. The destigmatization of mental health has freed people to not feel shame going to a trained professional to get help with a particular past event. The next step of destigmatization for black mental health is to engage in the consistent practice of processing all our unresolved emotions, especially the ones we ignore. Emotions occupy real estate inside our bodies and when that real estate is toxic, we will experience its mental and physical effects.

The scope of public incidents surrounding anti-blackness is vast. They are as macro as witnessing an unarmed black man being murdered or as micro as being followed by security guard in a store. No matter the scope, each occurrence introduces a deeper level of complexity to our grief, the desire to heal from a loss that is intangible. We have seen brutality and ignorance, but how do you go about grieving the feeling and experience of a loss of safety? This is what I believe is the source of Baldwin’s assertion that to be conscious is to be in a state of rage.

When you have someone rise to power who coddles white supremacist groups, even if your physical life is not presently in danger, the sense of potential harm, already stored in your cells, persists. What then do we do? My suggestions are not new, just necessary.

1) Decrease stress
If you are well-practiced at suppressing your emotions, begin today to find one thing in your life that reduces your stress. You know what you need. Is it therapy? Setting a boundary with a friend or family member? (Nedra Glover Tawwab has written two books on this matter: Set Boundaries, Find Peace & Drama Free).
I also cannot more highly recommend a particular type of therapy called EMDR which helps you disconnect from the trauma of your past so, although the experience still exists, it is no longer a part of your identity.

2) Increase joy
Sometimes the pain of life causes us to be numb to things that we once enjoyed. My prayer is that you rediscover hobbies and friends that are good for your heart and nurture those them.

3) Process all the unresolved emotions that is within your power to do so.
Grief does not have separate compartments inside our hearts. Grief is cumulative. Each unresolved incident is like an individual strain in an interconnected circuitry of pain, heartbreak, and disappointment. It behooves us to clear out as much of these toxic emotions as possible. I know quite a few African-Americans who specialize in the field of grief recovery. I am happy to make a referral should you be ready to begin the work.

The greatest example of self-care I saw last week was the choice that Kamala Harris and Michelle Obama made to skip the pomp and circumstance. May every choice we make be ripe with the boldness to choose, love, and heal ourselves.

The post When We Give Ourselves Permission to Grieve appeared first on Jocelyn Jackson Williams.

Back when I was in college in the 90’s, there was a t-shirt/sweatshirt that I saw people wearing that said “Love Sees No Color.” Proponents of this concept believe in a colorblind society that has no regard for the color of someone’s skin and can only see the internal qualities of that person. I used to cringe every time I saw that shirt. While I love the sentiment of appreciating people for their inner beauty and character, I take umbrage with the idea that we don’t see what we clearly see. Applying color blindness to your social construct means there is something you are choosing not to see. The Love Sees No Color clan will tell you they have no biases; I welcome them to take an implicit bias test and get a new shirt displaying those results.

This fairy-tale land of colorblindness reached new heights when Obama was elected President of the United States. We began to have conversations of living in a post-racial society because a black man became ‘leader of the free world.’ And yet here we are ushering in a second Trump presidency where political pundits will swear it was the price of eggs that got him re-elected. We have been and continue to be in the throes of an insidious collective consciousness that denies the existence and effects of racism. The people I have grown more and more concerned with contributing to this proliferation are content creators. Their reach is vast and I fear many of us may condone subtle moments of anti-blackness for the sake of being entertained.

When love sees no color through jokes
Just a couple of months ago, I felt compelled to write about an incident where Andrew Schulz claimed to be making a joke about black women that many others, including myself, found to be anti-black at its core. In response to the backlash, he said, “In my opinion, everyone gets these jokes. Once there’s a protected group, it either means we think more or less of that group than everybody else. And I don’t feel that way.”. But if that were true, why on Beyonce’s internet did he engage in comparisons? Why ask the black male guests if they prefer black women or white women? Why when he asks the guests to name women that they think are hot would he have a problem with the black man answering Meg Thee Stallion?

It’s crazy-making as a black woman to feel disregarded and be disrespected only to be told “Well, that’s not what I meant. That’s not what I see. That’s not who I am.” Either he is willfully ignorant or he is playing in our face. And if it’s the latter, he will continue to be checked.

There’s so much talk about whether the line in Kendrick Lamar’s wacced out murals was about Schulz. Technically, it is not. Kendrick may be referencing Schulz as the white comedian but Kendrick is speaking directly to the black people Schulz surrounds himself with.

When Kanye famously said that slavery was a choice, if his free thinking were coherent, what he meant to say was it must have been horrifying to exist within a system that dehumanizes and subjugates you and you don’t know how to free yourself from it. The system has changed but we find ourselves existing in a very similar dynamic. However, unlike our ancestors, we have agency. We don’t have to play along. We don’t have to play nice. We have the ability to establish the rules of engagement. And in so doing, they see us a little more clearly.

When we love sees no color through dancing
There is a TikToker who goes by the name of ladyintgebathroom (yes, with a g). Her content consists of spot-on lip syncing and dancing to a variety of songs, many of them in the hip hop/R&B genre. Some people, including myself, assumed she was down with the culture because she was ten toes down with the music. Cue the record scratch in my head when she reposted multiple posts/comments from Trump supporters. Many black folks posted their own content explaining the math of singing and dancing to black music plus Donald Trump equals cultural appropriation. It’s the counter-response to this thought from other black people that worries me; they deny the possibility of cultural appropriation stating hip-hop/R&B is not “our” music; the music is for everyone. While it is true that the music is available for everyone to listen, it is equally true that the creators of the music she uses for her content are black. Many of us have concerns about Trump enacting policies that promote anti-blackness. (To be clear, when I say us, I mean this percentage of us as stated by NPR: 89% of black women and 74% of black men.)

During Trump’s last presidency, he criminalized BLM protestors but supported those who participated in the Charlottesville hate parade. When he says Make America Great Again, he demonstrates what he means by the people he puts in power. His past and present cabinets are predominantly white men; his hiring perpetuates privilege for them while we watch from the seats of meritocracy.

The lady in the bathroom re-posted this graphic on Facebook that shows two women, one wearing shirts that combined say “You should be able to have strong opinions and be friends with people who think differently.” But differences do matter in friendships. How ironic that they’re both smiling while hiding behind their shades. To this meme, I reply with the words of James Baldwin: “We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” We may never get to this conversation with the lady in the bathroom because we suffice to watch her dance all our cares away. So, while we’re busy telling people our music is for everyone, let us engage that same energy in discovering if people are truly for us.

The lesson of the day for me is that we, as black people, need to be conscious and careful of what we entertain. Let us recognize the spirit that is underneath the amusement. Let us discern when we have judged a book by its cover and not its content. May we not numb ourselves at the expense of upholding and affirming one another. Asé!

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