What Are We, If Not Human?

We are now a week and a half into Black History Month and I am exhausted. Some days I feel I am screaming into a void, and only silence answers my call. Other days I hear my words, twisted in minds that never intended to really listen. I cannot speak about black history and about being black without mentioning pain. I also cannot do so without mentioning triumph and joy. But we live in a space where people love to make the ‘other’ one dimensional. I can have my pain, so long as I do not feel joy. And if I must choose joy, then my pain is to be ignored; what a dilemma that is. I am left fighting for a middle ground where I can be both, and so much more. But Whiteness is persistent and it asks me to assimilate to its idea of who I am.

So say I choose my pain to be my definition. First Whiteness must verify the validity of that struggle. It does so by asking me for the reasons behind my tears and anger. It takes my answers and tries to minimize and normalize them as much as possible. Then the left-over reasons are then held up to a microscope. “What are the statistics? Are you sure the statistics are true?” And if by some miracle Whiteness believes the numbers, it views them as inanimate. Like there are not people and stories summarized into these reports.

Say I choose joy to define me. Whiteness responds in shock, like I am an anomaly. Black and happy. My magic shows and Whiteness wants all of it. It prepares to try to take all of it. It pretends my tears are a myth and my skin is armor. It tells me that I should be *this- joyful and alive without room to be anything else. And God-forbid I notice injustice, violence, or experience loss and am no longer joy, then Whiteness must reduce me to my pain all over again.

This is a vicious cycle that seeks to steal your humanity. Because once it does not see me as the same, Whiteness is then okay with treating me however it wants or watching me get treated unjustly. And of course, I am not only talking about myself, but I am talking about black people. I am talking about marginalized peoples. Those of us on the fringes, looking in, and being told we are not welcome. But we humans are not one dimensional. We are not only our pain or our joy- we are both, in existence within these truths that are inseparable and not fully containing. However, Whiteness does not like to ask us where we reside, it habitually tells us where to be. Which is often in spaces of dehumanization.

I choose the name ‘Whiteness’ with precision. I mean this system we constructed and now live in and that white people benefit from. I mean this system that has white people in denial of realities apart from their own and unwilling to learn more. I speak of this system that has white people unsure and afraid to keep moving towards equality. I would liken Whiteness to water but I do not want to give destruction and oppression the power of life that water contains. So I call it by name instead; if you cannot say it, how can you hope to destroy it?

I am weary. This fight to be seen and to be allowed complexities is an uphill battle. What does it do to a peoples to always be asking to be seen fully? What does it do to a person who is denied dignity year after year? My life is resistance in and of itself. This black body, this queer body, this woman body, is human. Is complex. Is not content to be pushed to the margins, slipping between the lines and forgotten in the footer. I want to go chest to chest with Whiteness, with you, if Whiteness takes your form. I want to be able to say “I stood at the border, stood at the edge, and claimed it as central. And let the rest of the world move over where I was.” (Toni Morrison)

So Whiteness, know that I will not be reduced to a single story or convinced to one be dimensional. You, if Whiteness is your claim, may have your reasons for trying to minimize my existence but I know myself as alive. I know myself as whole.

I am the five year old in the allergist, trying to figure out a way to breathe better in this atmosphere. I am the second grader, bewildered on the playground as my white classmates told the black girls to play by themselves. I am the eight year old, trying out for my first club soccer team with nothing but love and happiness for this game. I am the sixth grader, devastated, on my way to move back to Kenya- a country that I don’t know how to call home and don’t want to get to know. I am the thirteen year old who is full with friendship and excited about my future. I am the tenth grader learning to write and finding my footing after a breakup with the guy I loved. I am the seventeen year old who is in and out of doctor appointments because she had nerve damage and had to rebuild. I am the recent high school graduate saying goodbye to her best friends after indescribable years of joy and love. I am the nineteen year old living in Oregon, a place she never thought she would come to care for and embrace. I am the girl who left her home in Kenya and her home in Oregon to move back home to Virginia and create a life she loves. I am full of all these snapshots and so much more.

I have hung out with baby elephants, rode horses next to giraffes, and driven into New York City to spend six hours before driving home. I have lost friends, sat in funerals and tried to hold myself together, and said goodbye to everyone I love before moving into the unknown. I have binge watched movies with my best friends, belly-laughed until I could not breathe, and danced until my feet hurt. I have spent years calling friends living miles away and weeks in gratitude with reunification. I could keep going on but I should not have to lay out my life to be treated as equal. I should not have to bare myself to be seen in fullness. Yet I do, and Whiteness still overlooks me so it does not have to change how it abuses the marginalized.

But here is the kicker: Whiteness does not get the last word. It does not get to decide who I am, or who we are. It does not get to determine the validity of my experience or the experiences of those it habitually overlooks and oppresses. I am someone’s daughter, sister, friend, and valued coworker. I am someone. Which is to say I am alive, human, complex and whole. I choose my pain. I choose my joy. And I choose all the moments inbetween and outside these two truths.

Do you know what happens when you look another human in the eye and refuse to deny them their humanity?