Are you sure?
Every joint in my body vibrated, the parts of me only loosely connected to each other; I, in a paper gown, goosebumps; he, skeptical, leaned back in his chair, badge glinting in the fluorescence, one eye drawn slightly, the edge of his mouth pulling upward to reveal his tongue probing the corner of a tooth. I roved the room with my eyes, my breath in my ears, and the humming in my joints - I feel my bones; I am still here - kept me from flying apart as we had a conversation. Sort of.
acquaintance. not a friend. not a boyfriend. no, never. last name? don't know. i don't know. acquaintance. i said no.
Deep breath through his nose; impatient shift. Yeah, but.
Are you sure?
He'd uttered the phrase a few times, clinically, half-interestedly, toward specific details. But this one, in the final wrap-up. The smirk in his words. It slammed into me - the fantasty playing in his head, as he looked at me and shrugged with, almost, aggressive amusement.
I hadn't focused before. But now, I knew he didn't believe me.
I was so numbed that I couldn't form the thought. But it's been blooming in my bloodstream since.
______________________
There are few parallels between the experiences of a white rape victim and a black person in America. Rape is not racism. And for white people, no matter our experience, there's a fine line between healthy, respectful advocacy and speaking for people of color. I fear I cross that line, sometimes, or at least toe the line much more often than I should, only because I am mouthy and ill-tempered and nobody should ever hang out with me. I've tasted, courtesy of systemic sexism, what it's like to be actively disbelieved by a larger structure which needs, in order to survive, the idea of your inherent untrustworthiness. But realistically: If you would only act decently, you wouldn't get hurt, and being judged for walking around in the physical that I own - that's pretty much the extent of what I might have in common with black Americans.
Because I am not a black person. I can never understand the experience of a black man in America. Sometimes, I think I'm even further removed from the experiences of black women in America - the ways in which the feminism that empowers me is narrow enough to erase their experiences almost completely. When I work to educate myself on issues of systemic racism, black feminism, and intersectionality, I find myself absolutely overwhelmed by how much anguish I do not know and cannot understand. It seems like a hopeless thing. A vague, hopeless thing. The lack of hard answers is uncomfortable. It's hard to sit with, for long. It's tempting to close the tab, put down the book, start baking. Leave it on the shelf. Or tell myself it's just not true, because it cannot be true. Because it hasn't been true for me. How can it be true? all of this brokenness being screamed toward white ears - how can it possibly be true? How can I live in this world and not see it, too? How can I believe this is true when I can't connect with any personally-meaningful proof that will make me understand it?
Full stop: that's the thing. Right there.
Nobody is asking you to understand it.
If you can't understand it, you can't understand it. That is okay.
But you - especially you, people of faith in God - are fully capable of believing it when you're made aware of it by someone who does understand it.
I struggle with the duality of belief: the effect on the believed, on the believer, the cost of conferring belief, the cost of withholding, both on the dis/believed and the un/believer. I'm so grossly angry sometimes, when I remember being disbelieved - from police, to dear friends - and when I, in turn, convince myself that belief is an easy thing to confer, but difficult to withhold except for the worst or most evil among us - when I remember how I was made to feel stripped, like an animal, before the eyes of men and women to whom rape can only mean fuck, and fuck only means one thing. When all I allow in my entire heart is how can you deny someone the fundamental human kindness of validating their pain and believing them when they tell you why it exists? What does it cost you to simply believe? to not turn away? to not rewrite the narrative into something that further blames. oppresses, undercuts, isolates?
But when I'm being real? No, Lisa. Belief is costly. You should know that by now. That to believe is to esteem; to hold dear; to trust. That, particular to pain: to believe someone's pain is to hold their pain near to you, to absorb its heat in your skin, to breathe it into yourself; to feel the sting in the limitations of your own empathy, intellect, and experience; to awaken from a state of denial to which you can't return. To elevate someone's life-need to express their pain above your need for comfort. To postpone pointing fingers of right/wrong at those expressions, and, instead, choose to recognize what drives the expressions. To humble yourself, rather than indulge in correction you haven't earned the right to confer.
White people: if enough black people are telling us the same thing, it is incumbent on us to believe. How can we not believe them? How can we sit here, in our whiteness, and listen to little bits of these myriad deaths, over and over and over, but only so far? and deem, in our whiteness, that it cannot be true, so we will listen no further? that we must know better? as though there's purity, or omniscience, in our whiteness? That because it has not happened "like that" in OUR lives, it could never be?
White people: we can never understand black peoples' experiences. We can never enjoy the certainty of proof; We can never nod, satisfied, at evidence which cannot be refuted by someone who chooses to disbelieve.
But when the majority of the black people in my life are telling me the same thing - that systemic racism is real, that police brutality targets and destroys black lives, that the judicial system is biased against people of color: I believe them. For what it's worth, from one damaged, somewhat bitter, slowly-rebuilding white lady with a migraine in Florida.
If black people tell me they struggle under a legacy of police brutality, I believe them.
If black people tell me that their children receive subpar educations based on skin color, I believe them.
If black people tell me what it means to them to live in poverty, or live in financial comfort, or seek or eschew education, and all the reasons and heartbreaks therein - I believe them.
If black people tell me they've been denied jobs, advancement, general upward mobility, and opportunity because they are black, I believe them.
If black people tell me that an entire police force or judicial system or federal government has been focusedly sabotaging them for generations, guess what? I believe them.
When black people riot in the streets because racism drowns them out: I believe them.
God believes them.
So should you.
