This is the Dark Matter bio that should've been posted. If you've been on the site recently, I promise to upload my content again. I had to remove it because my babies found it and were getting rowdy with it. Also I've been drinking so my emotions are high 🤣
Since 2001, I've been watching Luffy on tv. Since 2006, I've been reading his story. So for 74% of my life , I've been following the joyous story of this kid living and fighting for his dream. For 27 nearly 28 years of my life, I never had a dream. I was great in theatre so I wanted to be an actor. I was great at piano so I wanted to be a musician. I was great at chemistry so I wanted to be a chemist. I got chosen to participate in a highly competitive Physics program so I wanted to be a physicist. My mom asked for a lawyer. My grandfather wanted a heart surgeon because of my family's history. I went to school to be a Physicist because: 1. Fuck being a dream deferred by my parents (even though I love them) 2. I loved the combination of science and math But that's not what I was called for. In elementary school, my 5th grade teachers let me "skip" class to go to Ms. Kim's room to tutor the kids. On bus 107, I would help Kelsie with her homework when I wasn't playing yugioh. In middle school, Ms. Lockhart saw my potential and recommended me for the math team and Seqaous Williams accepted and molded me. In high school, Ms. Angira (sorry for the misspelling) begged me to lead practices. Mrs. Zachariah acted on my potential. And Ms. King (sugafoot) forced me to accept my calling. Vance Alan Hurst accepted me and passed the torch to me. Dr. Hendon noticed me and Dr. Cantarella put my name in a room. My Mathcounts babies pulled me, my high school babies clutched me, and my middle school babies said don't let go of us. For most of my life, I've followed one dream while running away from my own. While talking to my wondertwin Taylor Fleming and holding back the tears......even though she let her phone die on me 🙄 I've finally stopped being Jonah and accepted my calling. I'm going to be in my babies lives come Hell or high water. Through the stress, migraines, insomnia, hbp, and everything else, I'm more than joyous to give my life to the ones I love. I've been passive about being out of the field but now I'm willing to fight for it. I will teach. I will be in my babies' lives. I've discovered my calling......my dream and I ain't giving it up for anyone or anything. My kids asked all the time why I always smile and laugh (mostly deviously). Well, Luffy taught me that. Even in the darkest of times, know joy. And for me, joy is my babies. You'll hear from me soon and in God's name, I'll be known as "Momo, the greatest teacher to play the game." To my babies that find this and want to hear what I told you about, here's the link: https://www.facebook.com/1790756277/videos/4195812472179/ See ya soon and until then dereshishishi XD!
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So, imposter syndrome. Google defines it as “the persistent inability to believe that one's success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one's own efforts or skills”. And honestly, I still struggle with that. And from what I’ve experienced a number of scientists from under-represented backgrounds struggle with this. Now I’ll be talking about this through the lens of a black male chemist, but hopefully others will be able to take something from reading my experiences and how I dealt with it. I’ll start with my first sense of imposter syndrome and how I dealt with it and then finish up with my most recent case and how I’m trying to deal with it. Cool? Cool.
Let’s see, first case was probably my first semester at Mercer University. Up until I went there, school had never been an issue. I could always pass classes with relative ease and thought that the community college I attended was just upgraded high school. So, imagine my surprise (read devastation) when I failed the first chemistry course I took at Mercer. Nothing makes you question your career path than failing a class directly related to your major. Not gone lie, I felt pretty depressed and honestly considered whether college and science was right for me. And that’s when the imposter syndrome started coming in. See I had always been the only one of my friends to be a chemistry major. That was nothing. And before I failed that class I was the only black chemistry major. Now I had failed classes before: art, history, that beast Kwasi likes to call biology. But I’m a chemist! What kind of chemist fails at chemistry?! Surely, if I couldn’t pass this class, I would never make it as a real chemist. I saw all of my other classmates that didn’t seem to struggle at all. They passed every test and set the curve, while I was always at the tail-end of it. Might as well stop the train here. But I managed to beat back my sense of not being good enough. I started talking to other people about what was going on. They weren’t science majors, but they were going through similar issues: being the only black person in their class, always behind the curve, constantly studying but the material just isn’t sticking. It really helped knowing that I wasn’t the only one who felt this way. It helped just being able to talk out my frustrations. I talked to my professors about their academic and professional journeys and learned something interesting. Scientists fail. A lot. Like, for every success in the lab there are at LEAST 5-10 failures. Passing isn’t what makes a scientist. The determination to not give in to failure and keep pursuing knowledge is. So, I took the class again, determined to pass with flying colors. Afterall I knew what to expect, yeah? Welp, I got a C. During my time at Mercer I got C’s in two chemistry courses and one physics course. Despite my transcript not being as pristine as I would’ve liked, I still made it into one of the top universities in the country. I’m doing research that I love, and that people call me an expert in. Lab mates actually come to me with problems and seriously ask for my input. I teach undergrads the chemistry that I was taught. The chemistry imposter syndrome is finally gone! But, just like most negative things, it found a way to spring back up. The imposter syndrome I’m currently dealing with is actually this blog we’re running. Now, I can’t write as eloquently as Kwasi. I can’t make connections and grab at emotions like Reggie. And yet they both seem to think that my writings are worth something? Yeah, I don’t see it, but if they see something in it who am I to argue? I guess if they didn’t think my writings were all that great then you wouldn’t be reading this huh? This time around I’m working through this by taking a deep breath and looking around me. I wouldn’t be where I’m at in life now if I wasn’t good enough yeah? Well, the same goes for you. Y’all stay safe, Lloyd I started writing this piece over a month ago, 6 weeks after George Floyd’s murder, which catalyzed a summer of civil unrest. America saw protests unlike any in a generation, and the demands for justice, the demands for radical change, were echoed across the country. Reliving that trauma so familiar to Black folks, seeing our own murdered by the state, was draining and demoralizing. But part of me genuinely felt a different sort of energy, and I believed that if we were ever going to make a change, it would be now. Just last week, a Black man named Jacob Blake was shot seven times in the back by police officer Rusten Shesky in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He survived his wounds, which I doubt was the officer’s intent, but is paralyzed from the waist down. Once again, the people took to the streets to demand justice for Jacob, reinvigorating the ongoing protest movement the media has elected to ignore. Two days later, a 17 year old white man named Kyle Rittenhouse traveled from his hometown in Illinois across state lines to Kenosha with an AR-15 to quote “defend life and property” from what he perceived as a mob of looters and rioters. By the night’s end, he had murdered two people, walked right past the police to return home to Illinois, and turned himself in on his own terms, alive and unharmed. I’m tired y’all, I can’t say I’m surprised but it seems like so little has changed in these past couple months. The energy on the ground is there, but the powers that be, our institutions, that are most poised to affect change seem to lack the desire or will to meaningfully respond to the people. The most recent tragedies don’t change my subsequent thoughts, Jacob Blake is unfortunately just the most recent example of the reality of Black people’s existence in this country. However, I can’t start this discussion without acknowledging the tragedy that is hanging over our heads right now.
For about a month out of the summer, my PhD research requires that I trek out to the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, live in a tent, and spend the better part of my days catching chipmunks. It’s not glamorous by any means, and while I enjoy my time outdoors immensely, I find myself craving a shower and bed more often than I’d care to admit. That being said, one of the undeniable perks of living this way is that it forces you to unplug for a little bit from the deluge of digital content we’ve become accustomed to in our everyday 21st-century lives. I often use this opportunity to reflect and get lost in my thoughts, as well as catch up on reading all the books I’ve accumulated over the past year. As an academic, most of my day-to-day work tasks involve reading, whether it be academic papers and manuscripts, grant proposals, textbooks, etc., and this constant workflow quickly saps my desire to spend what little free time I have doing even more reading. However, when in the field, the long, quiet days and intermittent periods of downtime create the perfect environment to sit down with a good book and absorb the words off the page. This year, one of the books I decided to tackle during my field season was Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, which turns 10 years old this year. It is a book I’ve been wanting to read for the past half decade, but for myriad reasons, I have never been able to sit down and start. I even bought my dad a copy as a Christmas gift one year, in the hopes he’d finish it and I could snatch it for myself. However, my father has a similar relationship to recreational reading as I do, and he took his sweet time with the book, dashing my plans for the time being. But finally, I opened the book and began my journey through its pages. As I’ve come of age, I’ve been educating myself piecemeal about mass incarceration in this country, our racist criminal justice system, and the War on Drugs. Anybody who knows me will tell you that I will discuss the evils of Ronald Reagan and his presidency with little provocation. To quote The Boondocks’ Huey Freeman, “I'm tryin' to explain to you that Ronald Reagan was the devil. Ronald Wilson Reagan? Each of his names has six letters? 6-6-6? Man, doesn't that offend you?“ But for Alexander to lay out the racial caste system that has come to define our modern American existence so starkly, so completely, is still a shock to the system. There is so much to unpack here, in our politics, our law, our jurisprudence, our culture, things too complex to summarize in a blog post, nor am I especially qualified to do so effectively. If you want more details, the simplest advice I can give you is to go out, get a copy of the book, and read it for yourself, deeply. Rather, what I hope to discuss is one particular aspect of the book’s discourse, and the reflections it has inspired in me as an academic and beneficiary of certain privileges — privileges that often go undiscussed. In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander, a former civil rights lawyer, discusses the concept of “Racial Bribes.” These bribes serve as tools throughout history to insulate one racialized class from the horrors of racialized domination by providing them with some form of material benefits, which in turn serves to legitimize the prevailing racial caste system. During the era of chattel slavery and Jim Crow, poor whites, while not much better off economically than Black people, benefited from the access and consideration their skin color provided. In the era of mass incarceration, Alexander warns of a new racial bribe, this one targeted to Black people of privilege. With the help of diversity programs and affirmative action, middle and upper-class Black people have obtained access to institutions and levers of power once thought unobtainable, and at unprecedented rates. As a people, Black folks often hinge the success of our race, our people as a whole, on the success of our most exceptional kinfolk. “Doing it for the culture” is popular shorthand for individual accomplishment in service of the advancement of the whole race. Therefore, in the post-Civil Rights, post-Jim Crow era, we have for a long time considered the front lines of racial equality to be the fight to protect affirmative action, along with the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs of business, industry, and academia. In the state of California, a 1996 ballot measure, Proposition 209, rendered race explicit hiring and admissions practices in public employment and education illegal. In an internal report published by the University of California Office of the President (UCOP), the University of California saw a system-wide 12% drop in the enrollment of students identifying as members of an underrepresented group in a 16 year period post Prop 209. In economic terms, the report estimates an as much as 6% drop in the number of high-earning Black and Latinx workers in the state over that same time frame. The early half of the 2010’s had the saga of Abigail Fisher, an undergraduate who in 2008 applied to the University of Texas, and was rejected from the highly selective flagship university. As part of the subsequent lawsuit, Fisher would claim that UT’s admissions practices were discriminatory and unconstitutional, bringing her case all the way to the Supreme Court, not once, but twice. The facts of the case show that Fisher’s race had no bearing on her rejection from UT, and while it is true that UT offered provisional admission to 47 students with lower test scores than Fisher, 42 of those students were white. Regardless, her lawyers saw this as an opportunity to challenge the constitutionality of Affirmative Action nation-wide, perversely viewing it as their own Brown v. Board of Education. While in the 2013 case, the Court ruled that the Fifth Circuit Court failed to apply strict scrutiny and vacated the decision, the 2016 case would see the Court ruling 4-3 in favor of the University of Texas, determining that UT’s race conscious admissions program is lawful under the Equal Protections Clause. Just last year, a group calling themselves “Students for Fair Admissions” filed a suit against Harvard University alleging their race-conscious admissions practices were discriminatory against Asian-American students. While a federal judge ruled in favor of Harvard, Students for Fair Admissions filed an appeal in February, and it is likely they plan to take this as high up as they can. And now, the US Justice Department is accusing Yale University of unlawfully discriminating against White and Asian-American students during its admissions process. While by no means perfect, the gains Affirmative Action programs have enabled for Black and Brown folks cannot be understated. And, at least in the case of California, hindering or removing those programs can undermine that hard fought progress. Giving our most successful and our most exceptional all the means available to succeed seems like the next most natural, logical step to uplift the race in a Post Jim Crow world. But is this true? Have these efforts materially improved the lives of Black people as a group? Over the course of their lifetime, Black men have a 1 in 3 chance of seeing the inside of a prison. For white men, it is 1 in 17. White and Black people use drugs at similar rates, but Black people are nearly 3 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes. In some American cities, the proportion of African American men with some sort of criminal record can be nearly as high as 80%. One need only look at the evidence to see that Black folks as a group are, in many material ways, no better off now than they were during Jim Crow, and in some ways, are even worse off. Growing up, I never particularly struggled in school. I have a procrastination problem that continues to haunt me, as well as some issues staying focused and organized, but the actual content and material usually came easy to me. My parents, both college professors with PhDs in chemistry, deeply understood and appreciated the value of education, and had the experience and base of knowledge to help guide me and my sister through the academic world. This no doubt contributed to my ease and comfort in these spaces throughout my career. However, more often than I can count, my scholastic achievements were given a troubling moral framing by the other adults in my life. White and Black folks alike contrasted my own success with that of my less-fortunate peers, as an example of hard work and achievement to be emulated and, to use that tired idiom, as a means to “lift oneself up by the bootstraps.” This romanticized self-determination is baked into this country's DNA, the notion that hard work. talent, and determination will insure one's access to life, liberty, and happiness. It's important to note that this isn't merely the domain of conservatives, just look at every liberal's favorite musical Hamilton. This toxic respectability culture, while perhaps admirable in its intent, has the harmful effect of punishing our most vulnerable for circumstances beyond their control. The success of exceptional Black people, in many ways, serves to legitimize the nominatively colorblind yet still racist criminal justice system that incarcerates and controls thousands of Black and Brown people. The system must seem “colorblind” to survive, and as long as a talented and privileged minority can attain visible success, it is much easier to dismiss the incarcerated masses as merely the victims of their own poor choices. The election of Barack Obama and his subsequent presidency illustrate how effectively the desire to uplift an unarguably exceptional Black man can stymie true progress and movement-building. Obama endured a deluge of racist and absurd scrutiny from the right, and as Black people, we stood in solidarity to defend this talented and brilliant man, his beautiful family, and almost more importantly, the promise he represented for our people. The unfortunate flip-side to this solidarity is that during the Obama years, we found ourselves unwilling or unable to criticize and organize against policies that maintained and strengthened our system of Mass Incarceration and Mass Deportation, in fear of undermining the delicate and precarious position of our nation’s first Black president. Black folk’s distaste for critiquing Obama is a completely natural consequence of our experience here in America, and even with the benefit of hindsight, I remain unsure how vociferously I could critique a Black president beset by the kind of racist vitriol Obama and his family endured. However, for every Obama, for every Oprah, for every Beyoncé, there are thousands that — due to this system of mass incarceration and police violence, underfunded schools, environmental racism, what have you — live worse lives than they did during Jim Crow. I don’t think we should abandon affirmative action, nor do I think we should cease working to make our institutions and halls of power more diverse and more welcoming to non-white people. It is impossible to reckon with our society’s racist history without having a diverse set of voices in the conversation. However, it is important to realize that when our activism, our struggle, centers the most privileged of us, we abandon our most vulnerable kinfolk to a second-class, apartheid status. And I don’t use the word “apartheid” hyperbolically or irresponsibly. The millions of Americans living under the control of the criminal justice system live life as second-class citizens, disenfranchised, barred from employment, housing, and education, and marginalized to the fringes of our society. That message was finally beginning to break through after Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, and Freddie Gray. In the 2010s, we saw a new renaissance of race-explicit discourse, scholarship and activism, with the release of The New Jim Crow, Ta-Nehisi Coates’s A Case For Reparations and Between the World and Me, Ava Duvernay’s 13th and When They See Us, Ibram X Kendi’s How to Be an Anti-Racist, among so much more. In the twilight years of his presidency, Obama made it a priority to commute sentences for non-violent drug offenders, commuting more sentences than any other president in history. With this year’s uprisings in response to the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others, anti-racism has finally been pushed into mainstream conversation. These past few months, I’ve seen an energy and consciousness in the way we talk about racism in this country that I haven’t seen before, and a large part of me is hopeful about where the movement can go from here. However, it concerns me how quickly and easily we in the academy seemed to fall back into the same traps of centering the success of exceptional, privileged Black people as a tool to dismantle systemic racism, myself included. It is tempting for us to rely on this same, well-worn toolkit: departmental climate surveys, town halls, implicit-bias training, reevaluating recruitment and retention practices. And make no mistake, all of this work is deeply important, and critical for giving people of color in these spaces a fair shot at making it. However, how can we go further? How do we, as academics, particularly us Black folks of privilege, use our positions to truly be anti-racist, to help not just the exceptonal, but the most vulnerable as well? These are the questions I find myself struggling with as I figure out where I fit in all this, and I’m still searching for answers. As the school year begins anew under the shadow of a grossly mismanaged pandemic, as we think of creative ways to reach students virtually, and as we struggle with how best to carry forward the energy and good intentions inspired by the summer’s uprisings, let’s think boldly about what it means to confront racism in our work as academics. What has our role been in maintaining this system, and how do we combat that? Whether it be helping to improve education access and equity in our home communities, examining the racist and colonialist legacies of our research and collections, reaching out and working with folks who are incarcerated, or advocating and organizing, as individuals or institutions, for a just, equitable and more compassionate politics. I want to continue to support and uplift those Black folks who through talent, determination, hard work, privilege, luck and sheer force of will have made it to the academy. Because at the end of the day, Black people with the aptitude and ability to succeed in the academy are not some apocryphal fluke, and it is not my intention here to imply otherwise. However, I personally consider it a deeply important responsibility to make sure the work that I do can materially help those who have never seen the inside of a university. Peace, Kwasi Folks wanna talk about Black on Black (BoB) crime so let's talk.
Jamal assaulted, robbed, killed, or did whatever to Darrell. Jamal gets arrested, and fair trial or not, he gets convicted. Connor does the same to Darrell. But, they need more facts after the video and multiple eye witnesses have come out. We have to tweet and retweet while simultaneously making nonstop calls and sending multiple emails to state officials. We have to organize peaceful protests. We have to bear the bullets, tear gas, batons, arrests, and job loss when shit turns south because white America needs that action to fuel their narrative. They finally make an arrest after deciding whether it's best to over or under charge Connor. The trial happens, and just as we suspected, Connor walks free or into a cell where he'll be released on parole after only serving a few years. All the while, Connor and his family are supported by multiple gofundmes....many of which are set up by unabashedly racist organizations. BoB crime is a white myth for three reasons: 1. Crime is intraracial. White flight, redlining, and other practices have made sure that the communities we live in will be homogeneous. It is the consensus of criminologists that the majority of crimes happen within a limited radius of a criminal's home. So when your neighbors are 90% Black and you're a criminal, your victim is more than likely gonna be Black. This applies to any race. If BoB crime is such a prevalent issue, why aren't there hundreds of episodes of Forensic Files, Cold Case Files, Criminal Minds, or any other cop/crime show featuring it? Last I checked, those shows are majority white on white crime. But we never hear that phrase, do we? 2. By equating intraracial crime to state sanctioned violence, the white myth proposes that the state can't be held liable for its crimes against us since we do the same to ourselves. It suggests that intraracial crime goes unpunished. But we know that to be untrue. When BoB crime happens, somebody's going to jail.....and often, it's the wrong person or the sentence does not fit the crime. In rare cases, like R. Kelly, the criminal is left to terrorize their community for years. While it still needs reform, "justice" is typically served. However when crime is state sanctioned or interracial with the criminal being white, no form of justice is typically found. 3. In the same vein as point 2, the white myth implies that Black folks aren’t concerned about intraracial crime. With rally cries like “free them til it’s backwards”, it’s understandable why some would assume that…...understandable to racists and those in the sunken place. Name one time you’ve seen a massive, organized protest for the neighborhood crack dealer or the woman hitting licks at the mall….I’ll wait. Now, name a time you’ve heard a Black cop or any Black person say they’re in their occupation because they want to change the system from the inside. Name a time you’ve seen Black community leaders start community centers, after school programs, recreational sports, and mentorship programs. Research shows that providing kids and young adults with safe, healthy, and fun activities and proper education decreases crime. Does this not suggest that we care about crime in our communities? If you have fallen prey to the white myth of BoB, you're a victim of one of the oldest modern day racist strategies: the southern strategy. The southern strategy was a plan enacted to increase white support of the Republican party. By choosing their language carefully, politicians could leave interpretations to the individual. "School segregation is for the safety of the public." Who/what is being protected is left open to interpretation. We know it was the educational and economic advantages of white people, but the language leaves racist whites and fence-sitters feeling good about their support. The racists avoid the mythological violence of "lesser" communities while moderates can maintain their devotion to order rather than justice. To paraphrase Dr. King, a statement can seem well-intentioned while its application is detrimental. Curtailing BoB crime seems like a great idea, but is not the application- crime bills, increased community policing and incarceration, mitigation of white involvement- detrimental? When you fall prey to the rhetoric of BoB crime, you absolve white people of their enactment of and complicity in state sanctioned violence and permit them to continue the damaging practice of regulating Black bodies. Black people will continue to be killed and incarcerated unjustly because you let somebody convince you that Chicago and the local news are proof of its existence despite crime rates in Chicago showing a declining trend since 1994 and knowing that local news networks target crimes committed by Black people. So, if you still believe in Black on Black crime, what are you doing about it? Are you advocating for education reform to increase funding and standards for poor, majority Black kids, or are you moving your kids to "better" neighborhoods to send them to the better public school? Are you organizing programs to teach Black children their history and self-worth, or are you teaching them to conform to whiteness? Do you know the history of Black gangs, or do you still think the Black Panther Party and KKK are one and the same? Are you vetting your judges, sheriffs, district attorney, and other local officials, or are you just voting for the person with a D behind their name? Do you work to decriminalize unjust laws, or do you accept the status quo? Do you actually care about Black lives, or is that simply the image you want to project while remaining amicable with your white friends? You stole us from our Mother
Broke our ties with your till Separated us from each other Brothers and sisters you killed June 19th, our Independence Day Thank God Almighty, we're free at last! 40 and a mule, our due pay 40 and a mule? Not so fast. MLK and a Million Men Fast forward just a lil, and we still in pens Mothers die in hospitals, while their newborns wail Fathers treated like lesser men, while they slave in your jails America let me ask you As you wave your flags You act like we're bulletproof How can I not be mad? So until Target only applies to a store Until you stop ignoring our sound Until the day we don't have to march no more Light that shit up, burn it to the ground I encourage any and all readers that are having any mental issues regarding the current events concerning Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, or George Floyd to please skip ahead to the paragraph that begins with the first sentence that is in bold and underlined.
“Being black is having a good day and then seeing another black person was killed for no reason. Then you have to think about/talk about that all day. Or don’t and numb yourself. It’s a constant emotional war.” – Twitter user @quintabrunson Ahmaud Arbery (25): Lynched near Brunswick, GA while jogging. The Brunswick DA’s Office advised that no arrests be made. The killers were arrested on May 7th. Their cameraman was arrested on May 22nd. The murder took place on February 23rd. Breonna Taylor (26): An EMT, shot eight times in her Louisville, KY apartment by police serving a “no-knock warrant” meant to be served at a “trap-house” more than 10 miles away from the apartment. Her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, was arrested and charged with first-degree assault and attempted murder of an officer for firing at the plain-clothes officers entering their home. At the time of this writing, none of the officers involved have been arrested. Kenneth Walker has since been released. The murder occurred March 13th. George Floyd (46): Arrested for allegedly using a potentially counterfeit bill. Killed by an officer kneeling on his neck for several minutes, despite repeatedly saying, “I can’t breathe.” Floyd was pronounced dead at the hospital. At the time of this writing, only one of the four officers involved has been arrested. The murder took place on May 25th. Ever since Trayvon Martin’s murder, I’ve watched myself die again and again. With each new story I think, “That could’ve just as easily been me. How would I handle that situation? What could they have done to not become a hashtag? Is there anything I could do to avoid the same fate?” Sometimes there are clear answers. The same lines of advice our parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles have drilled into our minds. “Don’t move too quickly.” “Don’t speak to aggressively.” And of course, “Don’t give them a reason.” But now more than ever I wonder what constitutes a “reason”. Jogging is an outdoors activity that many a person takes part in. Especially with gyms being closed due to Covid-19, it’s one of the forms of cardio that can be done without equipment. Simply lace up your shoes of choice and start moving. However, this proved fatal for Ahmaud Arbery. Tell me why he was murdered. Protecting life, liberty, and property is one of the hallmarks of American “freedom”. To this end, it is the Constitutional right of each and every American to own a firearm to protect their home from intruders. Why then was Breonna Taylor killed when officers wrongly invaded her home and her boyfriend fired at the intruders? Tell me why Kenneth Walker was arrested for firing at these intruders. Tell me why the intruders weren’t arrested for killing an innocent woman in the sanctity of her own home when their target was over 10 miles away. Knowingly using counterfeit bills is against the law. When you break the law, you are arrested and await to be tried by a jury of your peers. If found guilty, you will face a punishment deemed to be equal to the severity of your crime. This, in theory, is the American legal system. Explain to me why George Floyd did not have his day in court. Explain why he callously had a knee placed on his neck while he protested he couldn’t breathe. Tell me why none of the nearby officers cared for his pleas for help. Tell me why three of the officers responsible for his death are still free. Since the murder of Trayvon Martin, I’ve watched myself be killed again and again. I’ve watched my mothers die. I’ve seen my fathers die. My brothers and sisters. Even my nieces and nephews. This past month, I’ve watched my family be killed three more times. And the only “reason” I can see, is that they were all black. Tell me how that’s a reason. For those that skipped ahead, begin here. This month I’ve read article after article about how officers haven’t been arrested, how arrests were delayed due to nepotism, how despite video evidence more investigation is needed. This month I’ve read comment thread after comment thread justifying each of these cases. This month, I’m tired. Family, this can get exhausting, especially with the current pandemic and some of your usual outlets potentially being shut off. I forced myself to watch Ahmaud’s video out of some sense that “I need to watch it because I need to know how they operate.” Let me tell you, that was the worst decision I could have made regarding that video. I was not prepared, and it took a toll on my mental. I lost the will to do a lot of the things I loved to do. For days I just replayed the video in my head, stuck in shock by what I had witnessed. Do not, I repeat do not, force yourself to watch a video of someone being beaten, assaulted, or murdered if you aren’t mentally prepared. I’ve seen many a post claiming that we need to watch to understand. Family, I’m here to tell you that we already understand. We know how they operate. We’ve known ever since we stepped foot off those boats. Do not subject yourself to that kind of stress. It is ok to take a break. It is ok to say, “I’m going to sit this one out. I’m not in the mental space to deal with this right now.” I’ve seen comparisons being made to this being like fighting a war. If that’s the case then you NEED to take a break. Soldiers get to visit family during war. They get to take a break. It isn’t constant fighting family, don’t force yourself to keep going. You’ll just burn yourself out. I know this isn’t a deep dive into how to deal with the stress and depression that these instances can cause and that’s because I’m not a therapist. If you have been having serious, shoot even minor, issues with the past events I encourage you to seek out professional help. We as a community seem to have this idea that therapy is a sign of weakness. It’s not. Plain and simple. It’s not. Do what you have to do family. Leave social media for a while. Read a book. Pick that instrument back up. Seek out a therapist or a friend that’s willing to listen. Just do whatever it is you have to do to take care of you. Love y’all and stay safe, Lloyd
On May 25 2020, Memorial Day, a black man named Christian Cooper was walking through New York's Central Park birding. Birding, for the uninitiated, is the, shorter, pithier term for bird-watching, an outdoor past-time enjoyed by many all over the world. Christian might have heard the song of a Chestnut-Sided Warbler, or spotted the brilliant blue plumage of an Indigo Bunting, or watched as a Red-Tailed Hawk soared on thermals over head. Particularly in times like these, he may find a particular sense of peace in his time spent outside, communing with nature, I know that I have. At some point in his walk, he encountered a women and her dog walking in the park, also presumably to enjoy the nature and fresh air. The woman's name was Amy Cooper, a white woman and self professed liberal, and her dog was off-leash, a violation of park policy. A dog allowed off leash can easily disturb and stress out the local birds, potentially harming the wildlife and quite materially spoiling Christian's birding. He therefore asks her to abide by park regulations and leash her dog. When she refused, their argument escalated and Christian began to record the interaction. Amy can be seen in the subsequent recording threatening to call the police, emphasizing Christian's status as an African-American man. As she dials 911, her voice rises in pitch and volume, performing the kind of hysteria that throughout history white women have weaponized against black people. Luckily, in our modern day and age, we have the power of the internet, and once Christian posted the video online, it went viral, and as we've seen before in recent times, millions of strangers on the internet rallied to his defense and vociferously called for there to be immediate consequences for Amy's vile, racist threats.
There are a lot of layers to this incident, whether it be the swiftness and totality of the online response, the culpability of white-liberals in upholding racist power structures, or the public desire for "perfect" victims who conform to white-supremacist ideals of success, value, and innocence. Many other wonderful writers and thinkers have explored these dimensions at length. As a biologist and avid outdoor enthusiast, this incident has resonated deeply with me, and has got me thinking about how race influences how we conceptualize and experience nature. As black folks, we have had to navigate a deluge of cultural messaging about who the outdoors are really for, and for a long time, the world of outdoor recreation has been displayed as a very white world. Whether it be hiking, camping, fishing, hunting, rock-climbing, cycling, kayaking, or birding in Christian's case, the outdoors are a place for the privileged and the white, so goes the cultural orthodoxy. Growing up in South Georgia, I gravitated towards nature and outdoor activities. I chased frogs, lizards and snakes in my backyard as a child, I volunteered for years at my town's local zoo, I even joined the Boy Scouts for the sole reason of having access to more outdoor opportunities. But in all of these contexts, I was either the only black person or one of a very small minority. This is especially concerning, in that in my town, black folks were by no means a minority. During that time, I often felt the need to perform, to constantly prove my right to be there by knowing more than anyone else around me. Don't get me wrong, I devoured every animal fact or tidbit of ecological trivia with gusto, but as often as I found genuine fulfillment in my learning, I'd fall back on this knowledge as a defense mechanism, to prove to myself and to others that I deserved to be in these spaces. Even as an older man and a practicing scientist conducting ecological field work in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, I find myself on the defensive, ready to rattle off my credentials in case someone thinks I don't belong. With the Central Park incident, I can't help but see an ugly manifestation of these racial dynamics, white folks insisting that black folks don't belong in outdoor spaces. Amy Cooper, a white woman, had the idea that Christian Cooper, a black man, was trespassing in nature, that he had no right to tell her how to inhabit that space. She may claim she isn't racist, she may genuinely regret her actions, but when it came down to it, she sought to use her power and privilege to assert her authority to utilize public space in the way SHE saw fit, Christian's rights to utilize that same space in peace be damned. She did this by threatening a black man's freedom and his life. In the Central Park incident, we can see echoes of the fraught history of public spaces in this country. For a long time, I idolized John Muir, the famed California naturalist and conservationist who was instrumental in the formation of our National Park System, and I still greatly appreciate his contributions to the conservationist movement in the US. However, one can't reckon with Muir's legacy without recognizing how his push for the formation of Yosemite National Park came at great cost to local Miwuk and Paiute tribes that have lived in Yosemite Valley for generations (which they called Ahwahnee Valley). Indigenous tribes were forced out of their ancestral homes to make way for the park, often quite violently. As for Muir, he may be well known for his stirring and poetic descriptions of the "pristine" wilderness of the Western United States, but his words for the indigenous inhabitants were less rosy, calling them "most ugly, and some altogether hideous". While Muir's attitude to native people softened over time, and he grew to deeply respect their culture, his actions caused irreparable harm. The pristine image of nature championed by Muir was quite deliberately used to erase indigenous peoples and their claims on the lands they inhabited, instead touting an apocryphal untouched wilderness that was for the enjoyment of white settlers. This mentality is still pervasive in our country, and is a big part of why outdoor recreation has remained so white for so long. This may seem far removed from the incident in Central Park, but we can see how American outdoor culture contains echoes of our imperialist, expansionist, frontier mentality, which in turn echoes into modern ideas of race in the outdoors. Making outdoor spaces safe and welcoming for black folks cannot happen until we reckon with these difficult truths. In a world beset by climate change, habitat destruction, and deadly zoonotic pandemics, now more than ever we need to strengthen our awareness of and connection to the natural world. It's no surprise that these crises are poised to hit our most marginalized communities hardest. Ask any environmental scientist, ecologist, marine biologist etc. why they do what they do, and most of them will relay a deep and abiding love and reverence of the natural world. Making sure that everyone, particularly our most most marginalized are welcome in outdoor spaces is of vital importance. I want to see more people who look like me involved in the kind of work that has brought me so much joy over the years, and that will get us through the next natural crisis. More importantly, I want black folks to be able to watch birds and feel safe while doing it, to simply exist and feel safe doing so. Things are moving positively, there are tons of amazing black educators, scientists, and content creators out there working hard to change preconceptions of who can enjoy the outdoors. Folks like Earyn McGee, Corina Newsome, and Jason Ward are sharing their love of nature, while also sharing their whole selves in the process. Jason's excellent YouTube show, Birds of North America, even features an appearance from Christian Cooper. Please give it a watch, and follow all the dope naturalists I mentioned on Twitter @Afro_Herper, @hood_naturalist, @JasonWardNY. I'll leave you with a quote from Christian, which I think really captures that sense of wonder and joy one can derive from nature, a joy that everyone should be able to experience, not just the privileged. "There are seven things that make birding absolutely spectacular... The seventh one is probably the best one, what I call the unicorn effect. You hear about birds, you see them in a book, and you're like 'Oh wow that's an amazing bird, I'd love to see that someday!', and then one day you're walking through the woods or walking through a swamp or whatever, and suddenly flap-flap-flap..." Stay healthy and stay safe y'all, get outside, and maybe watch some birds while you're at it. You might just find yourself a knew obsession. Kwasi |
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