what i've been thinking about

Hang on to the world as it spins around / Just don't let the spin get you down / Things are moving fast / Hold on tight and you will last

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I’m thinking about my dad, 8 years-old on the school bus, getting rocks thrown at him by white teenagers in South Carolina.

I’m thinking about how, at 74 years-old, my dad hates South Carolina to this day.

I’m thinking about the woman in Starbucks this morning speaking frantically into the phone, “Do you still have your green card? What are you gonna do when you get out?”

I’m thinking about the plane crash over the Potomac, the 67 people who perished. How it feels not only like the death of 67 people but the death of all of us.

I’m thinking about this scene from Ava DuVernay’s Origin: a little Black boy wanting to swim with his white teammates is told he can’t unless they all get out. I’m thinking about the white kids climbing out of the pool, the Black boy lowering himself into it. The agonizing length of this scene, the painful logistics, the hushed sound of him alone in the water, the joy of swimming, lost, foreclosed to him. Robbed. The dozens of eyes watching him wade in silence.

I’m thinking about what Kiese Laymon wrote on Instagram: “They bruise us. They buy us. That is why we are so tired. That is why we are awakened. We are fighting an enemy we’ve shown exquisite grace, an enemy we’ve tried to educate, coddle, and outrun, an enemy that never tires of killing itself, just so it can watch us die.”

I’m thinking about how Barbie was nominated for eight Oscars and Origin was nominated for zero.

I’m thinking about this one story my mom tells about when, as a young woman, a white man cut in front of her in line. How my grandfather grabbed him by the collar and shook him: “Do you not see her right there?!”

I’m thinking about how angry he was.

I’m thinking about all those conversations of reckoning in newsrooms the months after George Floyd’s murder.

I’m thinking about how, five years later, newsrooms are singing a different tune.

I’m thinking about how, five years later, corporations are singing along.

I’m thinking about all the white feminists clamoring for Margot Robbie, for Greta Gerwig, to be recognized by the Academy.

I’m thinking about Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor handing out fliers for Origin outside an A.M.C theater in Los Angeles.

I’m thinking about this line from an essay about the 14th Street bridge plane crash forty years ago, about the man who drowned in order to save his seatmates:

“…we ought to come again to the conclusion that people are powerless in the world. In reality, we believe the reverse, and it takes the act of the man in the water to remind us of our true feelings in this matter. It is not to say that everyone would have acted as he did…Yet whatever moved these men to challenge death on behalf of their fellows is not peculiar to them. Everyone feels the possibility in himself. That is the abiding wonder of the story. That is why we would not let go of it.”

I’m thinking about Ava DuVernay choosing to make Origin outside the big studio system because she wanted it released before the election.

I’m thinking about 1913. About the thousands of Black civil servants President Woodrow Wilson confined to corners, forced behind screens, away from their white colleagues. How he fired 15 out of 17 Black supervisors. How the federal government began requiring photographs with job applications shortly thereafter.

"Should I become President of the United States, they may count upon me for absolute fair dealing for everything by which I could assist in advancing their interests of the race.” These are words Wilson said during his campaign.

I’m thinking about the great-grandchildren of those Black civil servants.

I’m thinking about how sometimes words are just words even though they’re all I have.

I’m thinking about this one story my mom tells about how, as a child, she loved the drive home to D.C from her grandma’s house in Chattanooga, Tennessee in the summers. How her parents would wake her and her brothers late at night, how they’d drive for hours and hours.

I’m thinking about how my mom learned the reason they left Tennessee late at night, drove for hours and hours, was because there was nowhere they could stop.

I’m thinking about that Donny Hathaway song she loves, “Someday We’ll All Be Free.”

I’m thinking about all the hundreds of thousands of people throughout this country’s history who believed at one time or another that Someday was soon.

I’m thinking about how it wasn’t.

I’m thinking about all the people letting people swim alone.

I’m thinking about all the people watching others drown.