Diagnosis: Brown Skin

This morning I woke up to my 11-month-old baby letting out little whimpers for milk, and I thanked God that his only need was milk. As I cradled him gently back to sleep, my mind projected in to the future to consider how I may need to comfort him 5 years from now, 10 years from now. I thought of how terrified I’ll feel when he’s a teenager, and I’ll pray that he remembers what his dad and I taught him: “Look the officer in the eye, son. Keep your hands where he can see them. Call him ‘sir’ and whatever you do, do not get angry. I don’t care if you didn’t do anything. Promise me you won’t get angry. And call me, as soon as you have the opportunity. Call me immediately, if you can. Remember, do not get angry.” My heart can already feel the strain of the pleading, the stress of the worry. Just as patients feel the fear of death when a doctor looks at them and says, “cancer,” so do mothers who have brown babies when they see another death, another scandal, another crisis.  Let’s simply call it- diagnosis: brown skin.

I was privy enough to hear 20 years of hearing racist comments to back my assertions, for those who want to spit, “Race baiter!” Yes, before anyone ever saw me befriend a brown person, I heard the white people around me talk in hushed whispers and sometimes enraged spats about the n*ggers- for no reason other than… brown skin. I also read the news, and listen to my brown friends who tell me, we have a problem. There is no denying that when we see brown babies dying in police custody for refusing to remove a sweatshirt, or being shot within 3 seconds of a policeman seeing a toy gun, or drinking poison in the water flowing from the faucets of their own homes, we have a race issues. Brown skin has become a terminal disease in which the research for the cure is just now being talked about, revealed.

While, today, racial slurs might not be dropped as freely, I still hear folks who might mean well but will not listen, saying things that show they are (unconsciously?) racist. These are phrases like, “Why can’t they just work hard like I did,” or “Do you have to pull the race card,” or “I’m colorblind. I was raised to see no difference.” It is comfortable to stay in denial, and there is no work required. Essentially, what I hear when people say these things to me are, “I’m comfortable with my blinders on and do not want to put effort in to changing, or sit with the pain of your experience.” Diagnosis: brown skin.

Writing usually flows so naturally for me, but I just do not know what to say or how to conclude this piece. With each sentence, I try to play chess and type something that’s poignant enough to be felt, objective enough to be received, and intellectual enough to be respected. These tools that I have are a direct result of my education, which I received as a direct result of my privilege. I, a white woman, could freely learn without worry or fear of being hated, being discriminated against, being inappropriately targeted for nothing other than, brown skin. Yet no matter whether the activists try to appeal to heart, to head, or to logic, we are still shut down. We become sponges for the denial and disgust that people spew when we say, “We have a (race) problem, and we need help.” I like to ask people who project their fear on me, as an underlying proof that there is no gain from manipulation, “What do I have to gain?”

And the answer to that, in this case, is Safety. It’s Equality. Opportunity. Justice. Freedom. It’s knowing that my brown son can walk into a school and be seen as a boy, instead of a brown boy. It’s trusting that if he makes a mistake, he will be treated fairly. It’s refraining from role playing how to respond if a cop pulls him over. It’s not needing to wipe away tears from his eyes as I explain, “Honey, it’s not your fault,” before launching into a speech about where racism was born and how it’s thrived in history and in our society. It’s not waking up and seeing government negligence in African American communities, reading about another young life taken because of abuse of power, not having to defend saying “black lives matter” when an “all lives matter” thread goes viral. What we have to gain, is the cure to diagnosis: brown skin. And that is, a chance to truly, freely live.

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