The media uses our public pain to continuously show the world our capacity to withstand superhuman levels of physical and emotional trauma

I hope that I am never in the situation that so many black families find themselves in. The most recent family is the family of the murdered Botham Jean, who was killed by an off-duty cop in his own home in 2018. She tried to cover up her wrongdoing and is now convicted of murder and sentenced to 10 years of prison. It’s major because most police officers are never convicted of killing innocent black people. Botham’s brother, Brandt Jean, asked to hug the convicted killer, Amber Guyger and exclaimed that he forgave her and wished she didn’t have to serve jail time. The judge, a black woman, Tammy Kemp, also hugged the convicted killer. This happened to a convicted murderer after she was sentenced. This interaction, a judge hugging a black convicted killer, would never happen if the roles were reversed. There would probably be no trial because the black suspected murderer would’ve probably been killed at the scene. We truly have Stockholm Syndrome and it shows. The media uses our public pain to continuously show the world our capacity to withstand superhuman levels of physical and emotional trauma and we keep succumbing by giving them what they want tragedy after tragedy by forgiving groups who are not apologetic, disparage us via text message and kill us in our homes while eating ice cream.

Forgiveness is for yourself but doing so in a way that coddles the offender, absolving them from the opportunity to truly think about the consequences and ramifications of their actions is so dangerous and counterproductive to the equality so many black people claim to desperately want.

Black people are so used to receiving harsher jail sentences when we have made mistakes, we are used to receiving little to no compassion that when justice is actually served in our favor, we virtually apologize to the very people who are intent on destroying us. We are then expected to publicly forgive the people who put us in these situations in the first place. This expectation is something we put on ourselves because of religion and it has been a media narrative as if it is something black victims are supposed to do and this needs to stop.

We deserve to be treated with the same humanity that we too freely extend to those who repeatedly hurt us.

We have suffered through slavery, our children being ripped away from us, families torn apart, lynching, having our towns burned down by white mobs, income inequality, mass incarceration, institutional racism, and the lists go on and on but yet when faced with attacks, abuse and terrorism, we are expected to get over it and move on with little compassion from the masses. Forgiveness is for yourself but doing so in a way that coddles the offender, absolving them from the opportunity to truly think about the consequences and ramifications of their actions is so dangerous and counterproductive to the equality so many black people claim to desperately want. We deserve to be treated with the same humanity that we too freely extend to those who repeatedly hurt us.

Our sorrow and pain need to stop being commodified.

When we declare forgiveness over a white murderer who has taken our loved one, we are telling the world that this person, who has potentially done no internal work on their implicit biases, their bigotry, and/or outright hatred of black and brown people and the continual terrorism that has been inflicted upon us, is absolved of their wrongdoing and that we are disposable. Our forgiveness is pure but how it’s interpreted by those who don’t value us as weak and that is where my issues lie. Not everyone “deserves” us for a lack of a better phrase. I truly grew as a person when I had made mistakes with friends and family and wasn’t readily forgiven. Sometimes, it’s imperative to sit and live with the consequences of your actions especially a mistake as tragic as a killing.

Our public forgiveness sends a message that racist, hate-filled white people are free to walk into a black church, that welcomes all, shoot and kill 9 black people and you will have the opportunity to be taken into custody alive with fast food and a fair trial. This outward, public forgiveness is one of the reasons why this keeps happening. The consequence of killing us isn’t high. The mental and emotional labor seem to constantly fall on us. These types of people know that the punishment will not match the crime and they will have taken out their aggression on a people that will most likely passively extend a loving hand even after experiencing unimaginable immense emotional trauma. We don’t deserve this. No good person deserves this.

…we have to try and resist the urge of placating groups who consistently exhibit little to no remorse for hurting us and are empowered by receiving light sentences whilst destroying us and our families in the process.

Our sorrow and pain need to stop being commodified. We deserve to feel hurt, angry, mad and we need to demand and expect to have a private healing process. What if we were to say that we do not forgive our assailants? How would the narrative change about who we are as people? Why do we care? We are known for being welcoming but our kindness and our forgiveness have continuously being taken for weakness. We get to choose how we go about this process, but we need to internally remove the feeling of obligation that comes with public forgiveness. We do not owe the world anything. We don’t owe anybody anything especially the people who have created atrocities against us. We owe it to ourselves to work towards internal peace and to teach our children how to achieve this and focusing on our family’s overall healing and success, but we do not need to show the perpetrators anything externally.

We are a compassionate people. I am an overly sensitive and forgiving person, but we owe it to ourselves to remove the obligation of showing those who have shown no remorse public support. We need to stop extending our emotional labor on situations and people like the Amber Guyger’s of the world. We deserve private grieving and forgiveness. We deserve to be afforded the spectrum of human emotions everyone else is allowed to exhibit without recourse. What Brandt Jean did was possibly very healing during his personal grieving process and again, his decision to forgive Amber publicly was his choice, but we have to try and resist the urge of placating groups who consistently exhibit little to no remorse for hurting us and are empowered by receiving light sentences whilst destroying us and our families in the process.

The post Black Forgiveness appeared first on Carefully Created Chaos.

It has come up, directly and indirectly, how lucky and fortunate I was to grow up in a stable two-parent household. I have felt and continue to feel incredibly blessed to have had the upbringing that I had and the close relationship that I still have with my parents. I know that my life, was ideal and not entirely the norm, and for that I am grateful but saddened that it wasn’t the norm. Most people say they want to give their kids the life that they didn’t have. Parents want their kids to have a better education, a better home and a healthier life then the life that they may have had but often times those same people belittle and disrespect adults who came from those same backgrounds they want their kids to have. Our struggles and opinions are often invalid to many people who had harsher upbringings.

I’m sad that having two stable parents, who were both active in all of their kids lives, is atypical of the black experience. It’s sad that my pains and struggles get overlooked because I didn’t grow up with dysfunction and abuse. I wish no one grew up with dysfunction and abuse because our communities would be thriving if we truly addressed those systemic issues that so many of us choose to ignore. Within my own extended family there is dysfunction and I’ve seen how that affects everyone around.

As black people, we hold so much value on the negative aspects of our culture. We cling and hold onto the abuse we suffered because it makes us “tougher.” We view fatherlessness or motherlessness as the aspect of our upbringing that helped us to “grow up” and depend on ourselves. I understand that terrible situations can catapult us into success stories. I know drive and determination to get out of unsavory circumstances can be a major motivator for many. I understand that belittling the experience of a “privileged person” is a defense mechanism. I know it’s a way to discredit our human struggles. As a black community we need to dismantle our praise for the unfortunate negative experiences that so many of us are subjugated to while we are growing up. These same circumstances are often shared experiences we use to bond with each other. We bond over the negative because for a whole lot of us, the negative was inherited and clinging to it was the only way to survive. Obviously, not all of us grew up in turmoil but generationally we have all been touched with unfortunate circumstances that have affected our behaviors and emotions.

Having a stable upbringing didn’t absolve me from other traumas and pain. It didn’t absolve me from the very real racism I’ve faced throughout my life. It certainly didn’t make me better than anyone. What having two functional and happy parents did, was make it less likely that I would make detrimental mistakes that may severely impact my future. It helped with making better decisions about dating prospects. It helped me have more confidence in areas in my life that may have been reserved for “certain types” of people but I had the parental support to pursue anything I wanted and to shine all of my black girl magic. It gave me a perspective of humanity that many people who were raised on survival may have missed. It may have taken me years to truly understand this but I truly knew that there was enough money, love, affection, attention in the world for everyone to have if they so desired. What happens to us as children truly does shape the rest of our lives. We have to undo so many things that took place when we were in our formative years. I just hope that those undoing their own traumas see that no child deserves abuse or neglect and it’s never the fault of the kid if this was their norm. Most of my thinking, as an adult, even through pain and unfortunate circumstances, is that there is enough of everything for everyone. If our community truly understood that amplifying the good always attracts more good, we could truly transform our lives and revolutionize our families. My mind was never on scarcity because I rarely went without the basics growing up. We weren’t rich but I never went to bed hungry. I was always told I was loved by both of my parents. I received affection from both parents and I was encouraged by both of my parents. Those basic elements solidified that life could be expansive for me along with everybody else. Often, when you are raised on survival, those basic elements may not be learned until later on once healing has occurred. There is a scarcity mindset with many of us because resources were in fact scarce. When you are raised on love, your outlook and prospects on life are just different.

I wish we would bond with each other over healing past traumas, growing in our emotional, mental intelligence. I wish we would bond with each other to help each of us get physically healthier, grow in ways that we never knew were possible instead of bonding over mental, emotional and physical wounds. I’m sincerely tired of the black folks within and outside of my life battling each other because of fresh and unhealed wounds. While my personal example of how I was treated for being black and having a supportive family is rather benign, there are countless other ways in which black folks do so much damage to each other in the name of spiritual brokenness. We need to be more compassionate to each other. We need each other. Truly helping each other would transform worlds.

A lot of what I talk about in my work is not looking towards the destruction that white supremacy has caused within our community on a continual basis. These well researched and verified facts can be read and will confirm that we have been placed in positions that placed many of us so far behind other races it’s deplorable. My goal as a fiancé, mother, as a friend, as a writer and a creative, is to highlight ways we can make our lives as black people more positive and fulfilling while we are on this earth. And I hope we can see each other as less of a threat and an enemy and extend grace and support to each other. As someone who is doing the best that I can with the cards that have been dealt, I hope to inspire some to do the same and more.

This topic is important to me so I hope to expand upon this free writing topic in future posts.

The post Raised on love not Survival appeared first on Carefully Created Chaos.