SKIN
SAMANTHA SARAH ANNE HAS ENTERED THE CHAT…
I never watched the George Floyd murder. Instinctually, though, I almost immediately knew it was different from all the headlines we’d seen till then featuring the police-state-sanctioned murder of a defenseless and unarmed Black man.
Headlines we’d buried our heads in the sand over. Stories too painful to live past our collectively-agreed 72 hours of shock, grief, outcry, recrimination, protest and, ultimately, dismissal.
I didn’t watch it. I wouldn’t watch it. I still haven’t. And I won’t.
I’m a Gen X’er. I’ve seen it. I don’t need the details of that particular horror to live alongside so many others for which I still grieve.
Mr. Floyd’s murder, unfortunately, was not new. We’d all seen it before. But something was true this time that wasn’t true all the other times before that made everything about ‘this time’ extraordinary.
We were in a pandemic.
COVID 😷😷 RULES - MARCH 2020
We had never been sequestered in our homes for months before - terrified of being breathed and coughed on by strangers or loved ones. The global community, especially those of us in first world countries, had never been unable to go outside to get basics like food or baby formula.
We had never been force-fed fear 24/7 for months. The global psyche had never been singularly attuned to a single force before. In this case: Stillness.
Yes, everything about ‘this one’ was different.
We were still. We had been still. And we were awake to levels of truth about ourselves, our lives, our families, our relationships, our purpose and the world around us in a way few in our generation had previously experienced.
D-NICE SAVING OUR LIIIIVES 😅❤️🔥🔥- MARCH 2020
We were a captive audience that day in late May 2020 when Mr. Floyd and Officer Chauvin’s lives intersected for the last time. It had not been more than a couple of days since the first communities started lifting their stay-at-home orders. Most of us around the planet were still at home.
Not these men. They were outside for the first time in months. At least, Mr. Floyd was.
The rest of us were still scrolling. Remember? Most of us, locked in homes with walls that had shrunk what seemed like decades before. Others of us, strategizing toilet paper raids and N95 procurements between breaks in homemade mask-making and unemployment-filing.
All of us, afraid to breathe.
When all those people whipped out their phones, we were there. We could not look away. Not again. Not this time. And if I’m honest, that’s what really surprised and terrified me - the global outcry and what came after.
THREE WORDS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD…💨✊🏾✊🏼✊🏻
This seen-ness of Black people worldwide. This sudden visibility as the legacies of the African diaspora rose up in Western and Eastern cultures to attest to the truth that this suffocation was more than literal and broader than a few men.
The veils were ripped away and, suddenly, the shadows of in-betweenness were no more. I, personally, could no longer live and hide in those shadows.
And I hadn’t even known I was doing that.
S’BLENDED
On that same tragic May 25th that George Floyd died, I was living in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico - a country, in my opinion, that waited way too long to acknowledge the likely threat we had been witnessing since March.
Spring Break had just finally petered out after a highly-publicized Covid outbreak made for bad PR. The president of Mexico, AMLO, had recently about-faced on a mini-tour of the country kissing babies and preaching a gospel of ‘Ignore those phony reports… Viva la vida! Viva la Mexico!’. Coincidentally, right around the time he met and convened with G20 Summit leaders on the outlook for the worsening pandemic and the global shutdown that was only just taking shape.
LAST B’FAST BEFORE THE 🌎 CLOSED - MARCH 16, 2020
I had lived in Cabo for 2 1/2 years by that time. One of a veeerrry few Black faces around there. One of even fewer who was also female.
I was an anomaly during my residency especially being a transplanted local. I think it’s gotten more popular with the brethren and sisteren since 😉 Most of the real locals and fellow transplants kind of ignored me. Some were more than mildly curious WTH I was doing living there.
The rest kind of just relegated me to over there-ness. Which was fine by me.
PENELOPE & ME ~ ALONE TOGETHER 🌊 😴 🐾
You see, I preferred the fringes. It suited me and was safer - especially, I reasoned, as a solo Black woman traveler - to live on the edges of being a curiosity but just outside of context enough to be ignored.
My fellow salespeople at the resort at which I briefly worked didn’t know what to make of me and ultimately gave me the moniker ‘Azucar Morena’. Again, fine by me lol! Add that to the bag of nicknames I hold.
It was what I knew. It was what I had done my whole life. Pivot to the ‘you’re different’ foot and play to that. It’s a strength. It’s your ace in the hole. Use your smarts to nail those assignments - in school, in corporate America, in life - and be the ‘different’ one.
Be one of the only faces like yours at the boardroom tables and never really question it. For decades. Be one of (if not) the only people that look like you who sits in AP Honors classes throughout matriculation. And blend.
Some faves - amigas, amigos y clientes! Grateful for every encounter. My world would be less colorful without you 🫶🏽🇲🇽🇨🇦🇺🇸
Blend what? Blend out. For decades.
Homogenize. Dissimilate. Be different from those others.
And if you’re different enough, consistently enough, you got to be the one that got through. You got to be the one who met the hiring quota.
You got to be the one that just barely got across the line drawn and won through innumerable legal challenges and lives lost. Battles that raged solely to coax and then force ‘civilized’ societies to cultivate a godly and basic love and equity toward all.
MY MOM INSISTED I LET HER TAKE THIS PIC 🤦🏽♀️ AUGUST 2015
If you were one of the few who made it through, “they” made sure you never forgot that you needed to prove why you were there and another one wasn’t. It was a privilege. And it was an insult.
An insult to other candidates that looked like you but would never stand a chance. An insult to entire generations. A closed door to an entire people. Because there could be only one.
But sometimes all you need is one.
Let’s run that back.
AND A’1, 2, 3, 4…
If you were one of the few who made it through, you got to be the earnest of a firstfruit harvest. A harvest that was sown in subtlety and wisdom. A harvest no one told you was coming due through you.
You got to be the stealth weapon in the hand of the Lord as He repeated what He did on the cross: hid life where the enemy never thought to look for it - in death. In this case, the death of the aspirations of everyone else that looked like you, went for the same opportunity or another, and would never see an open door. Because there could be only one.
Yeah… He hid life in there. In you.
3 GUESSES WHO… BUT I THINK YOU’LL ONLY NEED ONE 🥰
You got to be the one in the room when there had only been one (or none) before you. You’re who our ancestors prayed you’d be. You’re the thing our elders sacrificed for. You’re the foot in the door. You’re The Token.
The Token??! What a dirty word.
Only if you don’t love your skin. Only if you don’t know your history. Like me.
That was a dirty word to me too until right this moment. Right up to these words hitting this page. I never saw it any other way than disgraceful. But now I hear it differently.
It’s a term of victory. It’s a term of overcoming. It’s a term of resilience.
The Token.
REPPING @ BLUE NOTE NAPA MUSIC FEST - JULY 2022 🎶🎸
It’s a term of validation to those who have come before. And it’s intended to be a term of intention, understanding, motivation, and legacy to those who have come after.
The thing is, tokens aren’t meant to dwell alone. I mean… It took more than two tokens to ride most subways before we switched to those pass thingies.
Tokens are meant to come together and provide access to s/he who is attached to them. Access to otherwise inaccessible rooms. Access, oftentimes, to faster rates of speed and faster modes of transport-ation.
But to do that - if we are ever able to do that - we must get reeeeeal honest and call out some elephants shoved in the corners of a lot of rooms.
SURVIVAL 101
You see, all of us Tokens have necessarily developed a mechanism for maneuvering through our worlds and it is quite succinct: Stay away from each other.
Whether consciously or unconsciously, we make sure to never spend much time (if any) connecting, talking, or engaging in any other form of association with one another. Nothing that would make it seem like we might have violated the terms of the “Not like other Black people“ survival certificate we each keep close.
Gold filigreed scrolls passed down through generations of enslaved and freed people intent on saving what children they could and any possibility of a future they might have. Broken heirlooms of a crucible-forged truth gestated in a demonic and systemic horrorscape: Stay apart. Don’t rock the boat. Survive.
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I have paid witness to mirrored and myriad variations of this dance of tacit understanding in myself and as it spills out into everyday life around me. But nowhere is it more visible and obvious as when I am traveling. Particularly outside the United States. Specifically, through European countries.
In my experience - and I’ve been traveling since I was nine (even if I am 35 again as of this past birthday 🙃 that’s still a few decades) - by and large, Black people don’t and won’t greet each other in open white spaces. Except maybe Amsterdam. It is uncanny. I am/am not surprised by it every time.
Imagine it: You’re in a foreign country alone. You’re friendly and chatty but almost every person you lock eyes with looks like they want to rip your throat out at worst. At best, you’re simply invisible. Like…literally not there.
Snapchatting through Greece in 2017 🇬🇷 🎥🎥
You round a corner on your way to see a famous cathedral or catch a train to your next city or grab a late lunch/early dinner near some legendary river and, for say the 27th day in a row and tenth time that day, you encounter the next sea of people who look nothing like you. And the hatred. And the invisibility.
Just then, you spot something different; a blip in the matrix. Is that someone who looks something like me? It is!! Surely they’ll be as happy to see me as I am to see them!
With just one look - one knowing blink or nod that says ‘I see you and I see you see me. You’re doing good being out here despite…all…this. How am I doing? I’m good too?? Whew! Thanks, Sis. Carry on 👊🏽’ - reassurance is given and a sense of equilibrium is temporarily restored.
MET THESE GENEROUS BEAUTIES AS I SOLO-WANDERED OIA (pron: EE-AHH) - GREECE - MAY 2017 🇬🇷🤎
You know what actually happens the vast majority of the time? The people of color I have run into out in the world go out of their way to make sure not to make any eye contact nor speak. Certainly no friendly greetings. Definitely no conversation.
It’s a little better since George Floyd’s galvanizing, cold-water-in-the-face sacrifice. A little.
Still, we all know. All of us out here ‘being different’. All us Tokens. Don’t assemble. Don’t be like those others. Stay alone. Stay…safe?
But if safety be found in numbers, how then can we be safe if we are not safe together?
MAAAAAMA!!
On January 7, 2023, Tyre Nichols - a 29 year old father, skater, and FedEx employee - was murdered by beating and consensual neglect in Tennessee by five Memphis police officers and an assortment of cohorts. At a traffic stop. I couldn’t even look at it.
As I said, I was already sick at hearing of yet another Black man murdered at the hands of ‘law enforcement’. And, as I think is probably obvious, I’m not a fan of deliberate soul-scarring. Especially when, historically and typically, no one is ever held accountable.
I can’t take that ride every time. That’s just me.
But then I caught a story development that said arrests had been made and people were in jail. I clicked on the photo to see the five men that had warranted Memphis police to summarily fire, charge and incarcerate them all – so swiftly. More swiftly than I’d ever heard of before. And the day before body cam footage was released. I said to myself “Ohhh it must be bad…“
Still, I had to look. I had to see the undisputed villains that had catalyzed such a rapid response and swift justice from this policing body. I clicked on the headline and through the gallery until – my heart stopped.
To see that it was five Black men - men who looked like the countless family and friends I also call family - uncles, besties and brothers that I’ve known my whole life – hurt me in a way for which I doubt I will ever truly find words. But I know every Black person, Tokened or otherwise, knows what I’m talking about.
A wound with no sound.
A shattered harmony within our individual souls where the resonance of the Black collective lives and once cradled Tyre’s song.
A few days after letting my soul grapple with the enormities that this new tragedy unveiled, something scary and really profound occurred to me.
To know that this young man was less than a mile from his mother’s home, screaming for her - screaming the first name he ever called her - while being savagely beaten then photographed by men that looked just like himself and probably all the Black men he’d ever known in his life…..
Family. Friends. Uncles.
This was a seminal moment. All six of the men in this tableau had been indoctrinated - at various times and by various people; inclusive of teachers, employers, shopkeepers, random strangers, the legal system, etc. - to hate Black. To think it as less than. To think it as nothing.
‘OK I got that but how did THAT idea translate into this brutality?’ I wondered.
My mind proffered a compelling and satisfying argument: ‘Because despite Tyre looking like them, these five did not see that Tyre was them.’
That made sense. That felt right. That felt a little bett-
‘The horrifying thing,’ my heart quietly interrupted, “is that they did. They did see that he was them.’
“A wound with no sound.
A shattered harmony...”
These five police officers all hated what they saw because they had been taught to hate what Black was. What it signified in their worlds.
Though they knew they couldn’t, they had, nonetheless, been taught to find a way to be something other than it. Not like those other Black people. Different. Better. Acceptable. Promotable. Worthy.
They killed him because 400 years of slavery and the 158 years of oppression and intrinsic attitudes of supremacy that have followed since its abolishment in the United States, specifically, has seeped into our consciences. They have taught most of us, throughout too many ages, that Black deserves to be ruthlessly beaten, overworked, murdered, stolen and stolen from, unloved, controlled, exploited. Erased.
THROUGH OUR BREATH, STILL THEY LIVE - #SAYTHEIRNAMES
So they erased him.
And in so doing, and by their agreement, patently declared that all those who carry such notions are right. And that they - these Memphis five - are, in fact, different.
All the while, knowing. And knowing that those who think this way know that they are not and never will be… Different.
That’s what their incarceration is teaching them right now. Something they already knew in their hearts but which they tried so hard to disprove in their lives. Something to which we all should pay attention.
I bet they received congratulations from their peers that they gratefully accepted for those three days before Tyre died. I bet they slept good those first three nights before he took his last breath and their lives changed forever.
I bet they felt righteous. Exorcised. Washed.
Washed again in their blue waters that reinforced the song all Tokens sing quietly in the recesses of their hearts: “I’m different. Yes I’m different. I’m special. I guess I’m special. Not like them. Not like them. I’m different. Yes I’m different.”
SOUTHERN COMFORT
The places that Tyre’s murder at the hands of his brothers hit me were manifold. It hurt so badly, I could hardly breathe at times. I tried to lift my thoughts. I tried to step back. Take a few beats.
Then I discovered that three of the five men now serving prison sentences - in jails to which they sent others including those who look just like them - are part of one of the oldest, most prestigious, most highly recognized, most violent Black fraternities on the block. And all the life left me again.
Im’a just say this and leave it at that: Let’s be real. Those of us who pledged a Black sorority/fraternity know that Omega Psi Phi has its reputation for a reason. There’s a reason why several of the officers were Que Dawgs. ‘Nuff said. Zee Phi!
But they aren’t the only ones.
BESTIES, FRAT & SORORS 💙💙 THE CREW BACK IN THE DAY
When I pledged Zeta Phi Beta sorority at Cal State LA – arguably a school with a small Black population - it was widely known that getting your ass kicked to various degrees of woundedness (a.k.a. hazing) was a rite of passage to become a member of one of the four Black fraternities on campus. Sometimes not so bad. Sometimes really bad. Like really really bad. Especially if there was a frat brother visiting from down South where the fraternities originated.
The deep south. Old slavery south. It always got worse if one of those came to town.
Why, you ask?
Because if you didn’t get a report sent back to the old houses that your criteria for admission into the illustrious fraternity was up to par (i.e., the quality of man you were producing as proven by how much pain and destruction the pledges could take, absorb, recover from, and absolve), the entire national organization’s version of the coconut wireless would deem you and your chapter as weak. Then would come the rumors.
Then would come the disrespect.
Until you proved them different.
A LIL’ CALI BLACK GREEK LIFE. CAN U SPOT ME? 📌
𝜡ɸ𝜝 BABY!! 🌀🌀 #WEHADFUN
And how do you prove them different? Usually, by inviting one or a few of those Southern brothers to come for a visit during pledge season to “teach” that chapter’s members how admission practices should really be executed on potential recruits. Thus, redeeming their reputation. Thus, perpetuating the cycle.
It’s multi-generational. It’s wholly unnatural. It’s what was taught to us by men and women who didn’t love our skin. It’s sickening.
And it’s changing. I hope.
I hope.
MIRROR MIRROR
I can’t lie. As I pressed into my spirit and into my quiet time with the Spirit of the Lord about Tyre and the associations it brought up for me, I realized that so many of us are equally having a terrible time processing the complexities and nuances of this kind of pain. And I again felt hopeless.
These repeated killings and murders, this mind-numbing destruction and expulsion of souls and spirits - having come into this life with no other crime beyond occupying darker colored skin - was already too much. But this. This was hitting me very differently. This was hitting something unique.
Yes we’ve seen Black men killed by police officers. Yes we’ve seen Black men killed by other Black men. But what we haven’t seen on display was us. You. Me.
What we haven’t seen is this public of a showing of our frequent and usually lightly-detected murder-suicide pacts with which #WeToo have been indoctrinated.
The ways in which we sabotage and murder the destinies that we were sent here into this life to fulfill. The ways we do likewise to other brown-skinned light-bearers we see around us because of shackled ideas fed to us by people who did not love our skin.
🚫 CANDLE BLOWER-OUTERS!! ~ Brene Brown’s “Atlas of the Heart” ❤️🩹❤️🩹
The ways we separate ourselves in a vain notion of safety when safety can only be found in Unity. I’m going to say that again: Safety can only be found in UNITY.
As I said, I went into my quiet time with God feeling pretty helpless and hopeless. And then I heard something:
All this ripping and tearing - all of this excavated and surfacing agony - is for healing.
I ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️ DR. ANITA!!!
All of these tragedies and stories – told and untold – were coming up now because God has initiated healing from unspeakable pain for us. Us. This generation and our children. And their children.
And their children…
Brother Floyd gave his life that day to thrust us all into the light. Brother Tyre gave his to draw us closer to the mirror.
🎶 I’M STARTING WITH THE WO/MAN IN THE MIRROR 🎶
As hard as it is to have these places touched within ourselves, it is inescapable. Because movement has come. Movement to parts that haven’t been touched in generations. Movement many of us Tokens have never felt before.
But it’s time to feel it. It’s time to let that movement move us.
It hurts. And that’s good.
The pain, though painful, is necessary.
Because the pain proves there’s still life.
The pain proves we’re not dead.
“All this ripping and tearing - all of this excavated and surfacing agony - is for healing. ”
