Stop Using George Floyd’s Name To Say You Care About Black People
Updates + the non-Black insistence on unaliving us.
Yoyoyo,
KB here (again). It’s been a MONTH, and I’m happy to be emailing you all finally! Below are a couple KB updates:
MY DEBUT POETRY BOOK IS OUT!!!! Purchase a copy if you haven’t already here.
I got three poems in American Poetry Review! Read all 3 here or here.
I’m on tour! Catch me in conversation with Sarah Nnena Loveth Nwafor on Black queer poetics this week here. It’s virtual so anybody can (and should) pull up!
Check out all my other tour stops (and RSVP for them) here.
I’ve been doing such BEAUTIFUL interviews with the likes of Chicago Review of Books, Sightlines Magazine, and more. Check out all my recent convos and reviews here.
Please ask your local public library, bookstore, university, college, book club, or political education group to pleaseplease carry my book. It would mean the world to me!!! ISBN is ISBN is 978-1-952224-13-3, and full name is “How To Identify Yourself With a Wound”. Let's get it poppin baby!!!!!
I think that’s it for today. Now I present to you: my essay, that is also a rant, about some things I’ve been seeing and experiencing. Content warning for Black death, anti-Blackness, and police brutality.
***
In June 2020, I (among other Black people) was witness to another anti-Black brutality at the hands of police. The video of George Floyd — a Black man murdered by police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis, Minnesota — hit social media like a timebomb and all of a sudden there were protests, riots, dollars flung to nonprofits, and legislative pushes. In June 2020, America showed us — like they did with Breonna Taylor, Mike Brown, Sandra Bland, Trayvon Martin, and (most recently) Daunte Wright — that they are more invested in the upholding of police departments and policing as a practice of control/terror than they are in Black lives.
I (among other Black people) have been subject to conversations that invoke the name of that Black man.
“After the George Floyd murder—”
“After summer 2020—”
“During the BIPOC uprisings—”
And the (mostly revisionist) (most masturbatory) sentence goes on. Often after that qualifier, we are left with:
“We’ve changed company policy—”
“I was an ally—”
“We’ve done some restructuring—”
Among other fables and false equivalencies. I’ve heard “after June 2020” and George Floyd’s name more times that I want to count. It’s all bizarre as hell to me.
In current times, the untimely demise of a father/brother/friend/foe is used as a precursor to a pat on the back, or to introduce a conversation about race (often muddied with “BIPOC”), or for non-Blacks to relate to Black people more. I’ve seen and heard all of these scenarios. I wish that I was lying when I say that it hurts me, but it does, seeing how police brutality is not a new issue. This wasn’t an awakening or a reckoning of anything for Black people. Often, people are invoking this man for reasons that don’t include Black life.
***
I can’t continue this essay without addressing the spectacle of it all. Many people (including Nancy Pelosi) think that Black death, and life, exists for their own entertainment. Disgust is a form of amusement, just like pleasure and enjoyment of music. Progressively — and especially over the past decade — hip hop and other things that have historically been Black have skyrocketed into the mainstream due to the non-Black gaze. With that comes pain, and erasure of Black people. With that, also comes the whitening of tragedies like that of the father/brother/friend/foe that was slain in broad daylight by Derek Chauvin.
Anytime Floyd has come up in conversation, it’s always been misplaced.
***
My June 2020 was traumatizing, to say the least. mostly because of the gore; Black death is not a thing I am desensitized to, so it is deeply disturbing to me. I was also traumatized because my body knew the history of what police brutality in America was and is and will be.
Non-Blacks get outraged. They are always surprised that Black people go through this. They perform allyship (mostly in the form of showing up to protests for 1-2 months and social media posts), tell themselves they’ve done the work, burden the Black friends they have with their non-Black feelings, and call for change (but only when other people do as well). They don’t feel safe being the Only One who cares about a Black thing, though Black folk are the Only Ones who care about Black things all the other time of the year. They keep their cushiony jobs — as the tastemakers of culture and the CEO’s of non-Black companies. They spend a night in jail. They only focus on policy change. Once the government says “no”, they move on with their lives. It happens every time a Black death goes viral.
This time, though, it was especially traumatizing.
All of a sudden, white people in arm's-length proximity were venmoing me $20. They were asking if I was okay (but only once, and they couldn’t handle the truth). They were sending out newsletters about “communities of color” (since it’s still taboo to say Black). They were centering their feelings. It was All lives mattering the situation but with BLM hashtags. By July, I just wanted non-Blacks to move on.
And they did, like they always do, but not without using the traumatizing Black people. In conversation, to this day, they use the man that was slain name specifically before a sentence about [insert something that actually did nothing for Black people]. Everytime it happens, I cringe. I hope that one day non-Blacks can be honest.
Are you bringing him up because you’re assuming you have a non-Black audience? Are you bringing him up to say how much has “changed” (in your world)? Are you bringing him up because talking about race NEEDS a qualifier, a life-changing event, to be valid? Please, be honest.
You don’t have to prove yourself to me (or anyone for that matter), but you do have to stop retraumatizing Black people. It doesn’t earn you street cred, or help me understand why your company has Juneteenth off now. At best, it tells me that Black death and police brutality didn’t matter to you before June 2020. And you’re entitled to that truth, but I’m not sure why I need to know it.
If you want to be an ally to me (and other Black people), start with resigning from your leadership positions. Or giving substantial amounts of dough (thousands and hundreds, not tens) regularly. Or not waiting on the government to create change; we can treat each other better in so many ways everyday. Or continuing to press legislators for change, and not resigning to “we can’t do anything” so quickly. I can’t tell you how many liberal and leftist white people I’ve come across that have a “that’s just how it is” attitude. Organizing is important, AND almost every huge change for Black folks — integration, freeing slaves, and more — has been signed off by a white person. Whites and non-Blacks have the best shot at changing policy, actually! Get even some of the grit that Black folks are expected to have after every tragedy, why don’t you.
Maybe it’s the culture of theory over practice that we live in right now. Maybe it's “wanting to be a good person” without being a good person. Maybe it’s that none of us can escape our context — white-centric, white supremacist states that value non-Black feelings over Black life over and over again. Whatever it is, I can’t take it.
***
I’m happy that non-Blacks can, due to social media and cell phones, have a peek into what Black people go through. I’m happy that a sliver of non-Black people still care. I’m happy, even, that Black death moves them into action, but it shouldn’t take that. Black people suffer at the hands of cops, bosses, bigots, and white leftists everyday. Some of that suffering — reinvoking Black death specifically — is avoidable, if non-Black folk took a minute to question themselves. I am alive enough to tell you: Black death should not be a conversation-starter. It’s crass, in poor taste, unnecessary for the living Black people in your lives to relive. Everytime his name is invoked, I am reminded of the trauma of that time. Black people don’t deserve that, and I don’t deserve to have to remind you that we exist — not in theory, but for real — and your actions have to match your theory. Don’t be an “ally” that also does harm.
Living and dead Black folks deserve better. I don’t want to be seen only in my death, and for my unaliving to be continuously in conversation. Black people are alive, in these meetings and passerby convos when you invoke George Floyd’s name. For our sake, and for the sake of history not needing to repeat itself, only invoke his name when you are talking about his joy, his life, and his humanity outside of Derek Chauvin and every cop’s sin. And use trigger warnings. This Black person would appreciate it.
***
Let me know what you think of this one. I appreciate you!
Love, peace, and chicken grease,
KB