Yesterday afternoon I removed my front door from its hinges because I wanted to paint it.
For seven hours, my door was on top of a picnic table, leaving only a screen to separate my family from the outside world, and not one time during that seven hours did I fear for my life. I wasn’t afraid of the police entering my home and shooting me.
#BreonnaTaylor #SandraBland #AtatianaJefferson
I chose to paint my door a bold color. I didn’t want a plain old white door anymore. As I was painting it, I had the thought that no one was going to hate me because my door didn’t look like theirs. In fact, I will probably receive compliments on it. Besides, I can always paint my door white again if the color change doesn’t suit me or if things get too uncomfortable for me in my white door neighborhood.
Kinda like tanning, eh. I will be accepted by my peers if I let my skin get darker from the sun. In fact, I will be considered more attractive with a sun-kissed tan rather than my pale white skin. It’s not unusual for white people to find their skin more attractive when it’s darker, especially in the summer.
#BrownIsBeautiful
My mind went back to the time I traded some concert tickets for some smokes 20-some years ago. I’m just assuming, but I doubt that I would have been thrown on the ground in a chokehold and choked to death by a police officer if I would have been caught.
#EricGarner
I was returning home one night after a band gig in a neighboring state when I was stopped by the police. He had seen my car leave the bar parking lot and decided to pop me for a loud exhaust. I wasn’t drunk, but I was belligerent. I was mad because I knew I wasn’t drunk. It was 3 a.m. and I had an hour drive to get home. When he told me to get out of the car, I asked why. When he called to order a breathalyzer to the scene, I became irate. I remember yelling and laughing at him while saying, “You’re seriously going to make me take a #%$@& breathalyzer?” He didn’t shoot me. He didn’t arrest me. In fact, he cancelled the call while I sat on the trunk of my car, refusing to do the sobriety test, and let me go home without so much as a ticket.
#PhilandoCastile
Perhaps my memories of these incidents were milling around because there was a protest/demonstration here in my West Virginia city yesterday afternoon in response to the killing of George Floyd. I knew a lot of people who were going, and most of whom I knew were white. As one friend said to me, “I have to do something and don’t know what else to do.” I was proud of my white friends who took to the streets because it’s white people’s responsibility to break down systemic racism. It’s our responsibility to begin the conversations about the discrepancies between white and black arrests, school suspensions, and sentencing within the criminal justice system, but, in order to begin the conversations, we first have to realize that systemic racism exists in all of our systems.
I couldn’t go to the protest yesterday evening because I had taken down my door so I could paint it. I don’t have any friends here in my new neighborhood. Heck, I don’t even know my neighbors’ names, so who would have helped me to keep my family and home safe if I would have left without a door on my house? I’m not from here. I don’t have family here. My family doesn’t look like the rest of the families here. But yet, I was perfectly safe in my white house with no door.
