I am going to write. I have deadlines to make. I am not going to think about #SandraBland. I am not going to think about how a 28-year-old African American woman left her suburban Chicago home to start a new job in Texas and was found hanging in a jail cell a few days later. I am not going to think about how someone who openly spoke against police violence was stopped for a routine traffic violation and was incarcerated. I am not going to think about how her death was proclaimed to be a suicide before an autopsy could have possibly been done. I am not going to think about how my 20 years of clinical experience is telling me that this doesn’t add up.
I am going to write. I am not going to think about how I just emailed one of my dearest friends and told her that we need to find a nice spot midway between Memphis and Atlanta to get together at least twice a year. I am not going to think about how terrified I am to drive alone on southern highways. I am not going to think about how I automatically scan homes and cars for Confederate flags. I am not going to think about the panic induced just last week when I realized my African American husband had entered a country store full of White men with a Confederate flag on the front counter. I am not going to think about how I had to give my 7-year-old a quick lesson on the stars and bars…how he immediately told me, “Tell Daddy to come out of there.”
I am going to write. I am not going to think about how White Christians seem utterly oblivious to this reality, how we were in that town for a Christian social justice conference. I am not going to think about how the organizers mentioned the Confederate flag hanging high at the entrance to the highway to town and how they had been working to get it down, but they didn’t acknowledge the terror of riding 45 miles along a rural road littered with those flags and where there’s no cellphone signal. I am not going to think about the number of Christian conferences and meetings where the organizers inform us of the town’s racial “history” and advise people of color not to wander off alone. I am not going to think about the fear that shadows my entire conference experience and the anger that White Christians keep planning these events in places that aren’t safe for us…for me.
I am going to write. I am not going to think about the time that I preached about racial reconciliation at my favorite country church’s homecoming service a few years back and that one man–whom I hadn’t seen before–glared at me the entire time. I am not going to think about how nervous I was to preach that sermon in an all-White congregation, even one filled with folks who I knew loved me, and how my memory of their receptivity is marred by the memory of that angry stare, the repulsion that I felt in that limp handshake in the narthex afterward.
I am going to write. I am not going to think about how my progressive congregation preaches justice while feeding white supremacy with all those stained glass windows of White Jesus. I am not going to think about how my beautiful brown-skinned boy once told me that he thought that God only liked White skin because God is White. I am not going to think about how many Sunday services we’ve missed now because I just can’t bear the thought of the cultural assault coming from those windows.
I am going to write. I have deadlines to make. And no one wants to hear that I missed them because my soul was paralyzed with lament for a 28-year-old woman whom I don’t know. No one cares or they’d do something…they’d say something…they’d do something. My White Christian friends would do something to make sure that the next time it’s not me hanging in a jail cell.