Help Me See You — Minus a Plus One

Like many around my country, I struggled to process what’s was happening as I watched protesters march past my windows day after day. Growing up in a small town and attending a relatively small state college, protests and riots were foreign to me most of my life.

When I was in elementary school, I recalled a night my great-grandma was watching the University of Iowa basketball game and commenting how the black players didn’t let the “poor, white kids” play as much anymore.

They’re better, Grandma, I remembered saying, the reason why seeming obvious.

Just five years ago, when I was back in my small Iowa hometown attending church with my family, a member of my congregation made small talk with me after the service.

He asked when I was going to bring a boyfriend home with me again. I did my tired joke of saying, “Lord knows, please pray for me, I’m asking the very same thing!”

“Well, we’re looking forward to it,” he said with a smile. It was then that he leaned in, lowered his voice and added, “As long as he isn’t black.”

His comment caught me off-guard. Confused I responded, “You can’t say that. It’s 2015.” I remember thinking how did he not know? We finally legalized gay marriage in all 50 states this year - how are you still making comments on race?

This year, I watched in disbelief as the world imploded right outside my window.

I felt fortunate to have friends reach out and offer for me to stay with them as the bustling neighborhood I call home spent hours boarding up its windows. But I felt compelled to stay. To watch. To listen. To be present despite how uncomfortable it was.

I wanted to hear them.

I watched as a fresh wooden smell was replaced with a strong spray paint odor as Black Lives Matter was scrawled across it overnight. I took in photos of a man whose name I had never heard before become and realized he would become someone I would never forget. I watched the video of his death and heard three words that forced our nation, and eventually the world, to pay attention.

“I can’t breathe.”

I know the sensitivity I carry with me being a single woman in my 30s. How the comments and curiosities of others have chipped away at me. How their skepticism made me question myself for no reason other than a man hadn’t asked me to marry him, and that alone reduced my value.

But outside of a naked left hand, I carry this quietly with me.

As I thought about my post this week, I wanted to open my eyes more. I wanted to open the eyes of those I grew up with and around.

And I asked to see the world through the eyes of a single black woman.

Be’, a thirty-something-year-old female, allowed me insight into her reality and shared what’s happening through her lens.

“I get triggered easily,” she shared as she quickly began speaking from the heart. She explained how her work building hasn’t been accessible with the recent protests downtown.

Good Lord, they are still protesting? How long will this keep going? There was annoyance in the customer’s voice, an irritation at their inconvenience.

“It’s just gotten started. You haven’t seen anything yet.”

She went on to share how black people have been in a rut for 400 years. Four hundred and one, to be exact. I had to Google the significance of what this meant, and learned that 1619 was the year the first enslaved Africans arrived in Jamestown. I’m aware this happened, but the year isn’t burned into my memory.

“History repeats itself because a lesson hasn’t been learned. All lives matter – we get that. We understand that. We are trying to get our voice to be heard as well,” she shared. “People ask ‘when is this going to be over?’ You are tired of hearing it? We are tired of living it.”

When thinking about George Floyd and the video that broke a nation, she questioned what would have happened if the roles had been reversed. If it was a black cop, with his knee on the back of a white teenager.

Would you feel outrage?

Be’ explained this was not something that has suddenly happened. This has been manifesting. And George Floyd’s murder was the lit match tossed on a years and years of trauma, pain and suffering that caused it all to explode.

She was quiet for a moment before opening up about the complicated relationship between blacks brought to our country by slavery, and the relationship white people have – who immigrated here by free will for a better life.

“It’s never been about the flag. But understand that we have a complicated relationship with that flag. One Nation under God – that did not apply to us as black people.”

She shared that despite being veteran himself, it was hard for her father to put the flag out, and she told me about the time he was pulled over in Pataskala, Ohio where he lived.

“The cop called for backup, drew his gun and approached the car, asking why my father was shaking. The most agitating thing was to hear my dad’s voice – how shaken up he was as her told me the story. He has veteran plates on his car. When you say, ‘you have to respect our veterans’ – which ones?”

There are countless examples of what she sees everyday that I never encounter.

But it doesn’t make them any less real.

“There are countless examples of what she sees everyday that I never encounter.

But it doesn’t make them any less real. ”

Athletes are praised when they are running up and down the field but told to shut up when they speak out off the field. When they aren’t dressed up in the notable colors that fans cheer for, they are just another black body to fear or silence.

“We don’t want to keep complaining. We are tired of complaining. We are tired as much as you are tired of hearing about it.”

But she shared optimism with our new generation.

“I don’t think we are going to be quiet whatsoever.”

As we wrapped our conversation, I asked her what progress looked like. What is the goal in the end?

“I feel like it will take what they are asking for – the defunding of the police. We put more into the police and military than education. Why?”

She shared wanting better mental health benefits. About being able to walk down the street without carrying her driver’s license in case she’s asked where she’s coming from; if she lives around here.

“I worry about my future son – having to give him 20 set of rules before he can go outside; that if he plays cops and robbers outside, he won’t be shot dead.”

She spoke of justice and proper investigations – for missing children and for deaths of all races. For parents to stop teaching their kids hate.

While it’s hard to know where the future lies, Be’ is convinced of one thing. “This is only the beginning. We are just getting started.”

She is urging people not to stay silent.

“If you want to be an ally, don’t say silent. Don’t speak for us – but speak with us. Amplify our voice and make it be heard to those people are don’t want to hear us.”

I look around at my neighborhood in the past weeks and see change. The plywood has been painted over with inspiring messages of love, of begging for change, of celebrating the life of a man whose death has changed the world.

She’s right. We are just getting started.

*Photo taken of the mural outside my apartment.*