Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America

by Michael Eric Dyson

My friends, many of you have no idea of this level of anguish. You think that if we merely obey the cop’s commands he or she won’t feel threatened by us, won’t view us as the roadblock to their return home that night. You think that if we keep ourselves in check nothing bad will happen. Where have you been? Have you not seen the videos? These videos make it possible to see what has always been the case. Now there is proof of our suffering. Have you not seen how no matter what we do the cops come for us? That no matter how pleasant our speech, how lowly our spirits, how tame our bodies, how domesticated our gestures, we are read as a menace and threat by so many cops? “I feared for my life,” many cops who have shot unarmed black folk have said. Not a gun in sight. No attack in the offing. And yet we are consistently, without conscience, cut down in the streets.