They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

by Hanif Abdurraqib

I struggle with this, the public grief by white people over Black Death. I have been, and am still, a victim of what my guilt can drive me to. Depending on the day, on the cause, on who I love that might be affected. There is, however, a manner in which this guilt is performed that sets me to wondering what the value of living blackness is when it rests against white outrage centered on the ending of black life. It is both essential for us to turn toward our people and ask them to do better, while also realizing that there is a very real currency that comes with being the loudest person to do it in public. It is about going against expectation. I am black. I am supposed to be sad when the police kill someone who looks like me. I don’t gain much by being afraid, because the fear itself has worked its way into me, simply pushing its way to the surface when most appropriate. I want everyone to be appalled, taken aback by these injustices. A major failing of our ability to process these deaths is that people have, for too long, not allowed themselves to consider the problem as real and systemic. That is the other side of this: my desire for this outrage to exist, even if I think it needs to be reconsidered and perhaps reshaped. What I realize now about my friends who left the shadow of Ohio’s sometimes-obvious racism is that they were making themselves comfortable with the silent, liberal racism. The type that sometimes roots itself in faux-concern to present a question of you...