Originally written May 30, 2020; re-published April 30, 2024
When I die, or if I am murdered, I want to be cremated. Scatter my ashes at the University of Tennessee medical school, where Nathan Bedford Forrest is buried.
Then set the plot on fire.
If I burn, he burns with me. My final tale of hatred and loss will burst in flames. This will not solve our country’s problem, but I think it’ll give me a sense of Cosmic Retribution.
My entire life, my parents have taught me the importance of taking care of myself. Learn how to make your own food, protect yourself, and by absolutely any means, DO NOT call the police.
I’m 23, but I have lived a thousand lifetimes.
I grew up reading Lorde and Davis, spent countless ours watching documentaries on Nina Simone and James Baldwin. I felt secure, somehow, knowing that I could learn from the great Black leaders of the past. I was deluded into thinking that memorizing their words would somehow make them past-tense, as if the things they experienced would not affect me in the 21st century. I am still in awe at my own naivety.
My grandparents have “Colored” on their marriage license, and my great-uncle still thinks we’re called Niggers. When I was younger, I always thought he was behind the times, and that surely we are no longer living in the Jim Crow era he experienced in in youth growing up in south Alabama. Well, Uncle Eddy, you’re right. We still are. And it’s not even subtle.
Our world is in a dangerous place, but haven’t we always been? The polar ice caps are melting, there’s a virus that kills only when we’re together, and Black people are still being murdered by the police.
When I was 16, I went to Little Rock to visit Central High School. As a high school student in Memphis, TN, that was a regular field trip for kids that needed to learn about Black history. I did not feel a sense of connection to the children pioneers, the school was almost majority Hispanic and Latinx at that point, but I felt a deep tug in my stomach, like there was something I was missing in that moment. A piece of history that’s been lost to time, perhaps, or maybe it was the thought that I was a witness to history after-the-fact. Whatever it was, I knew I was going to try and fulfill that longing my entire life.
I was still in high school when Trayvon Martin was murdered in Florida. I was a child when I saw Sandra Bland’s mug shot, a dead Black woman staring back at me through the screen. I was a child when Tamir Rice, 5 years younger than me, was murdered in a park. I was preparing for college when Eric Garner couldn’t breathe, and had just started my first semester away from home when Michael Brown Jr. was killed in Ferguson. I felt the pain of the protests hundreds of miles away.
My university was in the heart of Appalachia, a medium-sized state school in Tennessee with a Black student population of less than 6%. I went to class everyday with racists, cowards wearing “Heritage Not Hate” t-shirts with girlfriends that were too afraid of backlash to speak out against white supremacy. This was our every day burden, and I took it in stride, even with a bit of ignorance, because I didn’t really know how many people I surrounded myself cared about me, as a Black person.
When Trump was elected into office the next year, I cried in my dorm room and didn’t go to class the next day. My friends, truly the loves of my life, checked in on me. I was not surprised by the results, but I was fucking terrified.
In 2016, a coward agitator wore a gorilla mask and carried a noose to a Black Lives Matter rally on campus. He was arrested, and surprisingly, there was even a trial. A jury that comprised of East Tennesseans that have become so desensitized to White supremacy that they considered his actions as “harmless.” But what if, what if, his actions were to lead to something bigger? Something dangerous? What if another agitator came by the next day, less of a coward, and decided to escalate at the next day’s rally? I know I can’t life in “What If’s,” but in a world like ours, it isn’t such a far-fetched idea.
The charges were dropped, he was 19 after all, and what about his future?
Now I’m a teacher. For legal reasons I won’t say the teaching organization I’m a part of, but just think of a collective of white apologists that go into Black and Brown neighborhoods to teach diversity and love. You know the type.
I teach kids that look like me, but they have entirely different lives. So many have experienced death and loss, heartache, pain and trauma before they turned 13. I will not talk about my kids, because I care about their anonymity and because their stories are completely their own, but I will say that I know my teaching is not centered around what they need or what they deserve. That’s not at the fault of my organization, or even the school system. The fault is in white supremacy, and the systemic disadvantages my kids have had since before they were born. Before their parents were born.
My students are Tamir Rice’s age. I teach kids that have been told, like me, to take care of themselves and to involve the police only after the fact in any emergency. They’re more focused on helping each other, their cousins and siblings, before any other action is taken. I do not blame them. The most difficult thing I’ve seen, as an educator, is watching my kids interact with police officers. They are cold, curt, and overall dismissive to a point of near anger. This worries me because, as Black people, our biggest battle in police brutality is not the fear of a badge, but the inflated ego this badge creates.
Now we’re tackling a global pandemic that has forced us to stay apart. Although I am able to work from home, many of my kids’ parents are either unemployed or considered “essential workers” forced to clock in during second shift to make sure they’re home with their children during the day because school has been out since mid-March. Black people are exhausted, working every single day to stay alive. And every single day we see that the world isn’t doing the same for them.
To circle back, if I am murdered, I want my sister to take all my hair care products. Everything, even my wigs. I want my brother to have my poems. My friends can split my book collection, and my parents can have everything else. I want to donate my college quilt back to my university, because my experience there gave me the resources and strength to continue to fight for my life.
Protests are happening as I write this. There are moments when I feel an intense shame by not dropping everything and joining in today, but I am so, so tired. We all are. I’ve participated in so many protests, rallies, and demonstrations I cannot even recount them all. Black people are dying, and we are forced to rally, to protest, I’ll venture to say riot, because we are so incredibly fed-up from all the pain and suffering this country has put us through.
The United States of America needs to be turned on its head. It needs a demilitarized police force. It needs a restructure of its economy. It needs school rezoning. It needs less white Congressmen and needs new state laws.
And I need my uncle to be wrong, so absolutely wrong that I can say for certain that this country has changed since his mid-twenties. But for now, because that change has not happened, I will tell you what I want to happen if I die.
I do not know my place in this fight. Society considers me too young to be a political or cultural correspondent, but too old to consider myself the “youth of tomorrow.” But I’m Black, so I can only speak on Black pain, and a woman, and also queer so automatically too “left” and “radical” for publication unless I have good connections. But I am too young to have connections, too inexperienced. So I will write, and post, and donate, and protest, and fight this fight because that is all I can do. And I must do this, because my life depends on it.
This is not a suicide note, nor is it a heartfelt memoir. Think of this as a manifesto from a Black woman that is exhausted and disgusted in her country.
And we will burn it to the ground if we must.
