I’m hearing a lot of the black women I follow say “white people are exhausting”. I didn’t realize until the third or fourth time I read it that it really bothered me. The thought that came to my mind was “wow, that’s really dramatic, isn’t it?”
Is it dramatic to be scared when someone enters your apartment and kills you in your own home?
Is it dramatic to run for your life when you’re being chased by a car?
Is it dramatic to say “I can’t breathe” when you’re being suffocated on the ground?
One of the ways that white slaveholders used to validate their actions was a strongly held, “scientifically supported” belief that black people were actually lazy. They lacked motivation and drive.
If I were removed from my home, shipped across the ocean in chains, sold to the highest bidder, forced to work outdoors in blistering heat and freezing cold, with no hope of ever being able to build a life of my own, I might not have much motivation or drive, either.
If I had spent a long day at work and on the ride home had to be ready at all times to politely give my seat on the bus to a white person, I might find that tiring.
And if I had to work and live in a culture that was built by white people, and for white people, and in order to be safe from big hurts I needed to stay quiet and smile and endure the small hurts, and even though my black skin isn’t legally anyone’s property, I had to let it get walked on emotionally, mentally, and even sometimes physically, in order to keep the peace, I might find that exhausting.
But I’m not any of those things. I’ve never experienced them. I’m white, and that’s the right thing to be where I live. That’s the normal thing to be. And I daily participate in and benefit from the very system that suffocated the life out of George Floyd.
I have no real concrete ideas for what I can do. Here’s what I know for sure: I don’t want to be exhausting. I want to be a place of rest for the people I come in contact with. I don’t know how to do that. But maybe it starts with listening.