Do Black lives still matter? That’s the question I have been asking myself the past two years – not because I have any doubt that they do. I know my Black biracial life matters. I know my Black father’s life matters. My Black sisters and brothers. Black lives matter, this I know, but my fear that other people have forgotten has only increased.
George Floyd was murdered right before my 20th birthday. Blackout Tuesday, a performative pledge of allyship via Instagram, happened right on my 20th birthday. That night, after the candles were blown and the doom scrolling on Twitter finished, I had a panic attack that stretched throughout the night.
I’ve replayed that night as many times as I’ve questioned, “Do people actually care?” I carried that question with each panic attack that followed, as I sorted out my racial identity in therapy, as I watched people remove their Black Lives Matter yard signs.
I’ve tried to untangle this web of confusion. It’s difficult to reach a conclusion when a country that was founded on white supremacy denies that racism exists. It’s a wound that keeps bleeding a darker red, but I am in the hands of people who choose to be colorblind. They don’t see what I see. They proudly chant all lives matter. I am kicked to the side, a stampede of constructed superiority crushes me, and I am left with the other Black ghosts that were never seen or soon forgotten.
Will we remember the names of the victims in the Buffalo supermarket shooting? Will we acknowledge the attack for what it was? Will we be honest enough to speak the words, “hate crime?” Or will we whisper that the supermarket was in a “predominantly Black neighborhood?” Will we say it was a coincidence that the murdered victims were Black? Will we remember this, or will we forget? Will we declare, “Black lives matter,” only to fall silent?
What will we do with the information that the 18-year-old white man had a 180-page online manifesto embedded with racism and anti-Semitism? Will we be disturbed that the killer had etched the names of previous mass shooters and racial slurs onto his gun? And if we acknowledge this all, will we lose the recognition in less time than it took for the killer to drive to his shooting spree? It took him hours to get there, how long will we remember? How long will we remember the lives lost? When does the promise of memorial expire?
I don’t know how to move forward. The night of my 20th birthday, my legs trembled. The shaking rose through each muscle until my entire body was no longer in my control. Breathe, breathe, I was told. I tried but I couldn’t shake away the names of those who no longer had the chance to breathe because of their skin color. My leg bounces now as I write this. The panic I felt was based, a chaos that is too uncomfortable to fully confront.
Hatred has made hell of this country; this hell of a country was made on hatred. Yet, it’s a hell not fully realized. 10 Black stolen lives are added to the graveyard of all those who came before. Their tombstones are linked by overt racism, domestic terrorism and maddening manifestos. Their innocence becomes invisible, as does the chain that bounds them.
And when I point to this yard, when I scream out in the middle of the night, when my body becomes overtaken by panic – no one hears me. There is no help provided, no healing assured, there is only the horror that continues. And continues. And continues.
I am pulled by two ends. One hand is gripped by extremists who have torches in their hands, trying to burn the integration of my identity, they aspire to leave me in ashes, never should I have ceased to exist from a multiracial partnership. The other hand is pinched by neighbors and peers who can’t look me in the eye, who say they are listening but speak over me, their sympathy is unsettling because I know their declarations of change will never come. They are indifferent because they have never been different, they have never been identified as “other.”
I don’t know how to move forward, other than to ask: do Black lives still matter to you?
Alexandra Rain
Alexandra Rain is a recent graduate from the University of Utah, author of the poetry and prose collection “Growing Pains” and director of Lost History on social media.