Exhaustion
I’ve been so tired these last few weeks. I mean, I’m a pretty sleepy lady and am down by 9:30pm on most nights but the exhaustion I’m feeling now is different. A few weeks ago, I expressed that I was feeling very exhausted to a group of Black women and Dr. Carolyn Finney responded, “You are exhausted because you’re the thing you’re fighting for.” I haven’t been able to stop tossing that over in my head. This isn’t just a trend or “nice to do” project for me, it’s my livelihood.
You fail to recognize that the “work experience” you want to tap for your projects and panels is my lived experience. My experience comes from the painful work to find ways to create space for myself and other Black folks at organizations that weren’t created with us in mind. The experience of being pushed to tears in meetings at big green organizations that refuse to call out racist volunteers. It comes from years of my identities being siloed into initiatives.
The past few months have been a whirlwind of apologetic voicemails, frantic emails, and desperate DMs from white folks scrambling to figure out what to do in this moment of uprising. What continues to most upsetting is that the need for urgency has been provoked by decades of ignoring and tokenizing Black organizations, employees, relationships. Many of the same organizations that are scrambling now are the same ones that have benefited from the unpaid emotional and physical labor of Black folks in their organization for decades. The scrambling, flimsy statements, and call outs are a result of “DEI initiatives” that were about putting Black folks on brochures photos and meeting grant requirements instead of taking the time to form reciprocal and anti-oppressive relationships rooted in equity and trust.
I’m optimistic at this moment of reckoning but can’t hide my disappointment because the truth is there was always money in your budget to provide unrestricted funding to Black led organizations. It has always been possible to center and uplift the intersections at which Black folks experience the world. You all have been aware of the high turnover of Black folks at your organizations. You knew that folks in leadership were perpetuating racism. Affinity groups may have made you uncomfortable but they were never discriminatory or unfair. You could have dismissed racist volunteers and donors a long time ago.
In Octavia Brood’s, Walida Imarisha poses the question “are we brave enough to imagine beyond the boundaries of “the real” and then do the hard work of sculpting reality from our dream?”. I’m learning a lot at this moment and what is most emergent is that I will never let go of my ability to dream and reimagine. There is no return to the “before times” for me.
I’m still pushing myself to dream beyond what I know and have been conditioned to believe but what I do know is that…
Free labor isn’t it.
Book clubs aren’t it.
DEI committees aren’t it.
Initiatives aren’t it.
A DEI officer at an all-white organization isn’t it.
Acknowledgements of past racism without also confronting the existing racism within your organization isn’t it.
Let me know when you want to talk about giving up power, redistributing capital, and center Black folks and not white comfort.