don't give up, part 5: love your neighbor

To hear Brandi read this week’s essay, visit the Expand Your Us Youtube Channel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75oAkovur2c

This week’s essay continues a series called Don’t Give Up. It is geared toward helping us find resiliency, stamina and hope in at least two areas of our communal life: One, to keep pursuing wellness, creativity and compassion for others as COVID drags on. Two, to stay present, leaning in to the stories of the toll our racialized society takes. Don’t give up, but keep learning about the lives others lead, actively rejecting any position that upholds a dangerous status quo.

I grew up on a lot of land in east Tennessee, and think of that home as a heaven of sorts. Walking out on the porch, looking over the fields and toward the lake, the eye roams, soaking in the natural beauty. Last week I spent time there, teaching remotely while my kids zoomed into class, impromptu offices strewn throughout the house and on various porches. It was beautiful.

That home is situated in a rural community near Knoxville. Growing up there, I saw the value of family, of creating lives intimately connected to the land and to people dependent on it. I saw first hand how folks carry each others’ burdens, watching as grandmothers helped raise great-grandchildren, or gave their kids plots of land on which they could build. I watched churches surround schools, providing supplies, clothes and food for those who lived in poverty. I went to Sunday School with kids whose parents didn’t finish high school, and experienced big love in homes strapped for cash. My childhood there showed me a world where class divisions didn’t stick. The commitment folks shared to care for others mattered more than a shared tax bracket, or maybe even a racial background.

Immersed in that world again last week, I felt safe and protected in many ways. It was easy to idealize that way of living, as if in smaller communities, every person cares about their neighbors, willingly bearing their burdens, mourning loss and celebrating wins.

Then I went to Kroger.

I found myself in line behind a couple in their 40s. They were loud, openly mocking employees wearing masks, complaining of all the “bullshit” they are sick of. They let us all know they’d like to see someone try to take their liberties away by asking them to wear a mask. Moreover, they told the women checking them out and bagging their groceries that they looked like idiots buying the lie from the traitors destroying our jobs by telling people to be careful and stay home. Turning, the woman told her partner that before she knew it, the liberals would replace all the white workers with brown ones (I’ve elevated her language to remove the most offensive terms).

After they left, the employees were clearly shaken, and I reassured them that they handled that well. That I admired their composure and was sorry they had to suffer such abuse. The lady bagging my groceries finally looked up and said, “The costumer is always right. But sometimes they’re also really mean.”

I walked out to my car to continued commotion. The couple’s pick up truck was parked two spots away from mine. They had both cracked open Natty Lights in the parking lot, and had threatened a man who they felt was looking at them too long. Expletives flew, finger jabbing and angry shuffling occurred. Their pickup was covered in “Trump” and “Don’t Tread On Me” stickers, and they had American flags flying in both windows. Then the woman gave the man her beer, climbed in the back, and put up her large confederate flag before pulling out smaller versions for both back windows. They looked around, seemingly begging someone to pick a fight. Satisfied their branding was on point, they clanked their beer together, jumped in the truck, and peeled out of the parking lot.

I sat in my car, trembling. I thought first about my black daughter, and how thankful I was that she stayed home when I ran to the store that day. Then I thought about any other person of color who saw them, and cried as I realized how afraid they might have been. I shook as I thought about the damage one couple can do to an entire community. I choked out a sob when I was flooded with the fear many black and brown friends have to carry every time they leave their homes.

That couple was aggressive in their love of white supremacy. They were aggressive in their commitment to be free, untethered by concerns for the people around them. Their need for independence was worth more to them than the safety of anyone around them. Their rights demanded the restriction and diminishment of others.

They are dangerous in two ways. First, when we encounter people like that, some of us breath a sigh of relief, knowing that we aren’t like them, and therefore have no problem with race. More on that next week. 

Second, their existence terrorizes any person they dismiss as less-than, and causes long term, compounded trauma in people of color. Their clear love of boundary pushing destabilizes any environment, invoking the threat of violence, instilling fear in any person they might find unworthy.

This is no way to live! Our friends and neighbors deserve to go about their day unharassed, untraumatized, unjudged. When we allow others to pretend their claims on personal freedom trump another’s right to safely build a life, we help create a society of terror. We have to speak up for our neighbors, caring for them so well that their problems become our problems.

In order to do this, we have to know our neighbors’ stories. The thing I love about the town I grew up in is this sense of connection. People know you, they know your aunt and knew your granddad. They know the deaths that shook your family to the core, and they know the prayers of thanks that sustain you.

Many of us are being lured back into racialized complacency because we have seen riots, or we hear about violence getting out of hand. Today I’ll simply remind us to turn back to our own communities. Stop hating or demonizing the actions of someone across the country, and get to know the people in your town. Most of us are incredibly generous to those we claim as our ‘us.’ And most of us live in extremely segregated circles. We don’t know what it is like to sense or see racism, because we don’t know or love people being damaged by it. Before you dismiss the pain or fear of another, wait a beat, and ask yourself if you know anything about their life or the life of a person like them.

If our patriotism is based on terrorizing or excluding others, I’d argue we should redefine the word. If our personal freedoms endanger those around us, I’d argue we should examine what freedom is. If our political commitments require us to hate or diminish certain types of people, I’d argue our politics are destroying them and us. Don’t give up on our society by welcoming expressions of patriotism that terrorize other Americans.

Take a note from my town, which demonstrates the best and worst of humanity on any given week: A community that works and prays and grieves together, and a community that makes space for white terror at the local grocery store. The problem, and the solutions, are closer than we think.