Perspective from a LEO wife
Jun 19, 2020 13:52:21 GMT
SockMonkey, mollycoddle, and 34 more like this
Post by redhana on Jun 19, 2020 13:52:21 GMT
Full post below:
I'm the wife of a law enforcement officer. And I love him so much. And have mad respect for him. And nearly every officer I've met yet.
But I'm pretty largely silent about officers lately, which I'm sure feels hurtful to some. Because it's painful being an officer, it's painful to love an officer, it's painful to fear for an officer, and recently, it's painful to fear for your family as officer's families are threatened.
But every time I've felt fear, loss, grief, anger, or have seen how this affects my children, I realize I'm glimpsing the TINIEST glimpse into the pain of something I've never had to experience as a white woman (and I even cringe as I write this because I mean the absolute TINIEST).
Today, I've removed my address from the internet and checked door locks often. During the protests, people shouted about hanging white babies from the trees. Yesterday, I listened to my husband describe bricks and rocks bouncing off his body as people screamed terrible things in his beautiful face.
I should be screaming about these threats, this abuse, this fear in our lives... except I can't. Because I feel BROUGHT TO MY KNEES thinking about the modern and historical experience of black mothers who desperately loved their families and had no power, no protection, and no way to save them from the horror in front of them. Who worried when the weekend came about staying in and locking doors because the weekend was when whites were off work and school and "having fun" throwing bricks through windows and lighting fires over the weekend.
These mothers... these mothers. Have you read the writing of Hess Love? It is impossible to read without feeling an enormous space crack open inside you and threaten to swallow you with its pain.
She writes as an enslaved, black wet nurse, forced to feed white babies at the expense of her own, who died because of it.
"I wish I dried up
I wish every drop of my milk slipped passed those pink lips and nourished the ground
Where the bones lay
Of my babies
Starved while I feed their murderer
I wish I dried up
So the missus babies would dry up too
And be brittle
So I could crumble them to dust
Return them to the ground
Where all children of my bosom lay equal."
The absolute pain and abject cruelty of her experience, silently woven into these words of rage and hatred against something so innocent...yet her words don't condemn her, they allow us to see what's been done to her, the horror she's been put through. What her innocent baby endured and what she had to watch while being forced to feed another's baby. These words HAUNT me. And this is only one of many horrors faced by black mothers throughout American history.
This brings me back to George Floyd and today. Guys... he cried "Mama" as he died. A tall, strong, black man cried "Mama" as his life slowly left him, in public, capable of being saved, murdered by a white man. And the mamas heard. They HEARD. I am not a black mother and at that word, my mama heart pounded desperately in my chest. The collective Black trauma that must have been experienced watching that video...I can't even imagine. I watched a black teenager interviewed at the protest last night... he said he's been crying all week after seeing George Floyd killed. He teared up while saying it. The pain around the world is no doubt due to Floyd's mistreatment, but when everyone heard that "Mama", it called up ages of rage and grief. Rage and grief I can only imagine feeling if I had to experience the same.
White people, we just DO NOT understand. Do not say it was a long time ago, because that phrase is only true when you've taken accountability for something. But America never has. America has truly never reckoned with its terrible past. Because that's terrifying. Do I want my family to pay for that? Absolutely not. But do I understand why this is happening now? You bet I do. Does it make me think twice before I mention the momentary pain we feel? Yes, it does. Do I still love all of the officers I know while still saying that racism is still here, alive, thriving, and impossible to keep out of policing if we don't respond thoroughly in times like these? That despite loving a law enforcement officer and knowing why so much of it is good, that I can demand that police brutality be taken extremely seriously? That despite the love I have for the people I know, I feel a deep, aching pain for what this country has done and desperately want to be a part of taking steps towards a better future?
I don't want to hurt anyone. I don't want anyone hurt. I don't want to be scared. But people have to understand what's happening here. There is a legitimate, deep, seething, bottomless grief and rage that is demanding our attention and accountability. It wants us to FEEL IT. To SEE IT. The longer we don't... the longer we try to control it, to crush it... the more it grows.
This movement demands accountability. That we see and understand.
White people, are we ready for that?
