RACISM STEALS TIME
Tweet from Ashley C. Ford saying, “I was looking at a list of my goals from four weeks ago & I was thinking about trying to get into voiceover work, or finally working on a graphic novel, and now I wake up every day and the only goal is to get to the next one. Racism steals lives and dreams.”
I am carrying a very specific rage.
I keep returning to Ashley C. Ford’s tweet from June 5th, 2020. The statement: “Racism steals lives and dreams.” I feel that statement ring true every day.
After the Atlanta shootings on March 16th, 2021, I lost time. I woke up to my alarm every morning, took my dog out, fed him, returned to bed. Every day, I wondered if I was feeding him twice, because everything felt the same. I would close my eyes and see the same dog, the same bowl, the same cup of food, and I couldn’t remember if I had filled them five minutes before or the day before.
I grieved for people I did not know because I felt their loss inside of me. Because the loss of their life felt like the loss of my life. Such random chance, after all. An angry white man decides to kill Asian women. Through the white supremacist lens, there is no differentiation. There are no distinct lives. Asian woman. Asian woman. Asian woman. Asian woman. Asian woman. Asian woman.
Hyun Jung Grant. Suncha Kim. Soon Chung Park. Xiaojie Tan. Yong Yue. One of the families has asked that her name not be shared, so I won’t write hers out here. Six Asian women, who each had lives and loves and favorite foods. Lost, to a white man’s rage.
I felt terrified, faceless, unprotected. An Asian couple was beaten at the park I sometimes walk to and I wondered which of my neighbors, if any, would say something. Who would pick me up off the ground and see my pain as pain, my life as life? But as I wondered, Asian women from all over started sharing their stories. THIS IS MY STORY, they asserted. THIS HAPPENED TO ME. LISTEN TO MY EXPERIENCE. In Zoom vigils, on Instagram, on Twitter, in my inbox, Asian women reflected on themselves and I felt surrounded by their faces, their stories, their lives. And so I came back to myself, and my story. An Asian woman, one of many. Not alone, not anonymous — part of a collective with meaning.
But as Asian women shared their stories for each other, I saw something start to happen online. Asian authors saw their books hitting the bestseller lists. Asian activists were suddenly platformed and inundated with requests to write stories for major media outlets. In a moment of national grief, the capitalist machine knows that trauma sells. I wish I could remember their names, but on Twitter I read an Asian author lamenting that her book was now on a bestseller list because people who shared an identity with her were murdered, and a Black author replied in solidarity, remembering how terrible it felt when the same thing happened to her last summer.
For these writers of color, the cost of recognition was the murder of people who looked like them. A painful, dreadful way to be catapulted upward. These authors deserved to be on bestseller lists without anyone dying.
This leads me to my very specific rage. I am tired of the mainstream only having time for talented, brilliant, creative people when something terrible happens. I am tired of talented, brilliant, creative people losing time to create because they are weighed down by grief and need to rest and organize. I am tired of talented, brilliant, creative people postponing celebrations of their wins because their community is hurting. I am tired of talented, brilliant, creative people being offered opportunities to write for media outlets and magazines, but only if it is about their trauma.
I am surrounded by astoundingly talented creators of color. I love what they create in joy. I love what they create in uplift. I love what they create in passion. I love what they create in transformation. And yes, I love what they create in grief.
But please. After yet another week of grieving, I ask that we celebrate people of color when nothing terrible has happened. Buy someone’s art when their community hasn’t been in the news. Pick up a book by a writer of color that is not on an anti-racist book list. Pay someone to publish a story in a major publication that is not about trauma. And continue to do all of these things when another tragedy occurs. And continue when there is no tragedy at hand. Make someone’s dream come true because you can. Give people your time while they are still here.
Racism works to steal time, to keep us in a constant state of stress, grief, terror. Until we abolish the prison industrial complex and free ourselves from white supremacy, the tragedy will not stop. The grief will not stop. But if we can all hold each other, rise up for each other, share our stories for each other, maybe we can give each other more and more pockets of time. More moments of celebration, untinged by violence. More recognition, unrelated to something bad happening to someone else. More time to be human, and alive. More dreams.
My final word is for the children.
When I think of racism stealing lives and stealing time, I am heartbroken for the children who have lost their lives and the children who have lost time to be children. I used to wish my superpower could be teleportation. Now I wish my superpower was protecting every child, giving them time to grow and learn and play. For the children who testified in the Chauvin trial, for Gianna Floyd, for Daunte Wright Jr., for Randy Park, for every child who had to learn that the world can be cruel before they learned how beautiful it can be — for them, I wish time and healing and joy. Ordinary, beautiful lives. Extraordinary love. May this grief be the sharpest they ever experience, and only blessings from here.
For the children who have lost their lives, had their time stolen.
Ma’Khia Bryant, 16.
Adam Toledo, 13.
Daunte Wright, 20.
These the children of only these last few weeks. For all of the children I could name here, and for all the ones whose names did not surge to national media attention.
There is no more time. All I can hope is that we who are still here, who still have time, can protect the childhoods they did have. I see the headlines — he had a gun, she had a knife. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. They are children, and they were murdered. Let them be children.
