We get paid less. We die sooner. We get treated with disregard as though somewhere along the line we deserve poor treatment.
Last week a police officer instructed me that if I was respectful with him he would be respectful with me. (Which really just pissed me off…and I have been trying to get my head right ever since) I wish I could tell my customers, I’ll serve you properly if you are respectful to me.
Yet we continue to do nothing. Yeah we post and we complain but we don’t truly engage, because there’s a real possibility we could lose…lose our livelihoods, be labeled as the element we can’t afford to be labeled as; the element we are trying to save. In truth, there is no separation between us and the element. We just like to think there is. Sandra Bland and Tamir Rice happen and other injustices happen too, every day of every year.
And when it does happen to us, we don’t know the process; we don’t know what to do, how to act, what to say. And so we continue to lose. We lose because we don’t know what they have the right to do to us. Never mind the possessions we have tried desperately to hold on to, we don’t know what they have the right to do to our bodies.
We don’t know if we can take it or not. And we sure as hell don’t participate in the process to overthrow the rules that continue to harm us. Yet we speak incessantly about what isn’t right or what shouldn’t occur and we pray. But faith without works is dead.
Get to work because the field is not leveled and we are not treated the same. We don’t even treat ourselves the same. And even when we are treated exactly the same, the outcomes in these crooked rooms we live in are not equal. And wishing we are or they were, won’t make it so.