Skip to main content

Am I Next


Lord, have mercy.
George Floyd of Minnesota.
Your nation failed you.
Rest in God's peace.
Kyrie eleison.

Christ, have mercy.
Breonna Taylor of Kentucky.
Your nation failed you.
Rest in God's peace.
Christe eleison.

Lord, have mercy.
Ahmaud Arbery of Georgia.
Your nation failed you.
Rest in God's peace.
Kyrie eleison.

Christ, have mercy.
Tony McDade of Florida.
Your nation failed you.
Rest in God's peace.
Christe eleison.

Four people whom I never new have been murdered. It is merely the tip of an iceberg. The details of each heinous act are so horrifically unjust that there is no sense to be made of them. Each of the four was victimized. Each of them was Black, but their race was not the cause of death. Each was murdered because of the systemic structures that endow white people with an unimaginable authority and privilege based on the perpetuation of lies. The onus is not on the victims but on the perpetuators and their oppressive and unjust systems.

There is also a realization that it could have been me. I could be laying cold and lifeless in the morgue because of a distorted perception of me rooted in lies. Maybe it will be me the next time - not because of who I am, but because of how you see me in relation to how you see yourself. What lies about me do you believe? What lies about yourself do you believe?









Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for reading Leslye's Labyrinth. I welcome your comments.

Popular posts from this blog

Why I Write on Race

No, this is not what I wanted to do.  I did not choose this as my path, but it is the path on which I journey. At this time of my life, it is the path that must be acknowledged and no longer resisted. A deep sigh reveals my coming to terms with the convergence of my lived experience, my gift of words, and this moment in time.  As a citizen of the United States dealing with the heinous and flawed construct of race is inevitable. To speak about it requires inner work that I wanted to avoid. Included in the work is one essential question. Has the racial system been designed to privilege or oppress people? While many of my fellow citizens may  deny that race is relevant to them and in their lives, for those of us who identify as Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC), the truth of our nation's original sin is our lived experience. It is no secret. My parents sought to shield me and my siblings from the oppression that infiltrated our lives in an apartheid system. Even without th
6 comments
Read more

My Anger

Anger drains me -- emotionally and physically. It is an act of violence against myself and I try not to experience it intensely for this reason. The celebration or glorification of the culture of violence angers me especially when it is done by a person who has been given authority. A priest in my archdiocese posting a photo on social media of himself holding an automatic firearm, a weapon of war, while wearing his clerical collar angers me greatly. As a Black woman in a southern state, I am aware of the use of law and order rhetoric as a racist trope as is the priest's expressed intention of "protecting my people and property."  We also live in a period when stand your ground laws are used to justify murder. Sadly, I remember the murder of a child, Tamir Rice, who was killed because he was a Black boy playing with a toy gun.  There are many people who respect firearms and use them for hunting and sport. They understand and respect the deadly force at their fingertip. Gro
Post a Comment
Read more

Apples and Oranges

Dear Person  with A White Body, Many of you appear to take pride and comfort in denying   white privilege.   You say the struggles  you have experienced prove you have not benefitted from having a white body in this society.    As the old saying goes, you are speaking  of apples and oranges. Personal struggles and  white body privilege are not mutually exclusive.   The concept of white privilege does not mean that you have not experienced hard times. It means the systems and structures of our society were crafted  to benefit people with white bodies.   To be honest, they were created by a few “white” men to benefit some “white” men as with the initial intention of voting being exercised only by white men who owned land.   It did not apply to people considered  to be "property" including the women they married and the people they enslaved.   Denying this reality shows  your inability to think critically about our nation's history,  an absence of the curiosity  to question
Post a Comment
Read more