None of This Is Necessary.
I was 32 at the time of that incident.
At 32, navigating whiteness had officially exhausted me.
I was burned out with having to maneuver within it at every, single turn.
I was depleted. I was drained. I was that Solange album.
Weary...
I had also spent the first 24 years of my life existing at the margins of communities I was (often reluctantly) granted entry into solely because of either economic status…or because of affirmative action.
At 32, I was tired of integrating spaces.
I was tired of being the "acceptable" one chosen to meet the quota...
Tired of spending the majority of my time in spaces that never had to adjust me, yet I always found myself adjusting to them for my very survival...
And tired of managing other people's irrational fear of my very presence.
So while I didn’t quite have the language for it during the neighbor-police incident, something in me shifted permanently that day…
The day I told my white neighbors that my blood would be on their hands if they kept calling the police on me for things that could be friendly conversations instead.