That’s the question I’ve been asking myself as an awful year came to anti-climactic close. Typically, the questions I might pose after ringing in the New Year are questions like ‘what was my favorite moment’ or ‘what are my goals for the year to come’.
But 2020 was not a typical year.
I’m not just speaking about the decimation of so many lives due to the coronavirus, and the cruelty of our current administration’s lack of Federal response that helped the death toll soar to over 346K COVID-19-related deaths.
I’m also not speaking about the despicable behavior of nearly every single republican in the run up to our general election, and their tacit encouragement of violence against political opponents and blatant attempts to invalidate the votes of Black and Brown people.
It is neither of those things.
The cruelty of which I speak stems from the apathy of many white Americans toward the pleas of fellow citizens to be treated equally by law enforcement, and not be murdered for merely existing with the wrong skin color.
The apathy, and some might say contempt, started at the top from the Oval Office and spread across white America like a plague. A man had been killed in real time on video, and even white high schoolers – with the blessing of their parents – started posting ‘George Floyd Challenges’ on social media.
It spread to people I know, people I work with, people I had once respected. They looked at our collective pain, outrage yet could only muster disapproval at the inconvenience of the protests and indignation at the “lawless” rioting & looting.
Don’t get me wrong. There were many who stepped up and stood alongside us as allies. In the worst moments, I was heartened by messages of support from friends and co-workers. These messages meant the world because they gave me hope.
But there were many who couldn’t bring themselves to even give lip-service to say ‘Black Lives Matter’ without asserting how ‘All Lives Matter’ even when they clearly didn’t.
They couldn’t bring themselves to say the word ‘murder’, though we’d all seen the unrelenting knee on his neck as he pleaded for his life.
I needed to hear white Americans acknowledge the wrongfulness of his murder. I needed to hear them acknowledge the wrongfulness of Breonna Taylor’s murder after an errant no-knock warrant in the dead of night. I needed to hear them acknowledge the pain that I felt knowing that it could have been me instead of George, Brionna, Philando, ad infinitum…
I heard nothing. I waited. Many looked me in the eye, said nothing, and pretended as though nothing had changed between us even though EVERYTHING had changed. I gave them multiple chances to step up and say something, say anything. Yet still I heard nothing.
On the surface, 2021 looks to be a huge improvement over 2020 in many ways. There are currently 3 vaccines that have been created to help combat the coronavirus. And President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris WILL be sworn in on January 20th.
But Black people are still being brutalized by police, and victimized by a system that was designed to do just that. And white America has moved on as though ‘Black Lives Matter’ is a thing of the past.
Maybe I’m not asking the right question. Maybe the question is not ‘Can we escape the cruelty of 2020’. Maybe it’s ‘Can I escape the cruelty of 2020’?
I certainly hope so.