Introduction
Thank you, Delano, for coming home to your hometown of Great Barrington to have such an important project launch with us: “The Great Barrington Project: Unbleaching the Souls of Black Folk.” BRIDGE and our Racial Justice groups are a grateful and inspired partner. You are lifting up our community, necessary conversations, and unspoken stories on such a deeply intimate and personal level. All the while calling us to activation or re-activiation. Thank you!
People need to be seen, heard, and understood.
I changed the gender a bit in this quote, but the quote is from Dr. Du Bois. (Wo)men was originally “ men” only and I’m going to also say “we” and “us” tonight.
“And herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that (wo)men are poor, –all (wo)men know something of poverty; not that (wo)men are wicked, –who is good? not that (wo)men are ignorant, –what is Truth? Nay, but that (wo)men know so little of (wo)men.”
-W. E. B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
Today I come to this conversation as a Founding Director of BRIDGE, one of its racial justice and equity organizers, a mom, Du Bois Legacy Committee Vice Chair for the Town of Great Barrington, a member of the US Attorney Civil Rights Task Force, and most essentially as me. Because at the end of the day, the way to be seen, heard, and understood is to stand in vulnerability with you, before you, and alongside you.
At a project I was invited to do with Gesel Mason called Yes And (see video here)—a project that is also traveling the nation like Delano’s project this year—there is an opportunity to listen to Black women like myself across the country. We as Black Women were asked, “Who would you be and what would you do if, as a Black woman, you had nothing to worry about? What would you create and how might you be in community with others?” So that is a question I continue to ask everyday and this Great Barrington project gives me another opportunity to visit those questions and practice with you today.
The essence of my long-winding answer to Gesel and her team took me to lessons from my grandmother Josephine of the McCrae family in South Carolina to the most recent interactions I have with clients and colleagues at BRIDGE and beyond. My answer was I wouldn’t hold back. I wouldn’t have to be careful and measure out how much of the complexity, the violence, and the harm I have lived and I experience daily as a Black woman. I wouldn’t measure out how much of that can be shared with my colleagues, to my family, to my children before…. Before something irreversible happens.
How much trauma and stress does my family actually have to hold? I want to protect them. How much will/can my White counterparts take before they shut down, walk away, lash back, and even sometimes collapse? In essence, my answer is I wouldn’t have to manage that energy and my own emotions to hold back as to not hit the already cocked triggers for so many around me.
AND I wouldn’t have to hold back on celebrating joy, success, and abundance when it comes my and my family’s way. How much is enough in folks’ eyes or too much? What is my allowance of joy? Who decides and where do those messages come from? Constant questioning I am engaged in.
My thoughts have shape shifted over the past few months since Delano, Luci, and I have been speaking about the launch of Delano’s project here in Great Barrington and I just wanted to share a bit of my journey with you. Delano’s, Luci’s and my stories may overlap this evening because we have been talking and planning and supporting one another. It is okay to hear it once, twice or thrice. It is needed.
But now… the remainder of my charge for the rest of this evening is to take us through a mindfulness activity—a practice you heard Delano say is integral for him—because Delano heard me echo…Talking about race is exhausting. It wasn't what I set out to do. I bet most DEI folks today didn’t set out to do this work. I was a Math major as an entering undergraduate, I fell in love with Art History on my way to be an attorney to advocate for victims of violence. I loved studying Spanish and Latin American studies. I was an honorary women's studies major, too.
There came a time where the only logical path to make a difference I could take was DEI and race work so I could hopefully get back to those passions of mine, reclaim the narrative of my life, and create a safer community on the way… so my loved ones, women walking similar journeys as mine and folks I don’t even know might have it even just a bit better. A bit more connected. A bit less traumatic, arresting, and isolating.
I strive to maintain a spiritual base in this work because I arrived here after some deep personal spiritual work after some deeply painful, life threatening moments over three and a half decades of life. This was a dozen years or so ago before the reckoning of the Black Lives Matter movement, Colin Kaepernick, or the recent trends of DEI work following the pandemic and George Floyd’s murder and Ibram X. Kendi’s book How To Be An Anti-Racist. I was driven by a sense of striving for purpose, hope, and meaning for me and my family here in the Berkshires.
Delano heard me. He heard 1) my passions for what the science of positive psychology has borne me to enable and empower me to stay on my journey and 2) my excitement about what this field of positive psychology has learned from resilient people like my ancestors and many more around the world.
Guided Meditation: Mindfulness and Presencing in Five Chapters
For the remainder of my time we are going to do this mindfulness practice of the pause with breath while I share five short chapters (guided meditations) from my most recent week as a Black woman here in the Berkshires. Quotes I came across, quotes sent to me, inspiring insights from current Black and Black women leaders, and some brief experiences I have had.
First get comfortable. Take a few deep breaths, ground your feet on the floor, drop your shoulders, soften your gaze or even close your eyes.
Try out our Happiness Toolbox position where you are giving yourself a hug as you breathe. Cross your arms, hold your hands and curl them under and rest them on your chest.
Take deep breaths in and exhale deeply. When you inhale, fill your belly with air and when you exhale, sink your belly button back towards your spine to the back of the chair. Keep that rhythm and breath through these meditations.
Search for your mind’s images and notice your thoughts and release them. Stay with the breath and the images that come to be. Notice your bodily sensations. Soften those tense spots.
Chapter 1 - Meditation/Visualization 1
Such a victory, a moment in history! Rachel Rollins became the first! Massachusetts has its first Black female United States Attorney. Flash forward, a week ago this evening, she sent this message to her team and the next day out to some of the Black community leaders in the state...
As I read her email to you, just listen and breathe. Notice emotions. Notice tightness. Focus on rhythmic breath…
By now you have all heard about the act of domestic terrorism in Buffalo, New York yesterday (Saturday May 14, 2022). Ten people are dead and multiple others were injured. I have reached out to the US Attorney in that District and offered our condolences as well as our assistance in any way possible.
I participated in a call with the FBI earlier today (Sunday May 15, 2022) and received some information that I wanted to pass along [“all of which is now public”]. My thoughts are in red. I am sharing my thoughts because we need to better recognize the varied experiences people have when they come into contact with law enforcement. I am less concerned about whether you agree with my thoughts, than I am with the fact that you acknowledge them. Until we start respecting and listening to each other’s experiences and concerns, we will not make any progress.
The terrorist that committed these murders is an 18 year old, white male. He is a self-proclaimed white supremacist. He had made deeply concerning statements at his High School (e.g., saying his post-graduation plans included committing a murder-suicide) and was “on the radar” of law enforcement. His father had given him a firearm in 2020 as a gift. He would have been approximately 16 years old when he received that firearm. Query whether this firearm was registered in the father’s name, and whether the police checked for LTCs and firearms in the household when they were alerted to the son’s murder-suicide statement. NY has strict gun laws. Were the guns removed from the home? Should they have been? Was any LTC or FID card revoked or suspended? Is the father being charged with anything?
The shooter wore military style tactical gear and live-streamed the massacre with a GoPro. There is currently footage on the internet showing the shooter apologizing to a terrified white patron of the supermarket – and letting him live – then turning back to hunting and killing more Black patrons. This is so similar to the Winthrop, Massachusetts murders where white supremacist and domestic terrorist Nathan Allen walked past multiple white people, allowing them to live, and only shot and killed the two lone Black individuals he encountered - Ramona Cooper and David Green.
The Bushmaster xm-15 Rifle he used had the word N*GGER written in white paint on the barrel. There is a photo of several white police officers standing what appears to be calmly next to the 18 year old white male – who had just killed 10 people (including a retired police officer) and injured several others – waiting to place him into the back seat of a police car. The terrorist doesn’t appear to have a scratch on him. Not a single visible cut or bruise. Like Dylann Roof, who in 2015 murdered 9 Black people in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina, this white supremacist in Buffalo got the benefit of de-escalation tactics and restraint. Everyone deserves to receive that same de-escalation and restraint. The police cared enough to bring Dylann Roof Burger King after he was arrested. Meanwhile, Rayshard Brooks (who hadn’t killed anyone) was killed by the police after he fell asleep in a Wendy’s drive-thru line (not a crime); George Floyd (who hadn’t killed anyone) was killed by the police after allegedly passing a counterfeit $20 bill (a misdemeanor); Breonna Tayler (who hadn’t killed anyone) was killed by the police during the execution of a no-knock warrant at her home (the individual named in the warrant (not Breonna) had been apprehended earlier that day); and the list goes on.
Hours after the attack, an unidentified third party posted the shooter’s Manifesto. That person remains at large. The Manifesto makes obvious that the white supremacist in Buffalo was heavily influenced by the white supremacist in Christchurch, New Zealand who killed 51 Muslims while they worshipped at mosques in 2019. This is not a lone actor. Someone released the Manifesto. Also, if police departments can have gang databases, why aren’t white supremacists in a database? Crime adapts. We need to as well. Many of these loners are using videogaming adjacent platforms to correspond and share Manifestos and screeds. Gangs change. With white supremacy it isn’t that they grew up in the same housing complex or on the same street, it is that they all share the same fear of being replaced. They are isolated loners that find solace in communicating with other bigoted loners like themselves. And some are actual groups - the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, NSC 131. This concept needs to be explored or better explained to the communities that have hundreds, if not thousands, of people in gang databases with very little transparency about criteria to be admitted to the database and how one can be removed from the database.
I have another call with the FBI tomorrow afternoon and will be having a meeting with various leaders and groups in the Black Community after that call. The community is shaken and deeply saddened. Some are angry. All of these reactions are valid and appropriate.
The work we do in this office is vitally important. Any civil rights and/or terrorism charges brought by DOJ in the Buffalo case will be as important as the DA’s murder charges. Whether the case is adopted federally or handled in both jurisdictions, the swift action of the federal government matters. We must speak to the impacted community immediately and keep them up to date with information. Every community deserves to feel as if their government works for and will protect them. Every person deserves to live free of fear and authentically as their full and best selves. As the US Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, I promise to fiercely protect the civil rights of everyone in our Commonwealth.
Be kind to one another and tell the people you care about that you love them. Nobody is promised tomorrow. The 10 people that were murdered yesterday make that abundantly clear.
In solidarity,
Rachael
She is doing her job with a fierce love for our people and our heritage and our right to safety in her sphere of influence, that is, with law enforcement and civil rights public servants and officials in our New England región and beyond. Follow her!
[I read aloud the names of those we lost in Buffalo]
Say their names —
Pause.
Was anyone worried about this conversation about race and Blackness just 7 days after this terrorist attack on these Black people in Buffalo who are now gone? Anyone aware of those of us worried about our safety here this evening?
Breathe. Deep breaths. Notice tensions and discomfort.
Chapter 2 Meditation/Visualizaton 2
Dr. Joyce de Gruy coined the term and theory of Post traumatic slave syndrome. I won’t explain it here tonight, but you should look it up. Research it. It was liberating when Lucí and I first heard it together in screening a documentary for the Berkshire community!
Here is an example of PTSS from my life this week:
For some white Women in my moon circle group ( a mixed race group), it was time to brag this week. That didn’t feel safe for me or others that look like me in the group. It often is not. (Or at best, taking folks up on a less than full invitation to brag is safer bet and more prudent. I reflected about who worries about the consequences of the brag in this group and who fears that there is danger in the brag. I immediately felt distanced from my spiritual nourishment Practice in a week that I needed it the most.
Later that week I was put back together a bit when one of Shaun King’s posts came over many of our feeds — I will read it here.
To say that it has been a very hard week is an understatement.
I’m going to do something I don’t do on here often, and share a bit from a conversation with my therapist, who is a brilliant sage of a woman.
She told me that what Black people are forced to do daily in this country, ping ponging back and forth between trauma and joy, trauma and work, trauma and rest, trauma and love, trauma and (fill in the blank), day in and day out is a form of psychosis.
I told her that I would have to plunge myself into the depths of despair and ugliness and violence and horror as I worked through the terror of Buffalo, only to then pick up the baby and give her a kiss, or listen to the kids explain recess games, or try to watch a Disney show, in between studying the deadliest hate crime in modern American history.
It’s not normal.
It’s not healthy.
But this country has done this to us.
I’ve noticed something very different.
@MrsRaiKing noticed it too.
People are exhausted.
By all of it.
It’s too much.
And now I see that exhaustion manifesting itself in peculiar ways as well.
It’s a tough time.
I’m going to try to help lead us to some solutions OK?
Don’t give up.
Love y’all.
Shaun
Just listen and breathe.
Chapter 3 - Meditation/Visualization 3
I hear from a Black female colleague that her Black male pre-teen child, her son, was assaulted by a White female teacher by all accounts: by video, by the child, and by the administration. In the Berkshires, but no consequence. Only that the Black Child is fearful everyday they enter school. Yes, she is still teaching, uninterrupted. All other adults paralyzed in their roles. Why?
I hear from multiple colleagues the n word is used in Berkshire classrooms by teachers and students more and more in the last 45 days. Even after a circle of Black women leaders recently taught (🤦🏾♀️) why this is bad, even more incidents seem to have occurred and less and less overt action. Why? As Delano asks, why?
A White woman shooting a BB gun, another threat with a knife at a 12 year old Black boy and getting the equivalent of a ticket and a slap on the hand this week. I was sent these videos from a dear friend. All this while she is trying to do her work and provide care for people in need and there I was, me, at my desk trying to work as well. Both of us Black women. But hey, that's just over the border in NY. Not here in the Berkshires. Phew, right? It is those people this time. Hmm…
Pause.
Where do we talk about the violence allowed to our people? To our children?
Do you know the term: vicarious trauma?
Breathe.
By silence or closed door conversations, who are we protecting? And who are we giving permission to continue?
I hear the new sidewalks are stopping at the edge of gentrification in Great Barrington on Rosseter St. We don’t need any more sidewalks where it isn't newly renovated. Whose Black voices are in those conversations?
Several known Berkshires people have been identified at the January 6 insurrection at the White House. This was reported by DOJ on MLK Day when someone was searching for an answer to the question, How racist are we in the Berkshires?
Pause.
Any feelings there? Are people noticing our brand of White liberal racism?
Move it through with your breath, but don’t swipe it away. Don’t delete it; move it to action. Ask yourself, What will be my counter-action? What can I imagine as a disruption?
What do you see yourself doing?
Breathe.
Chapter 4 - Meditation/Visualization 4
As I mentioned, I have had the great privilege to be invited to participate alongside Black artists. Activists like Cauleen Smith, Gesel Mason, and now Delano Burrows and to pose these important questions to touch our hearts and minds. What are our questions, what are our answers and what are our experiences?
And these times the Hearts and Minds were ours; the reach was for our Black hearts and Black minds at the margins. We were being invited to the center. This week a reach of this Great Barrington project has genuinely been about the hearts and minds of Black people. It doesn’t happen often.
If you have not had a chance to listen or see a Black person in their full humanity this week, we are so glad you are here this evening. And I thank you in advance for listening deeply and actively.
Especially if that Black person is yourself. Pause, breathe, and listen to the answer to the question Delano gives us about how we see and hear other Black people: how do we see each other and ourselves? How do we let our collective voice rise up to be the dominant voice? How do we link up? How do we listen?
Take a deep breath and say a word out loud that points to the healing of the Black community near and far. Take another breath. Keep going. Keep speaking those words out loud now. Say the words out loud. Booming voices and whispers are welcome.
Pause.
And Allies and Accomplices, How will you fix a world that is broken? For the next generations, use your voices now and say a commitment out loud for now and into the future. Booming voices and whispers are welcome.
Chapter 5 - Meditation/Visualization 5
Our breath, our collective sigh, our collective exhale can and will bring us joy.
Let’s sigh together. Audibly. Exhale.
We learn and relearn that joy and happiness in positive psychology is a state of being. How do we harness that and pass it on to our children and the next generations? That indeed is the most essential generational wealth we need to pass on.
Breathe. Remember to breathe. Because we still can.
And I close with this quotation sent to me by a woman this week whom I don’t know when I “bravely” and “boldly” canceled a training for white people to learn how to face their bias. I just couldn’t do It this week. The quotation she sent was a gift of care I carried with me all week. It was good to be seen and good to be heard.
The quote was from Maya Angelou
“My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness. Continue to allow humor to lighten the burden of your tender heart.”
Breathe. Sigh. Exhale.
Thank you for listening.
