Forgetting
No. 4 | (2021)
Photograph and Words by Jahi Chikwendu (2020).
“This is part of a series of photos meant to be a “Whitest Hands” version of Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye.” In that book, Pecola Breedlove — a young black girl — is convinced that her life would right itself if only she had long, blond hair, white skin, and the bluest of eyes. This image is a startling alarm to wake us from internalizing the myth of white supremacy and the reality of racism, which has led us to blind, deafen, silence, even choke ourselves.”
Cultural Amnesia
I’ve had a lot of conversations lately, across age, politics, and proximity. One thing keeps coming up: many white people want to do something. Now. There’s urgency, confusion, frustration, and a sincere desire to help. What I keep noticing, though, is how often that urgency skips over memory.
Cultural amnesia is part of how anti-racism becomes performative. And it’s deeply tethered to white privilege.
In 2017, I flew back east to attend the Women’s March in Washington, D.C.. Early that day, the Mothers of the Movement took the stage alongside Janelle Monáe. Together they led a call-and-response to Monáe’s song Hell You Talmbout, chanting the names of Sandra Bland, Natasha McKenna, and Tanisha Anderson.
Then Monáe turned to the mothers themselves. “Say your baby’s name,” she said. First came the mother of Jordan Davis, who was murdered in 2012, at a gas station in Jacksonville, Fla., following an argument over loud music. Eric Garner's mother was next. Her son was killed by police on Staten Island in 2014 on suspicion of selling "loosies" (individual cigarettes). Trayvon Martin's mother, whose son was fatally shot by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, in Sanford, Fla., came after. They were followed by the mothers of Mohamed Bah, whose son was killed by New York City police in 2012, and Dontre Hamilton, shot in 2014 by Milwaukee police officers.
I fell to my knees. I thought about my own sons. I told myself that I would join the fight against police brutality.
And then I didn’t.
I moved on. I stopped watching. I let the feeling recede. I chose, quietly, to stand by.
That’s cultural amnesia. And it’s something white people are especially practiced at.
If there’s a first step, it’s this: not forgetting when the moment passes. Not smoothing over racial discomfort or explaining it away. Building the stamina to stay present—to remain accountable—after the headlines fade.
(Watch the Mothers of the Movement and Janelle Monáe at the 2017 Women’s March.)
Uncomfortable Truths
What do we do when our empathy turns out to be temporary? When our outrage inconsistent?
Cultural critic Jenna Wortham has asked whether white people are willing to sit with that question. Not just do Black lives matter when they are taken? but How they matter when they are lived?
How do we contend with a system that allows Black people to be displaced from their neighborhoods, incarcerated at rates higher than Black South Africans under apartheid, and impoverished at nearly three times the rate of white Americans?
Some facts that are hard to sit with:
From 2013–2017, white patients in the U.S. received better healthcare than roughly 40% of Black, Hispanic, and Native American patients.
Black women are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women, even at similar income and education levels.
Black men receive sentences nearly 20% longer than white men convicted of the same crimes.
Black Americans are twice as likely to be unemployed, and when employed earn about 25% less than white peers.
(Data from DoSomething.org)
Maps
Angela Davis has argued for prison abolition since the 1960s, pointing out that we repeatedly criminalize poverty, addiction, homelessness, and mental illness—treating symptoms while leaving root causes untouched.
In 1976, the Prison Research Education Action Project outlined an “attrition model” for abolition built on three principles: moratorium, decarceration, and excarceration.
Earlier still, Kwame Ture warned that race cannot be “forgotten” until its weight is fully reckoned with. And in 1857, Frederick Douglass reminded us that progress has never come without struggle, sacrifice, and sustained effort.
Audre Lorde later cautioned that survival is not theoretical—and that the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.
More recently, Roxane Gay, when asked what to do about white friends who refuse to acknowledge privilege, answered simply: get new friends.
Witness
At the close of her performance that day, Monáe urged the crowd to choose freedom over fear. “We are watching,” she said.
To watch knowingly, to refuse forgetting, is to place the murders of Stephon Clark, Botham Jean, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd within a longer history:
against the backdrop of slavery
alongside the murder of Emmett Till
in the shadow of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing
Witnessing is not spectacle. It is memory. It means context. It means refusing the comfort of distance.
Know the history. Live consciously with uncomfortable truths. Remember, especially when it would be easier not to. And when you can, challenge yourself and the people you love to do the same.
(Read more on witnessing and the public, unbearable grief of Black mothers.)
Bye for Now
Next post in two weeks.
In the meantime, email me at drcarala@gmail.com. Because…SO. MUCH. LOVE.
