Guest Post: Scenes From The Underground

Dear White People,

Can I have your full attention as your brown skinned equal as part of the music scene, and life in general?

We need to talk about this week.

The public, and brutal police murder of George Floyd in MN has been on everyone’s lips, eyes and hearts. We’ve seen this narrative play out so many times over the past few years-racist ass cops taking their hatred out on camera; defending their defilement of brown bodies; a family left to mourn often many times-the loss of a loved one killed publicly for simply existing in a deeper skin tone, and the fact they may never get the justice they deserve thanks to a system that was never designed to protect black and brown folks in the first place.

Needless to say, black folks are exhausted.

I am tired.

And while I am thankful for so many white friends and allies speaking up, we need you to do more.

Those of you doing the work to be better are what I’m gonna call the “awake.” You know what’s happening, you stand with us and even share the “Why does this keep happening? This isn’t fair” narrative.

And that’s great, but we need you to take your allyship deeper. Phone calls are great, donating is great, having the hard and rough convos are great, but we may need you to do more. We may ask you to come to a rally/protest, or we may need you to read a book that’s gonna rattle you a bit or we may ask you to simply let us talk.

Uninterrupted.

Now don’t mistake this for emotional labor. These are different things. You are simply holding space and making space for us to vent, which in this world, we need more than ever. We need the safety in our friend groups, work peers and the like. 

Otherwise our experiences are going unheard yet again.

The next group(s) are the “asleep” and “sleep paralyzed” and honestly this group is not only the most dangerous, but this group is the most exhaustive. This includes people who think it’s cool to make casually racist jokes, refer to folks of color as “thugs,” drop their white tears when their privilege is challenged, and ask dismissive things like “Why does everything have to be about race,” or “I don’t see color!”

This group needs to move to the awake group. However, some folks here are lost causes.

They know, or may unknowingly know EXACTLY how their privilege works and it’s benefits, and don’t want to dismantle a racist status quo.

Again, this is dangerous for many reasons. It’s this thinking that emboldened Amy Cooper to call the cops, and lie on camera about a black man in Central Park this week.

And don’t be mistaken either….what happened to George Floyd is what Amy wanted to happen to Christian Cooper. Thankfully, he’s alive and she’s lost her job, her dog and her reputation thanks to her awful actions. Yet, this is only one of the few cases where justice is served in OUR favor.

I’ll end with this, in order to dismantle a system that was built, and still UPHOLDING hundreds of years later, the work must be done continuously and not stopped.

It’s a heart check, a mind check and overall a test to make sure we all stay awake and on guard. 

Too many lives are one the line for those of us that care to fall asleep.

In solidarity,

Krystal M.

Scenes From the Underground