Seeing is Believing

"The events in Birmingham... have so increased the cries for equality that no city or state or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them.” – John F. Kennedy (June 19, 1963)

I wasn’t there.

Not yet.

But I’ve read about it

In US history texts

At the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Civil Rights Memorial

On Wikipedia

and in so many novels and autobiographies

that I no longer can name them.

Images of nonviolent Black protesters

Being firehosed

Attacked by dogs

Shot at

by the police.

 

They say these images

Provoked the conscience of a nation

to revolt against segregation

and the long history

of white supremacy.

Or as the NY Daily News put it nearly fifty years later

“eight days…tore at America’s conscience”

with “television cameras covering the drama

broadcasting

brutality

to the rest of the country”

Becoming a “catalyst for social change.”

 

30 years later

I watched

as video

of police brutally attacking Rodney King

repeatedly played

across the screen of my dorm TV.

It was the first time

my privileged white eyes

saw the truth laid bare –

The legacy of slavery

Alive

Well

Thriving,

Not vanquished

by broadcasts of brutality

when my parents were

my age.

 

I’d say it has to happen each generation

to counter the narrative of progress

taught in schools

and regurgitated thoughtlessly

on programs created by people

who look like me

to make others

who look like me

feel like we

are not the problem

Because the problem is past.

Festering only

in a few bad apples.

 

But it’s clear

given the proliferation of videos

of assassinations

Lynchings

Assaults

that cross my screen

as I scroll through social media

Seeing hasn’t engendered believing.

Each time the cry of shock

Reverberates

for a few days

as we express outrage

and outpouring of support

self-reflection

a promise to do better

To never

Ever

Let this happen again.

Until the next video surfaces

And we do it all again.

 

We’ve seen plenty.

The evidence is there

to convict

US

of a psychopathic desire

to destroy Black lives

even as we rely on them

for our very survival.

 

White people make justice blind.

Because if seeing

is believing,

She’d have condemned us all

to rot in jail

centuries ago.