What it means to stay woke for racial justice for George Floyd

Staying woke to racial justice became a “thing” over the past few years, especially after the death of Freddie Gray in April 2015 and continued [police] violence against Black bodies captured on video. In the past 12 months it became a “super thing” because of the killing of George Floyd and continued violence against Black bodies. Today, May 25 2021, is the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s killing. It’s a day of reckoning of whether we will continue to wake up for racial justice for Mr. Floyd, Mr. Gray, Ms. Jones, Ms.Bland and the known and unknown others who have been unjustly persecuted and killed with the support of the police state.

This is the intention that we must carry: I will stay woke for racial justice.

We must stay woke even while the #Black Lives Matter rhetoric from the colonized spaces continue to crack open and reveal the superficial actions of White Supremacy over the past year. We must stay woke even while we’re “returning to normal” [after 14 months of a pandemic that claimed almost 3.5 million lives worldwide].

In these past 14 months some reflected on the value of Black lives because of the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on those who are working poor, non-white, and essential workers. Almost 3 months into this pandemic we saw George Floyd’s body being disposed of callously, collectively. Because we were already vulnerable and unrooted from our normally distracted and sleepwalking minds, we paused, and the images of Black death and Black protest made an impression. There were sufficient conditions at play in our society to allow a collective engagement with the history of violence against Black people. We caught a glimpse, an opening, into an America that was reckoning with its nursemaid of White Supremacy. In some corners it seemed the nursemaid was being asked: “why did you rear me this way?” Eyes were “seeing” the truth of our inhumanity against each other, against the “other”, against all that was not white.

On the anniversary of George Floyd’s killing and 14 months into a pandemic, almost 50% of the US has been vaccinated against COVID19-the virus causing the pandemic. And while this may protect us from being infected with the virus while we resume our normal busy way of being in the world, it also supports us falling back to sleep to racial justice. During the pandemic many of us had to stop our normal lives and quarantine, we slowed down. And in this pause we had more time to be kind to ourselves and to see ourselves in others. We began to wake up to what was in front of us-the birdsong and the less polluted air; and the racial violence against Black and Brown bodies. And many joined the protest against white supremacy. The vaccine may allow us to resume our busy lives. But this business numbs us to seeing each other as ourselves. The vaccine in effect also immunizes us against feeling kindness and compassion for ourselves and for others, immunizes us against being woke.

We have been vaccinated against our heart continuing to open. Our busy lives inhibit the maturation of the heart actions of our humanity. As we resume our fast-paced lives we also resume our selfishness, our greed and want to stop this ‘nonsense’ of racial equity and seeing our interconnection with each other. In fact, in spaces of power we think that we should return to business as usual- the distracted minds and closed hearts nourished by moving too fast and consuming so much we could not see each ourselves in each other.

This is a call out to all those whose heart broke open during these past 12 months: don’t close it back up. Keep feeling that trauma of racism and ignorance as this forces us to find ways to heal and understand our collective history of racial injustices and its legacy, so we can recover ourselves. This call out is to all of us who, over the past 12-14 months, have managed to look at the person on the street begging for support and asked: why?

Don’t go back to sleep. The right evolution of our humanity depends on our collective awakening. Stay woke, whatever it takes.