I came out at school today.
It’s stressful every time and it normally consist of me having a normal conversation with someone I’m getting to know. I’m about to relate to them about some trivial nuance of life when the weight of disclosure settles in around my words. How long can I go without slipping and using the pronoun “she” to describe my “partner” and do I really want to laboriously edit my contribution to the conversation as I’m speaking? The answer is inevitably “no”. Often I try to casually refer to my “girl friend” and continue along as though I’m not bracing for a sudden shift in their perception of me.
Sometimes, however, I simply decide to not to speak. The haunting emptiness of pretending not to exist as you are has but one silver lining. It protects you from people who stop seeing your humanity once they know your identity.

The truth is I’m never totally in the closet. I never misrepresent who I am when asked. But I am very aware of every first disclosure I make to a person and sometimes I choose not to. Even among a few long time acquaintances my identity is often a polite secret we keep from each other. Like a silent mutual agreement that it’s unkind of me to make them reevaluate their moral perception of the world around them.
Implicitly agreeing that your existence is rude is a bad message to send yourself but one always has to choose ones battles and sometimes pressing the issue is not worth the fallout. More importantly, sometimes not disclosing buys you enough time for others to see your full humanity.

Tonight I am haunted by the horrible duality of having witnessed another persons humanity laid bare and knowing it’s still somehow invisible to others.
Another shooting of an unarmed black person. This time in my town.
He was mentally ill and his sister called 911 to help get him to safety. Instead the police showed up and shot him to death.

We can argue the particulars of this case just like every other but the pattern which emerges day after day (and is well documented decade after decade) is that we perceive unarmed black civilians as an a threat and when we act with deadly force we cite our fear as justification.
When I think about black people in this country I think about my friends and family members. My step father, sisters, brother, aunts, and cousins who don’t live near but aren’t ever far from my heart.

When I introduce myself to another person for the first time I have the option to buy time so they can see me as a human before they see me as a stereotype.
This isn’t true for my family.
When I call the police I’m never mistaken for the suspect. I wasn’t raised with the understanding that the police may kill me at a routine traffic stop.
I don’t have to live with that terror and then witness our societies collective agreement that it’s all perfectly reasonable in context.
This isn’t true for my family.

There is generally a hostile response to bringing this kind of thing up.
As though calling for police training in de-escalation, better mental health services, and holding abusive cops responsible is somehow bad for police and bad for white people.

But we have an obligation to speak up about institutionalized racism and police brutality. We have an obligation to find better solutions because it’s unbearable to hear another woman say “I call you guys to come help. Not to kill my brother!”.

#AlfredOlango #NotOneMore