Sunday, September 6, 2020

The Cost

As a generality I would venture to say black men never want to be martyrs.  However, the almost daily public execution of black men has created martyrs of many men without their permission.  The frequency at which this is happening, I am embarrassed to say, has rendered me numb to the news of another black man’s death.  See at one point, a small part of me used to die when I heard that a black man met his death in a senseless manner and it somehow got blasted into my consciousness.  I would spiritually, intellectually and emotionally mourn his passing as if I knew him, when in fact our only connectivity was race, gender and the news.  I would chide the collective community for what I considered our collective carelessness and normalizing his death because I wanted to live, and no matter who he was or what he did I am sure that on his worst day or in his worst moment he did too. 

 

Fast forward to now and my spirit has intersected with the Law of Self Preservation and the Law has won; which suggests that I cut off that which may harm me, and the weightiness of black men dying is a lot to bear. Now you add law enforcement to the mix of participants, and the ask becomes entirely too much.  At least for me.  What’s more grim and heavier relative to law enforcement is the movie-like appeal their role in the death of black men has taken on (Cops = Good Guys, Black Men = Bad Guys).  The implications and permanence of good guys versus bad guys and the death of said bad guy being uploaded almost daily to my psyche has created a cycle of social confusion that I just can’t/refuse to carry around. 

 

I would venture to say death at the hands of those who may have some real or imagined beef is one thing, but layer in those who took an oath to protect and serve and it becomes akin to the Chinese torture method of lingchi (death by a thousand cuts).  Therefore, as a means of coping I chose to mentally check out and preserve ME instead of waiting and watching while I die a spiritual and emotional slow death. 

 

This is not to say I have become or intend to become any less of a conscious objector to the spiritual, intellectual and social genocide that is playing out before me.  I just had to make a choice and the frequency of those thousand cuts made me rethink my collective actions.  What does that mean or what does that look like I am not sure, but what I do know is it doesn’t look like me clicking on or watching every tragic story about a black man dying.  I simply don’t have room at the inn for that.  

 


That’s my truth and I AM sticking to it…

 


Dr. Irvin PeDro Cohen

 

Friday, June 5, 2020

Truth as I See It

The discernment of truth from fiction has never been as arduous a task as it seems to be these days.  Outside of the human element to flower the truth, the flowering of the truth as manufactured by artificial intelligence has made discernment and truth seeking a conscious task.  So much so that there are articles that focus solely on “Best Practices” for discovering the truth. 

Imagine the work one must go through in every aspect of his or her life to get to the point of making intelligent decisions based upon facts.  Also take into account that according to research humans make upwards of 35,000 decisions a day.  I don’t know about you, but I want to have some universal truths around certain aspects of my life.  I want to believe without much thought that the food that I eat, the air I breathe, the institutions I depend upon (government, religious, etc.) are operating with my best interest at heart and truth is at core of those entities.

I frame this particular musing in light of truth because what the recent protesting has brought to bear is how many of my white brethren have been vested in facts that simply are not grounded in truth.  See what the deaths of Armaud Arbery, George Floyd and Brianna Taylor’s death has shown white people is the ghost of race and racism that black people see are real and are not just figments of a time gone by.  It has made plain that people of color complaints of a systematic ideology based solely upon the color of one’s skin can both be a cause of death and or an economic barrier. 

However, if there was a silver lining to the issues of today is the fact that when I look at the front lines of the revolution there seems to be a shared responsibility in terms of moving humanity forward.  Which brings me back to truth.  What the revolution has further done is made my white brothers and sisters look in the mirror and juxtapose the untruths their parents have been raised to believe about black and brown people against the truths they as young adults have grown to know for themselves.  It’s hard to justify death and systematic inequality when you see it in real time and right before your eyes.  

While white supremacy spun at its unconscious normal rate the pandemic slowed the world down to a crawl.   Making the entire world acknowledge separate and unequal treatment, particularly here in America.  While a resolution is still TBD that will quell the Negrophobia that has gripped the country for over 400 years what is happening now makes some of us hopeful.  At the very least it gives those that went on before me solace that at least the revolution moved from Soutel to San Marco and from Auburn Ave to the doors of CNN.

That’s My Truth and I AM sticking to It…

I AM 

Dr. Irvin PeDro Cohen