Guest Blogger~ Hashim Bello~Risk Something

Introducing my beloved big brother Hashim.  The feeler.  The thinker.  A brilliant genius of a man. Yes, he was in college by 16.  As you’ll read in this moving piece, he’s a grandfather, an attorney and a man living in American, experiencing this ‘new abnormal’ that we all are dealing with. 

We don’t often hear from our guys.  I’m honored to be able to share Hashim’s writing as it relates to institutional racism, the protests, the unjustified killing of our people, COVID-19 and his daughter and family’s recent move to Minnesota.  You can follow him here.

Risk Something

by Hashim Bello

I know no one asked, but sharing anyway. 

My eyes are burning and have been for almost a week. I am dehydrated, despite excessive consumption of water. I am tired. I cannot sleep and when I do sleep I cannot rest. My daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren are in the midst of a move to right outside Minneapolis. A dear friend’s husband has to spend nights guarding his business. A Black friend, and her Black husband, both who support the very real purpose of the protests..  The implications reave my mind and twist my inside in knots. And yet, so it is, this life in America.

I’m just a mom. A wife. A teacher. Paused. Thinking. Sharing.

Hashim Bello

 And yet, in the midst of this and all the other recent similar events, I still go to the job and overperform just so that I can maybe offset the preset expectation that those who look like me underperform. These days, I read my email 2 extra times, to make sure the rage in my heart does not bleed through in any way more than being slightly more clipped than usual. Because in corporate America, while sympathies to my plight are acceptable, rage about my plight are certainly not, particularly from faces like mine. Thank goodness for a job, but thank each guardian spirit and force the universe over that I am working from home. Because. The. Tears. Won’t. Stop. F****g. Falling.

And it isn't just this, or today, or the latest killing, or the decades of killings, and so on. It is a lifetime of wondering who cares and who doesn't, who even tries to understand. It is every friendship with faces on the other side of the privilege line being peppered with the extra concerns about motive, having to decide whether to laugh at that joke that almost maybe sort of crossed the line, having to choose whether to be angry, again, about this other thing. It is about feeling the world pressing me into a smaller and smaller box each day of my (still relatively privileged) life. It is about survivor's guilt, and pretender's guilt, and rage. Most certainly about rage. 

I know of no active racists on my timeline or in my life, but I know too many people who are silent in the face of the continued suffering of people like me. I know too many who signal their guilt then return to their privilege as though the problems are solved. They probably aren't racist, but maybe racism-agnostic or “race-blind”,and that is, ultimately, the same damn thing.

So, if you are not doing something, giving something, saying something, and risking something, you have no f**cking clue and quite honestly you have no f*cking care. 

I hope this provokes at least one of you to consider your real stand. But, as you consider your stand, be honest. Let the degree of risk you are willing to entertain demonstrate the care you hold. 

My sole request: If you don't care, stay the hell out of the way. 

And, if this offends you, definitely stay out of MY way. Because every day I walk the streets in my skin, I risk something.

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