Grieving Ahmaud Arbrey: How White Allies Can Provide Comfort

Warning: This communication is not meant for the masses of White America. It is designed to produce a paradigm-shift, thus, only a precious few will understand the concepts collected in this essay. If you exist in a white-body this lifetime and self-identify as an ally, please continue reading. If you are in a reactionary mind-set, defending the self-image given to you through American socialization, then, this communication is going to trigger you.

With news of Ahmaud Arbery’s murder by two Georgian white men, right now, emotion is boiling within the nervous systems of Black and Brown-bodied persons inside the United States of America. Let’s call that emotional current: collective grief.

The collective grief we are experiencing is the trauma bond which unites young and old; it makes us tribe. (For those white bodied persons new to discussions about race, racism and whiteness, I use Black therapist Resmaa Menakem’s vocabulary for speaking about and to the subject of race. His vocabulary currently has the least amount of emotional charge.)

What I am experiencing does not have correspondence inside the lived experience of white-bodied persons.

Can you intellectually conceive of what I am stating? Yes. You can easily go into your memory and bring up a lived experience where you felt GRIEF over a loss.

What I am experiencing is beyond that.

What I am experiencing is not abstract.

What I am feeling is not a memory.

What I am experiencing is immediate. It is affecting me and affecting you.

What I am experiencing is a FEAR of your presence. I am experiencing a FEAR of white bodies and white skin and white laughter and white nonchalance.

What I am experiencing is the actual fact you cannot feel what I am feeling.

It is the knee-jerk reaction from white women to not be perceived as an oppressor.

It is the knee-jerk reaction from white men to not be perceived as an oppressor.

It is the search for common ground where the white bodied person does not feel bad about being in a white body - that part - is the most aggravating part about racial trauma and the grief it inspires.

You, in a white body, cannot “share” in the grief I am experiencing about white bodies.

When you watch the video of Ahmaud Arbery being murdered, you see a person being killed in the video; like it is a movie, or a video game. In contrast, I see myself being killed in that video.

You, in your white body, do not see yourself driving the truck.

You do not see yourself walking up to Ahmaud.

You do not see yourself pulling the trigger.

You do not see yourself getting back into your truck.

You do not see yourself driving over Ahmaud’s body.

I do.

That is what I am “managing” in my nervous system. It is the lack of connection the average white person in America - a population of approximately 198 million Americans - has with white racial violence. It rubs salt into the wound.

To your defense, you, in your white body, do feel something!

Is this fear? Yes.

It is a kind of fear. In the white American body, I can see how fear is the closest emotional current to “name” when race, racism and whiteness are brought up by the media or a person in your life who possesses race.

The difference is: this “kind” of fear extends beyond my personal nervous system. My reaction is visceral, overriding my will, no matter how developed and disciplined I am.

Two generations ago when Minister Malcolm X and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. walked the earth, our beautiful public intellectual named James Baldwin stated that “black paranoia” is not a figment of his imagination, or mine. It is a real fear generated from not having agency over our own bodies; my body is at the whim of a white bodied person remaining in a certain mental state in direct relationship to my body. Too much agitation inside the white nervous system, from my sending any body language signals that I am acting outside of the roles programmed for me to occupy inside the white nervous system, and I lose all rights and freedoms to my body. I cease to be human, like the white nervous system views itself as human. I am the Other.

And, I have to be the Other gracefully because the white bodied person cannot “hold” the knowledge that I know I am oppressed.

I know I am oppressed.

This concept inspires chills, apparently, up and down the spine of white bodied persons who walk this edge.

I learned at a young age, the average white bodied person, who is choosing to interact with me, does not wish to be treated as if they possess race - as if they possess any connection to the two white men who killed me on video. The idea of racial connection to other white bodied persons is too much for the average white person to “embody.” They are not strong enough.

When painted with the broad brush of race, the white bodied person has a sane, mentally healthy response to their individual self being labelized and falsely categorized. They angrily react to their personality and individuality being erased.

Allow me to suggest that interacting with white people, while still grieving racial trauma, is my individuality being erased.

This concept does not appear to have purchase in the collective white mind. It is a fleeting mentation. The concept of my grief affecting my relationships with white bodied persons passes through the ears of my friends and white family - and no lived experience, no memory, exists to connect them to how impotent I feel to protect myself from you: who are living in a white body.

So, what do I want you to do?

Please do not police how Black and Brown bodied persons in your life are processing their racial trauma. “Let” them be fully human and experience the entire rage of emotional expression when processing the experience of being the Other. Consider it a gift the Black and Brown bodied persons feel “safe” enough, in front of your white body, to process their emotions at such a level of raw intensity.

Please listen to Black and Brown bodied persons. Not listen with your head. Listening with your head is going to start the pre-programmed tapes of self-defense given to you by American socialization. Listen with your body. Allow yourself to feel what it is like to be perceived as a white bodied person. The culture of individualism inspires dissociation. Choose to not dissociate. Choose to stay in your body and experience WHAT your whiteness means.

Journal what comes up for you. Engage in a spiritual practice and settle yourself. Please do not “react,” or process your emotions with the Black and Brown bodied persons in your life.

When you have processed your emotions, find another white bodied person you trust and share what came up for you. Speak directly to the feelings you have related to race/racism/whiteness in the face of Black and Brown-bodied grief.

The words to discuss race/racism/whiteness escape the average white bodied American because the conversation is not had. Talk about race is silenced - tone policed within individualism culture. The white fragility Dr. Robin DiAngelo points towards, the intense emotional reaction, proves this. What I am asking you to do is be brave enough to withstand this initial trauma response.

Why do I want you to do this? Because this is the only way we have found to GIVE white bodied persons an experience with race/racism/whiteness. White community organizer, Saul Alinsky taught a person cannot be organized outside their lived experience. You and I must give them said experience. Once they have said experience, then, the person has some “thing” within them to connect an idea too.

I do not know what happens next because what I am suggesting has never happened in America. Not in a coordinated, strategic manner.

Thank you for choosing to read these few words. May you take my suggestion to heart and do what is asked.

As for me, I am available for teaching, as it is a necessary act of survival upon my part. I am going to ask that you follow up by contacting me at royalstar907@gmail.com.