The smiling avatars and friendly profile pictures that accompany my social profiles are oftentimes a mask.
The posts laden with exclamation marks and displays of joy, the sharing of business triumphs and new product launches and entrepreneurial achievements, encouraging messages and status updates touting hope and the carefully curated sharing of personal struggles are sometimes very, very inauthentic to how I am truly feeling.
Because in many of those moments, the moments I allow you to see this varnished, polished version of me, where I am hoping you associate me with good times and positive vibes and happiness — I am not happy.
I am angry.
After a lifetime of witnessing abject injustice, unequal access to opportunity, and tacit compliance and normalization of prejudice and xenophobia and racism — I have become what I most feared.
I am an angry black man.
I am someone born with an incredible, unending emotional reservoir of hope and optimism. I have the ability to laser focus on goals and objectives, denying myself instant gratification with an eye towards future wins and down-the-road achievements. Such is the mental makeup of any successful entrepreneur, business professional, artist, entertainer, anyone who creates, anyone who is a maker, a facilitator, a bridge builder.
I pride myself on being an immovable, indefatigable source of guidance and support for many people, family, friends, colleagues, co-workers. I am that rock. I never waver, and many times its because I know how many people are depending on me and looking to me to show leadership, restraint and sobriety of thought and decision-making at any given moment.
The life I have built is my choice. I would have it no other way. It’s all I know.
But I have censored myself my entire adult life. Because of fear. Fear that my access to opportunity, fear that my struggle to create a legacy for my family can be snuffed out and sullied at any moment.
Being “liked” and having positivity associated with me is a big part of my personal brand. As it is for many men and women of color trying to navigate the business world. An unspoken consequence of this is a promise of silence.
Don’t make people feel too uncomfortable.
You might offend people.
Live to fight another day.
Pick your battles.
But I can no longer be silent and complicit. The silence about the massive injustices and inequalities that pervade our society angers me.
This silence comes from fear. So many people I know and grew up with and work with and laugh with and break bread with are silent because they are afraid to speak up, to rock the boat, to upset the apple cart, to challenge the status quo.
But what is this status quo that we are all accepting? It’s not peaceful. It’s not one of justice.
It’s simply uneasy quiet.
It’s knowing the game is rigged, but feeling powerless and thinking that your voice could not possibly make a difference, so grudgingly accepting and resigning yourself to “this is just the way things are.”
As someone who is an entrepreneur, a problem solver, I refuse to accept that, to grudgingly resign myself to this grim reality.
I hear so much anguish about buildings burning and civil unrest and law and order — but not enough anguish about the destruction of real life human beings. Real people who are dying. Viral videos the equivalent of snuff films being transmitted across social media seemingly daily at this point.
From so many I simply hear “what is happening in our society?”
“Why is racism getting worse?”
It’s not getting worse. It’s always been this way. We just have nowhere to hide anymore. We are all connected. It is in our faces.
Will Smith poignantly said that “racism isn’t getting worse — it’s getting filmed!”
Police brutality and the targeting of black men and women is real. Anti-black racism is real. It has lasted for centuries. There is psychic trauma that exists because of this history. I have experienced it. I have lived it.
When I was 12 — I was picked up by the police while riding my bike on my way home. They threw me in the back of a cruiser and rushed me to the scene of a neighbourhood robbery, pulling me out the car and asking the owner of the home if he recognized me. The home owner looked at me, and then looked at them with incredulity, and then reminded them that who he had witnessed breaking into his home were grown men — not a small black child. The police barely apologized and unceremoniously dropped me off where they had picked me up. My bike was gone. But that didn’t matter in that moment. I ran home, feeling fear and shame and helplessness.
Why did I have to experience this unnecessary interaction with law enforcement so early in my life?
On the morning of July 16, 1999 — a day I will never forget — the police loudly forced themselves into our home. My father was in his den, doing some writing and working from home for the day. My brother was in the living room, playing video games and relaxing. I was in the basement, fast asleep.
I woke up to a SWAT team in our house, tearing up the place, guns drawn and yelling commands. One officer came down to the basement and woke me up, a shotgun trained to my face as he bellowed for me to get up and leave the basement and go to the side of the house.
I look back at this moment, waking up to shotgun in my face, as a moment where I could have so easily become a statistic, mere collateral damage in this long brutal history.
But I wanted to live. I instinctively knew that one small mistake, one unfortunate move would end up with me being blown away.
With my hands in the air, groggy and confused, I summoned every ounce of courage in me and calmly asked the officer if I could put some clothes on before leaving, to which he agreed while urging me to hurry up. I carefully pulled on some sweatpants and a tee, and then began what seemed like the longest ascent up the stairs to the side of the house, aware of the barrel of the gun pressing painfully into my back.
Once I got to the side of the house, the pathway between the house and the garage, I joined my father and my brother, who were both also being held at gunpoint.
The officers screamed commands at us, at the top of their lungs, the entire time. They held us in our home for almost 4 hours before relenting, before it became clear that they had the wrong people in their custody, that what was happening was in fact an egregious violation of the basic human rights of law-abiding citizens.
On our own property.
In our own home.
Unbeknownst to us, what had happened in the wee hours of that morning, miles away from us would become the catalyst for what is still a moment of incredible trauma for my family. On the morning of July 16, 1999, the police happened to be transporting a prisoner in a police van when things turned deadly. In a brazen, desperate bid to escape his circumstances, the prisoner somehow got loose in the van, caused the officers in the van to stop the vehicle, wrestled with one of them and drew one of the officers handguns, shot at him, and then ran into the thick of a residential neighbourhood. A manhunt ensued.
I have no idea what ever became of that prisoner, but nevertheless the lives of my father, my older brother and myself were in grave jeopardy for several hours that day because of the entrenched perception associated with people who look like us.
For those hours, we were presumed criminals, our home ripped apart like we were animals, our dignity stripped from us.
I have never committed a crime in my life. I have no criminal record. Yet I can point to a long history of unnecessary interactions with the police simply because of what I look like, the amount of melanin I possess in my skin.
I have shared two stories with you here. There are many, many more. Every single black person, almost every single person of color, has a story like this. Or several. If you happen to have a person of color in your life, your friend, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your husband or wife, and you have never had this conversation — have the conversation.
Ask them.
What more do we need see to realize there is a problem in our system, in our society? Men and women who look like me are getting their doors kicked in, getting shot in the back or the chest or the head, knees on our necks as life is drained from us for everyone to see.
This needs to end. It’s 2020. It has been decades. It has been centuries. As a new era dawns, we have to realize the pain that is being held deeply within so many of us.
I made the decision when I was a child, witnessing all of this, that I did not just want to merely survive. That my life, this incredible life that I am so lucky to have, is worthy of more than mere survival.
I made the decision that I wanted to THRIVE.
In this capitalist paradigm, thriving means business ownership. It means mastering and investing in the stock market. It means buying and owning real estate.
These are opportunities that are closed off to so, so many people while a blanket of uneasy peace prevails over everything.
As Trevor Noah said a couple days ago, as citizens we are all abiding by a social contract, one in which we promise to not create unrest, we promise to keep the peace, we promise to get up every morning and go to work, to attempt to survive while also striving to thrive.
This social contract can only be upheld if those leading us, those we have elected into positions to legislate and create policy, those that we trust to “serve and protect us” hold up their end of the bargain, this unspoken contract.
Working in digital media forces me to read thousands of comments every week from people who have not taken any time to understand other perspectives, to understand the daily struggles of people that they share this continent and this globe with.
I say to anyone reading this who is not a person of color, who is not a visible minority, that the time has come. It is not enough to be simply silent, neutral or “not racist” at this climactic moment in history. If you cannot be vocal, if you cannot be actively anti-racist — at this moment in history — all I can do is wish you peace in your heart and hope that you do educate yourself and seek perspective.
The reason people are rioting in the streets of almost every major city on this continent right is because no one has been listening. It’s been building up for decades.We need to talk about this as a society. A lot of people who look like me are walking around deeply, deeply in pain — with zero outlet to express what is happening to us internally.
Things will get better. Gam Ze Yavor. This Too Shall Pass. But this is a hard time right now mentally and emotionally. And the deafening silence from “the majority” who just want things to “get back to normal” is now tantamount to no less than psychic violence.
I see you all as brothers and sisters. It’s time for us all to see each other, regardless of skin colour, or sexual orientation, or level of wealth, or ability of body or status of mental health. I needed to say this, to write these words, to express these feelings and emotions.
What has changed in me is that I am no longer afraid. I will no longer censor myself, so concerned about being liked and accepted and celebrated. If this makes you uncomfortable to be my friend, or my colleague, or my business partner, to buy my products and services — I have nothing left for you but the truth and I wish you well.
We all bleed red. We all want the same things. To live a good life. To not just merely survive — but to thrive.
Uneasy silence is no longer acceptable.
