It’s Hard To Be Both American and Black

There’s an essay in my drafts folder that’s eight years old. Currently, it’s about an 11-min read with one page of citations. It’s one of the pieces I return to, every few months or so, to jot down a few observations. Stray thoughts. When I started it, I told myself I wouldn’t publish it off the cuff. Couldn’t edit it when I was angry. Or depressed. No, this piece would be polished. No weak spots where a person could set tenterhooks and stretch the meaning until the flesh tore. The only published piece I’ve treated remotely similiarly was this 13-min personal essay. <h2><a href="https://humanparts.medium.com/the-trauma-is-at-this-address-50e3d65428c7?source=post_page-----4ebf2249baaf--------------------------------" rel="noopener follow" target="_blank">The Trauma Is at This Address</a></h2> <h3><a href="https://humanparts.medium.com/the-trauma-is-at-this-address-50e3d65428c7?source=post_page-----4ebf2249baaf--------------------------------" rel="noopener follow" target="_blank">How it feels to watch your family suffer and die, over and over</a></h3> <a href="https://humanparts.medium.com/the-trauma-is-at-this-address-50e3d65428c7?source=post_page-----4ebf2249baaf--------------------------------" rel="noopener follow" target="_blank">humanparts.medium.com</a> That essay stayed as a draft for almost three years for the same reasons. Not many of us like to present our bruises for further poking, prodding, and pain for no purpose, and I’m only slightly different. I show the bruises I want to show. Unveiling your pain on a public forum and being told to toughen up when a knife is twisted in the barely-healing wounds is, quite frankly, useless. It doesn’t help you. It doesn’t help the people hurting you. It doesn’t sew flesh-and-blood back onto bones. It doesn’t give families their flesh-and-blood back. The wound throbs and itches. <a href="https://medium.com/counterarts/its-hard-to-be-both-american-and-black-4ebf2249baaf">Website</a>