The Threat of Being

Imagine you're a single working mother. You need to work as an office cleaner to support your child and your daycare voucher has been rejected. You need daycare because if your child is unsupervised you will be arrested and charged with being a bad mother. So you pack up your diapers, bottles, 10-20 lbs of supplies, your baby, and maybe a stroller. You head down the social service office. Your baby just turned 1. This is a work day, but you have no other options. The office is small and packed with irritable people. There are no open seats, and no one offers you there. So you sit on the floor with your baby, your bags, etc. You're not blocking the door, you're out of the way. You wait for 1 hr, 2 hrs. You wait 4 hours in the office. No one tries to expedite your wait in consideration for your 1-year-old child or the fact that you're sitting on the floor. The security guard demands that you stand with your baby, your bags, your supplies, and other things while waiting for another 1, 2, 3, or 4 hours? You're not sure how long you will have to wait, but standing is not really a good option. You refuse. No one offers you a seat, no one tries to speed up your paperwork, or offer aid. Instead, the security guards call the police on you for sitting on the floor with your baby and baby supplies. The police threaten you and say you have to leave. But you just spent half of the day sitting on the floor in the hopes of seeing someone. And you need to work. And you need those vouchers to work. And you just want to see someone who can help you out. But now people are shouting at you, trying to rip your baby out of your hands, cell phone cameras are filming you as you scream for help. But no one helps you. You are arrested. Your baby is taken away from. You end up at Riker's Island...for sitting on the floor so you could get daycare vouchers so you could work. You are stripped of your clothes, given a prison uniform, and number. You get a cell. Bail is impossible and you can't afford an attorney. You are charged with felonies and spend several days in prison. You are no longer allowed to see your baby. If you had a cleaning job, you have probably lost it by now. You will have a record. It all seems absurd and impossible.

Now imagine you're a black woman. And this situation isn't absurd. It actually happens all the time. It happens on the same day a Black nurse had the police called on her for checking on a patient...while wearing hospital scrubs and a stethoscope. Imagine you are a black security shot and killed by the cops without any excuse. Imagine you're a black soldier home from Afghanistan who gets caught in a mass shooting by a white male and you end up getting killed by the cops, and the armed mass shooter goes free. Imagine you're a black woman who goes down to Texas for a job interview, and you end up dead in a cell for a traffic violation.