Most of my earliest memories involve hearing the local news playing in my living room. My father works for the local ABC News affiliate, and I spent every Friday night until I was in high school waiting up for him so I could hear what packages he had worked on that night.
I would lie awake in my twin bed reading Goosebumps and listening to Wisconsin Public Radio until he came home. I knew who Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer were when I was six years old, and there was rarely a day that went by where I missed BBC World News or PBS NewsHour.
Before making the decision to police Black rage, I encourage white people to make an effort to develop a comprehensive understanding of all of the ways they have been complicit in the unending systemic harm of every Black person in this country.
Growing up in a household where politics, news, and civic engagement were regularly discussed led me to develop a deep desire to understand the political landscape that I was born into. My hope was that I, too, could one day create the type of change I kept hearing about on my radio and television.
Being a Black child in 2008 meant that politics were more than just voting in “Kids Pick the President” on Nickelodeon. After every Sunday service, I would hear my pastor and my mother talk about Barack Obama. The entire congregation would strategize ways to get out the vote in their respective neighborhoods, offering each other rides to polling places throughout Milwaukee.
My parents put up Obama/Biden yard signs and stuck decals on their car windows that I would trace with my small fingers before putting my backpack in the backseat and heading to school. These were not political analysts or professional organizers and canvassers—they were my community, people whom I respected that believed so deeply that a state as segregated as Wisconsin could come together and do its part to help elect the first Black president.
And they did.
I saw my family sob on election night, feeling as if the Sam Cooke song “A Change is Gonna
Come” had come true.
Once I reached high school, I saw that the rug had been pulled out from underneath us. In 2011, Governor Scott Walker signed a Voter ID law in Wisconsin, before the 2012 election. I was sitting in my dad’s Honda Odyssey coming home from the dentist as Wisconsin Public Radio discussed this new legislation.
Looking out the window at the field next to my parents’ usual polling place, I asked him why this law made him upset. When you’re fourteen years old and attending a mostly white high school, you’re led to believe that everyone has a driver’s license. But I quickly learned this wasn’t the case.
During the 2012 election, Black folks throughout Milwaukee stood in long lines clutching their utility bills as proof of residence so they would have the chance to vote. It was clear to me that having to take the bus to your polling place shouldn’t be seen as a punishable offense.
The previous year, I’d watched my favorite English teacher quietly request a substitute as he and other educators throughout the state descended upon Madison, the state’s capital, to fight for their collective bargaining rights ( Gov. Walker, at the time, was pushing for an anti-union bill called Act 10) . I listened silently as my white classmates expressed contempt for these educators, who were guiding them toward attending large and prestigious universities, as they demanded to receive equitable compensation for their labor.
And while Obama went on to win re-election, it became clear to me that challenging the status quo in any way was grounds for punishment by those in power.
As a senior in high school, I was navigating a world that still believed Jeb Bush would be the Republican presidential nominee. Every morning at 7:30 a.m. during AP government and politics class, I would listen as my classmates debated whether or not Ted Cruz had a fighting chance for the nomination, while I sat near the door peeling hard boiled eggs for my breakfast.
One day, I noticed that everyone in my classroom, except for my best friend and I, was wearing a matching T-shirt. The long-sleeved white shirts featured an American flag emblem on the front and a large graphic of Uncle Sam on the back with the text “Homestead Young Conservatives, Back to Back World War Champs.”
As my best friend and I got up to leave and head to our next class, we were greeted by a sea of white. Shoving our way through the heavy hallway traffic, all we saw were emblems of Uncle Sam angrily staring at us, his searing gaze reminding us that we were minorities in this sea of heterosexuality and whiteness.
Around this same time, I stumbled onto a parade of protesters circling Red Arrow Park in downtown Milwaukee. I quickly learned that in the same park where my white classmates drove their brand new cars thirty minutes from the suburbs to ice skate every winter, an unarmed mentally ill Black man was shot by police for sleeping on a park bench.
His name was Dontre Hamilton. Hamilton was shot fourteen times by Officer Christopher Manney who, four years later, still hasn’t faced charges for committing this brutal murder.
At twenty-two years old, I am now watching the world wonder why Kenosha, Wisconsin, is in distress. White people never understand the ways a Black, brutalized body keeps score. We are made to endure white supremacy dressed in conservatism while being actively deprived of the tools we are supposed to use to fight it.
Voting will never be a tool that Black people in this community can use to combat white supremacy. We tried this. We spent night after night in 2008 endeavoring to create ways within our community to operate within these systems. We invested in the dream of change, and it left us to die.
In Milwaukee, the most segregated city in the country, voting will never be a form of harm reduction. Not when we need driver’s licenses to vote in cities where the DMVs accessible by bus were closed. Not when the districts we live in were gerrymandered to the point it doesn’t matter if we show up to the polls or not. Perhaps the change we were spoon-fed to believe in was just another tactic to appease our hunger—the same hunger we inherited from our grandparents who moved to this city during the Great Migration?
Kenosha has a Democratic mayor and is burning. Wisconsin has a Democratic governor and is reeling. No amount of liberalism can fan the flames of generations of intentionally silenced citizens whose government withheld their forty acres and a mule while proceeding to usher them into underfunded school districts.
When I created the Black Disability Collective, a small online platform dedicated to sharing narratives and uplifting Black disabled lives, I thought about Dontre Hamilton. My work is forever shaped by the ways Wisconsin has dehumanized me as a Black person.
To understand why Jacob Blake’s case has had a ripple effect on the fight for Black lives here, you must understand the deplorable conditions Black citizens in Wisconsin have faced, how many times our loved ones stared down the barrel of an officer’s gun while even our most polite white neighbors watched quietly.
White Wisconsin residents have witnessed thousands of snuff films starring Black residents and law enforcement without ever batting an eyelash. Every time a white person expresses disdain for the alleged looting happening in Kenosha, Black residents are sent a message that our death is excusable, but property damage isn’t.
There is no amount of fire that can bring back all of the Black lives that have been stolen by police brutality, houselessness, and our underfunded education system. Before making the decision to police Black rage, I encourage white people to make an effort to develop a comprehensive understanding of all of the ways they have been complicit in the unending systemic harm of every Black person in this country.
To speak on pain you have never experienced is to disrespect the memory of the Black lives my communities are fighting to honor. Through my work, I refuse to let Dontre Hamilton or any other disabled Black life be forgotten.
As Kenosha suffers, Black Wisconsin residents are taking it upon themselves to demand to be seen within a state that has continuously made efforts to punish us whenever we have fought for our rights.