Bear Witness
What does the future hold after we look at the history of America through the Black experience? The future is directly influenced by the present so I would like to ground the question in the now. And ask what are our responsibilities to the present so that we can imagine the future? We play an active role in shaping the history of the future whether or not we believe the magnitude of the role we play.
Our global struggles are often deeply interconnected as humans, especially as globally oppressed peoples. Whether that is racism, class, ableism, colonialism, or imperialism. They are interconnected because we are governed under a system that doesn't imagine a future with us in mind. Rather it imagines a future where capitalism and exploitation are centered and not the well-being of all people. And the instigators of these issues are colonial and imperial powers that have built these systems on the backs of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. Our recognition of these systems and their global power is critical in our imagination of the future.
For our imagination of the future, we must be present and bear witness to the injustices happening around us. We can't move to change anything if we cannot acknowledge what needs to be changed. I often think back to what I was taught about history in high school. I wonder now who controlled the narrative. Did the subjects of our textbooks have a say in the writing of their story? Whose stories were left out? When the main historical narrative we are fed is written by the oppressors, their greatest crimes are conveniently omitted. History is often not a factual documentation of what happened so much as a retelling of what the oppressor wants us to remember. Such material does not bear witness to the realities of the past, nor does it teach us how to bear witness to the realities of our present. I don’t want to see a future or leave a future for the next generation that is imagined by the oppressors who refused to bear witness.
To bear witness is to be present and to reckon with what we’re witnessing. It is critical to creating a more just world. Being present can take many forms... For me it means learning as much as I can about what is going on in the world, participating in efforts to destabilize inhumane acts of empires through boycotting, protesting, calling, signing etc. But it's also not limited to these actions. Bearing witness for me is also the mere act of reckoning with the present and allowing myself to digest what's happening around me. Fleeing from these issues as if they don’t pertain to us is the main problem and it is a huge privilege to be able to distance ourselves. Bearing witness to the present is also allowing ourselves to grieve and not accept the realities as normal.
I remember when I first arrived in the US at 13 years old. Growing up in a country of Black people, I had no knowledge of the construct of race or how that construct would be ascribed to me. I had a vague understanding of slavery in America, but not its lasting impact or complexity. It didn't take me long to realize my skin had a lot to do with how I was perceived.
I was a freshman in high school when Eric Garner, a 43-year-old black man, was murdered by the police. That same year Michael Brown was also murdered by the police. I remember watching Eric Garner’s murder on the news. I remember how traumatic that was to witness even on television. Now that I have the words for it, I realize what the publicizing of violence committed against Black people does to the psyche of everyone involved. That was the first time I bore witness to the violence and injustice that plagues Black Americans, but it sadly was not the last.
I was still learning English at the time, but I remember arguing with my peers about how wrong the killing of this Black man was. They kept telling me he was a criminal. I was so baffled at the thought of someone publicly executed without a trial, criminal or not. As Eric Garner stated many times, he couldn't breathe with the knee of the officer on his head. They had every chance to let up, to let him breathe, and they didn’t. I argued with the little English I spoke for the humanity of this man who looked like me. I had this argument with children and adults alike. Years later during the summer of 2020, I once again had to argue for the humanity of a Black man murdered with the knee of a police officer on his neck, a Black woman murdered asleep in her own bedroom, and another Black man murdered while jogging. There was a global outrage following the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor. Calling to question the constant brutalization of Black bodies in America. However, this outrage was not present on the campus of my small, midwestern university. There was no talk, action, or conversation from my non-Black peers and professors. My fellow Black students and I had undertaken the burden of making sure everyone bore witness, even in the face of them constantly denying our humanity. I was shocked by the dissonance I encountered while studying at this predominantly white university. I was expecting people to wrestle with the current crisis unfolding in front of them. Yet they chose to be silent and decided it didn’t concern them.
It's that disconnect I am bringing into question when I think about our responsibilities as humans to bear witness. Especially now as we are witnesses of atrocities in Palestine, DRC, Tigray, Haiti and many more countries across the globe all suffering from some sort of global power and extraction. I am questioning the delusion that people think they can exist outside of politics. They say, “This is too political for me.” They are not troubled by what they see because they make no time to sit with it and digest it. They believe what the western media tells them to believe. The acknowledgment of the interconnectedness between most geopolitical and social issues is critical for us to bear witness to these atrocities. It affects us no matter how distant it feels because we are governed by powerful empires that have extracted and exploited people everywhere. The issues we often deal with globally usually have common instigators.
