Friday Speak Out! We Will Not Be Silent #BlackLivesMatter

by Angela Miyuki Mackintosh


“I can’t breathe.”

The words of George Floyd echoed in my head as people took to the streets across our country this week to protest the systemic racism that has targeted the Black community for hundreds of years.

On the first night of the protests, I was driving home from an errand when a local college radio station here in Los Angeles started spinning tracks from Ice Cube’s AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted. Powerful rap like “Endangered Species” and “Rollin’ Wit The Lench Mob.” It instantly brought back feelings of anger from the 1992 LA Riots. We protested against the police’s use of excessive force against Rodney King. By the time the riots ended 2,383 people were injured, 12,000 were arrested, and 63 people were killed. I was in Venice Beach protesting with everyone else, a twenty-year-old, trying to make a difference. We hoped our voices would be heard. I can’t believe I’m forty-eight now and it’s the year 2020, and we still can’t breathe. None of us can breathe until we start laying the groundwork for change.

It may seem overwhelming, but as writers, we cannot stay silent. Silence is a form of complicity. We must speak out against the violence inflicted on our fellow human beings if we are to breathe. Write about what angers you. Write about the current administration’s enablement. The abuses of power. The ignorance. Write about what’s going on around you right now. How this affects you personally. Write to educate others and yourself. And if you really can’t write, highlight voices of the oppressed and marginalized and share resources.

Earlier this year, my writing partner encouraged me to write a piece for The Sun Readers Write column’s “Work” theme, which is still on submission. As I sat down to write, a story popped into my head about the first time I fired someone and how it changed my life. I was twenty-five and worked at a lingerie store. The new owner promoted me to manager and gave me my own store to run. As manager, my first assignment was to fire the previous manager, who was an African American woman twice my age. It was a terrible ordeal and I ended up crying. She pulled me into her arms and told me it would be okay as I fired her. At the time, I thought it was part of the job. I didn’t realize I was a pawn. I didn’t realize that the new owner didn’t want her as manager because of the color of her skin.

A few months later, I promoted my best sales person to assistant manager, who also happened to be Black. Well, as soon as I did that, the new owner transferred a woman from another store to take her place as assistant manager. Right then, I knew for certain that the new owner was a racist. As an Asian whose mom was first generation, I am no stranger to racism, but I was inexperienced, and didn’t think something like that actually happened in real life. I also felt used. I remember consulting a customer who was an attorney, who told me it wasn’t my fight. The owner had written up the previous manager and had a paper trail to justify the firing. Plus, he told me, the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, an agency that protects our workplaces against harassment and discrimination, closed more cases than it investigated, leaving less than 2 percent completed. I quit the next day, opened an art gallery, and never worked for another company again. That experience had such an impact on me that it changed my life’s trajectory. And yet; still, to this day, I regret not taking a stand.

When we stay silent as writers and as human beings, we are legitimizing the harm that will be placed on future generations.

As I write this, I just finished watching the emotional debate on the Senate floor as Senator Rand Paul tried to amend the anti-lynching legislation on the day of George Floyd’s memorial service in Minnesota. Both Kamala Harris and Cory Booker spoke out with raw words that brought me to tears (video link). Booker said, “It would speak volumes for the racial pain and the hurt of generations.” He raised his voice and continued, “I do not need my colleague, the Senator from Kentucky, to tell me about one lynching in this country. I’ve stood in the museum in Montgomery, Alabama, and watched African-American families weeping at the stories of pregnant women lynched in this country and their babies ripped out of them while this body did nothing.”

The time of doing nothing is in the past.

There are many things we can do. Writers are talking about books you can read to educate your children, and we’re proud of our team member Sue Bradford Edwards for writing Black Lives Matter (Essential Library, 2015). Her book was recently mentioned as essential reading in a tweet by the Richland Library alongside The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, How it Went Down by Kekla Magoon, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Hands Up, Don’t Shoot by Cobbina.

Take steps to invoke change locally. Here in Los Angeles, since Mayor Garcetti and the district attorney Jackie Lacey have been in office, 601 people have been killed by the police, and our district attorney refuses to charge those officers. We need to engage in a practice where police who are criminals are prosecuted when they abuse, brutalize, and kill our community members. Take action by joining your local Black Lives Matter chapter, and remember to vote in local elections.

Additionally, check out this Anti-Racist Guide created by Victoria Alexander, which includes organizations to connect with, where to donate and sign petitions, articles and books to read, videos to watch, Black businesses to support, and children’s anti-racist resources.

When we take steps forward in ending the hateful practice of anti-Blackness, we take a collective breath and commit to change.

As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said in a similar time of great moral crisis for our nation, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” We will not be silent or complicit. We will speak up and say, “Black Lives Matter.”

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Angela Miyuki Mackintosh is editor-in-chief of WOW! Women On Writing. WOW is committed to promoting the work of women, people of color, disabled, LGBTQ, and all marginalized people. Angela currently writes the introduction for WOW's monthly Markets Newsletter and E-zine. Sign up here.

Would you like to participate in Friday "Speak Out!"? Email your short posts (under 500 words) about women and writing to blog editor Marcia Peterson: marcia[at]wow-womenonwriting[dot]com for consideration.