It’s been a rough past few weeks, hasn’t it? Between the SCOTUS rulings, Zimmerman trial, another recent discovery of a serial killer who has targeted Black women, and the general tomfoolery of white supremacy experienced on a daily basis, it seems like we can’t catch a break. Certainly, it’s never easy to be a person of color, but it has felt, at least to me, particularly egregious recently.  We have a lot of work to do to get free and stay free, but in the meantime I’m really concerned about how we love (on) ourselves and each other—because the business of liberation is not for the faint of heart.

Y’all know that Beloved is a sacred text to me. I can always open it and find something that will move my spirit. And I’ve been thinking a lot about how Morrison imagines Blacks in the 19^th century navigating a hostile world that not unlike our own, a world where “whitepeople believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift unnaviagable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood.” But, as the novel suggests, the time we spend convincing racist whites about our own humanity is not only an exercise in missing the point, it is a clear path for participation in our own dehumanization.

I want to make a call for radical empathy within communities of color. Yes, coalition building and allyship are important, Lorde knows. But how we see, trust, and love ourselves should be at the core of our understanding in these times, as we are continually under surveillance, battered, and hunted down in the streets as if our lives were worth less than nothing.

This is a time for fighting, agitation, mobilization, and organizing for systemic change—yes. Absolutely. But this is also a time for reflection, reading, soft beds, self-care, and saying “no!” to time wasters and soul crushers. This is also a time for laughing, lovemaking, singing, crying, wailing, dancing, and holding on to each other tight. This is a time for potlucks, cookouts, BBQs, picnics, cocktails, karaoke, concerts, house parties, blue lights in the basement, slow jams, and dutty wines. You feel me?

How am I practicing what I preach? Spending time with the people I love. Eating copious amounts of roast pork, fresh corn on the cob, and Italian ice.  Listening to great music, like my girl Alice Smith.

I’m also daydreaming about cuties. Watching bad movies with my mama. Reading novels about zombies. Organizing ways in which I can foster support self-care and healing in the communities I live and love in. But mostly, I’m loving myself and those I hold dear fiercely and unapologetically.

What are you doing to cultivate radical empathy in your own lives, fam?

(H/T to Son of Baldwin for inspiring the use of the Morrison quote)