Journey to Justice: A Black History Month Homage to Resilience and Hope

Almost a year ago, to the date, I sat down at my laptop to tell the story of how I had to console and uplift my young son after a bully made fun of his deeply rich brown skin and, effectively, his personhood. I tried to conjure up remembrances of Ruby Bridges and other Black children who boldly integrated schools that didn’t want them as they unknowingly became icons of courageous inclusion and advanced a movement much bigger than themselves. I opened up about the daily struggle to combat harmful and ill-spirited questions that functioned more like sharply-crafted blades like: “Why are we still talking about race?” But, instead of becoming consumed with the rage I’m more than entitled to, I tried to give a bit of context and challenged questioners to grapple with just how long Black people in America have actually been “free.” When you do the math, it’s only the sum of two 85-year-olds being born back-to-back and includes an additional century of laws, policies, and practices that excluded them from economic, health, social, and political justice.

In an attempt to live my aspirations out loud, I decided to tell a love story. The saga of how Black people have cherished this country so deeply and radically that we refuse to let it be anything less than what we know it could or should. How we’ve worked incessantly to have it live up to its fullest potential and truly be a place where “liberty and justice for all” are more than mere words we were forced to memorize before we could even comprehend what they meant.

I gave a celebratory testimony about what was, what is, and what will be. Reminding you, though we have a long way to go, that we’ve come immeasurably far in an impossibly short amount of time and have done so with irrational optimism and infectious joy. We’ve been intentionally placed on a ship that’s taking on unimaginable amounts of water and we’ve somehow found ways to not only plug the holes but also restore it beyond its former glory and make it attractive to others looking on from a distance.

The difference a day makes…

I sit today, in the same chair, contemplating the same vitriolic questions over and over again with a much-changed landscape, as we witness attacks on historical programs that tackled discrimination and have long acted as a counter to the biases that continue to endure.

I ask myself how I could have gotten it so wrong. Feeling humbled by my grandiose hot take, I went back into my files, found the first draft of last year’s article, selected every word, and deleted it as if that action would somehow absolve me of my inexplicably optimistic miscue. And then, it dawned on me:

I wasn’t wrong, I was early. Thank goodness for CTRL-ALT-Y.

Hanging on

My stepfather was an incredibly light-hearted and giving man. As a carpenter, he taught me that sometimes the best course of action is to roll up my sleeves and prepare for the hard, but necessary, work it often takes to fix a problem. Teaching me to measure three times and cut once. Precision. On February 18, 2019, I got a call from the hospital letting me know that he had been admitted into the intensive care unit for what they believed to be life-threatening symptoms. My wife called his room to speak with his nurse for an update on Wednesday, February 20, 2019. In the background, she could hear my stepfather laughing and talking loudly to anyone who would listen. According to the nurse, he was excitedly demanding they bring him more food and complaining about the temperature in the room. Pretty basic dad stuff, really. His spirits were as high as they’d ever been, and all signs pointed to him being back on his feet in no time. I made plans to visit him in the hospital the next day; I figured I’d try to beat the traffic and spend a little extra time with him during visiting hours. When I walked into his room, I was met by a doctor with a grim look on her face. My stepfather’s organs had completely begun to shut down and he had only hours left to live.

“How?! He was just walking around and demanding more criminally under-seasoned Salisbury steak just the other day and now you’re saying he’s going to die!?” The doctor sat me down and tried to talk me through what was happening. She asked if I was familiar with the concept of “terminal lucidity.” I was not. “Terminal lucidity,” she explained, “is known to many as ‘the surge.’ It’s a period of increased energy and alertness that some patients experience hours or days before they pass away. It’s almost like the body’s attempt at one last jump-start before letting go.” He passed away the following afternoon.

So, while bigotry, prejudice, discrimination, and injustice seem to be winning out, with the feeling that each day we turn on the news and are exposed to more instances of harm being perpetuated against our most vulnerable and marginalized communities. And, indeed, it’s become almost impossible to scroll more than two posts on social media before being hit with another occurrence of bias or hatred. I’m here to profess, with the utmost confidence and righteous stubbornness, that intolerance, bigotry, and hatred are well into their “surge” and what we’re seeing are its final attempts at a jump-start.

Those concepts and insidious practices that seem to be lurking around every corner and fighting so desperately to stay alive know their number’s up. In a world destined to progress and evolve, their window is slowly closing. With every sunrise, each of us is granted the opportunity to experience something new, different, unknown, or that which has caused us apprehension. And, with that same sunrise, more and more of us are choosing courageous curiosity over isolated fear; opting rather to see and respect the inherent dignity endowed to each of us from the moment we draw our first breath. Like most organisms that have ever existed, “-ism’s” will do everything in their power to survive, reproduce, and remain relevant for as long as possible.

Unfortunately for them, that’s not in the cards. The responsibility has once again fallen to us to remind bigotry that it’s running on borrowed time. We don’t take that call to action lightly.  We will provide shelter and refuge for those caught in the downpour of buzzwords, rhetoric, and stagnation because that’s who history has always shown us to be, and there’s no reason to think we’ll soften now. We don’t back down from challenges and we don’t negotiate with inequality. And, though the path may be fraught with obstructions and detours, we always find our way to the destination in the long run. Until then, we will (MUST) keep our eyes trained on the road ahead and not allow distractions to take us off course. We’ll naturally and periodically have to pull over to refuel, stretch, rest, and find nourishment, but abandoning the journey is not—and never will be—an option. The GPS is set and the destination is justice.

I can fit a few more in my car; who’s rolling with me?

Written by Teron Buford, director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Belonging at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota.