Please check in on your White Employees, Friends and Family

Last week, Tonya Russell published a wonderful article in the New York Times title: Check in on Your Black Employees, and like the “rule followers” that they are — White people around the world checked on the mental health status of their Black friends, colleagues and family members.

Texts, phone calls, Facebook posts, marches, extra smiles on the street, “Black Lives Matter” signs everywhere. To be clear, I was truly grateful for the thoughtful and sincere sentiments and attention given to my mental health, especially since the world is literally burning down. #littlefireseverywhere.

Protests across America, international marches of solidarity, corporate and philanthropic declarations, tweets, social media posts from pro-athletes, political leaders; hell, even the National Football League proclaimed that Black Lives Matter (news flash… they still have their knee on Kaepernick’s neck). They called for change, shared words of solidarity and promised to do better for the Black community.

I must admit, by midweek, I was exhausted by the “check-ins.” Every call, every email, every Facebook post, left me wondering — Shouldn’t white people also be in a state of depression? What about their mental health? Didn’t they see the video?

When Black people watched George Floyd’s murder, we saw our sons, our brothers, our uncles, our babies — ourselves. We saw Us being murdered in the street. The perpetual cycle of Black death captured via cell footage has and will continue to cause mental despair, or as James Baldwin put it: “to be black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of rage.” I imagine Black people have been in mental despair — and rage — since the year 1619.

But what about my white colleagues, friends and family members? Are they ok?

Did they see the video(s)? Did they see themselves in the destruction? Did they see their sons, their brothers, their uncles, their babies — themselves unmercifully kill another human being in broad daylight?

What if white people took their gaze off others for just a moment and looked in the mirror? Look at Derek Chauvin. Watch him for 8:46, hands in pockets with a nonchalant smirk for the camera, as he waits for his prey to die. Look at Ahmaud Arbery’s killers, complete with a cameraman whose steady hands recorded the hunters tracking and shooting down their prey. Watch Amy Cooper choke out her dog with one hand, call the police with the other as she conjures fake terror in her voice.

Did they see? Did they see? Have white people and whiteness become so opaque that they have become invisible even to themselves?

Are white people ok?

Are white people facing a mental health crisis?

If not, they sure as hell should be. Over the coming weeks, as more people join the movement to eradicate Racism, I ask white people to go back and look at the countless cellphone-recorded, Facebook Lived and even Snapchat videoed deaths of black people at the hands of “law enforcement” or straight-up white vigilantism. Look at what you and whiteness have created, and truly see yourselves.

I promise to check on you next week.