In response to the staggering election results in which many members of marginalized communities experienced how disconnected they were from their fellow citizens as the country elected bigotry and hatred; Black Nerd Problems put out the call to hear how people were coping. Here is a collection of short essays on what we’re doing, just to get by.
The Threat:
Myles Franklin Yates / Twitter: @projectspit
Black Male, who knows that his voice Matters, that his feelings are valid.
While in my junior year of my undergrad as a Finance major, I have found myself a hobby of taking pictures of the sky. I don’t know why I started doing this. Reasons I thought of include appreciating the beauty of what was around me, the belief that God take artists who have died and give them a job to do, or the idea of what heaven might look like after my time of living passed. Whatever it may be, it helped distress my mind from dealing with taking six classes and the future I will have to take.
I already knew how the outcome was going to end. I went to bed with the desire to sleep off the worry. I still woke up early and couldn’t go back to bed. Instead of laying in the darkness, I decided to go outside to breathe in the air and see what the sky had to say about all of this. Deciding also to listen to Sound and Color, and Don’t Wanna Fight, by Alabama Shakes. I chose these songs because they reflected the reaction I had of the election.
When I first laid eyes on the sky, the clouds have formed around each other to have this magma like color that I’ve never seen before. The color painted the emotions I was having while watching it. Anger and worry started to cloud my mind. I was angry about how everything can switch up on you and not give you a warning. How a person can be against so many people but still win. Worry also came because I was thinking of all my friends that were more affected by this than myself. That just because they are their own person, they become targets for discrimination. It didn’t help to have Don’t Wanna Fight because after fighting so much, it seems like we have to keep doing it.
I decided to head back home to prepare myself for the day I was going to have and school. Walking back, I saw the shift in the clouds. It was almost in a formation like setting with this golden color. The first thought I had was of my grandmother. Being with me my whole life, I reminisce the lessons she taught me from dealing with racism and sexism as a black woman. Still living to this day, I admire her strength and resilience. With that in mind, I told myself that I have to be ready to endure and persevere with what’s going on. Doing this so I can see her when I get back home, so I can give myself a life beyond the discrimination, and so I can see more clouds in the sky.
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