On December 31, 2019, the year 2020 seemed hopeful, dreamlike, full of rare possibilities. A clean slate, unblemished by human hands. It was a future yet unwritten –– over there, in the abstract. But once 2020 was here and the world went from real to surreal, and now oddly cubist, it’s hard to see past the hard-edged nightmare cut into disparate shapes that simply won’t align. It’s incomprehensible.

And, we’re all having trouble breathing.

With the masks, the COVID-19 threat, the ravage of the black community; we’re suffocating under the weight of it all. When George Floyd’s breath was taken, the words “I can’t breathe” cut so deep because it wasn’t out of the distant past with black-and-white photos and those familiar platitudes of freedom many of us had taken for granted, assuming (wrongly) that the worst was over, was buried, was confined to history.

Eric Garner’s last words, also “I can’t breathe,” were uttered only six years ago to chilling effect.

“The breath of life” as Genesis calls it (Genesis 2:7 NASB), when God breathed life into Adam, or in the original Hebrew, Naphash, has its roots in what we would call the soul. As W.E.B. DuBois’ seminal 1903 work attests, The Souls of Black Folk are still crying out for justice, for peace, for an equitable world, for an America that might materialize out of the transparency of its naphash state into something black Americans can actually touch and feel – intangibility taking form.

We’ve all come to know our America is functionally aspirational, and like 2020, seen from the distance of a cold December evening, dreamlike with time running backward (the countdown) and forward simultaneously.

Functionally aspirational means every day we wake up –– we wake up to the unknowable. The black community has never been monolithic, but what we do know, monolithically, is fear. When Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin’s knee was locked onto Floyd’s neck, we all suffocated, and something of the American idea was fumbled, was crushed in that televised moment.

For the first time –– as a nation –– we all saw with a single vision.

The unrest awakened across the country is a clarion call, the alarm bell urgently issuing from our digital devices as we reach wearily to find the icon to turn it off. This might be the turning point, the moment where homogeneity coalesces beyond the melting pot analogy. I have seen our white brethren protesting in several suburbs of Detroit to show solidarity, support and outrage for George Floyd and the treatment of its black and brown citizens.

As protests continue across America, it’s important to understand what we’re here for, what our voices are straining to accomplish against the vociferous inferno engulfing our communities.

We don’t destroy.

We don’t tear up.

We don’t give them the fuel to criticize our matter –– the atoms that make up our black lives.

In many ways this was all paved in inevitability and causality. Make no mistake. Our anger is palpable and justified. This pandemic has tested our patience and has taken numerous lives. All of this is … lamentable.

According to a recent NPR article, “48 states plus Washington D.C., report at least some data. In total, race or ethnicity is known for around half of all cases and 90 percent of deaths. And though gaps remain, the pattern is clear. Communities of color are being hit disproportionately hard by COVID-19.”

In Detroit, our death toll is running in the thousands. Our cities are burning both metaphorically and physically. Perhaps even psychically because all this death is taking its mental toll on us, even while we prepare to move from the sheltering-in-place phase to carving out our new place in a darkly dystopian society.

When musician Gary Clark Jr. says, “‘I feel like every time I walk out of my goddamn house, I could die,’” he’s speaking for all of us.

There’s no escaping the fire.

The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah watched his city burn. After many warnings to change their course, their ways, their thinking, Jerusalem was engulfed in flames.

After many warnings, our own country is similarly challenged.

What does a lamentation sound like?

Listen closely, and then, respond with urgency, care and empathy.

Editor’s Note: Cornelius Fortune is an educator and writer living in metro Detroit.

  City of Detroit, civic unrest in Detroit, Cornelius Fortune, COVID-19, Detroit economy, Detroit protests, Gary Clark, George Flyod, Jr., Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin, The Old Testament, W.E.B. DuBois