Fani Makes Me Feel Schizo

In most lynchings the Black man, woman or child (yes there are stories of a pregnant woman being lynched and her baby was cut out of her stomach and killed), would be hung up, tortured and mutilated. Each piece of their body cut off and displayed in jars as souvenirs for the families…FAMILIES…that attended the public lynching. The mutilated body was left hanging for days, sometimes burned up and left smoldering, lifeless and the world would see their naked bodies shamefully hanging for all to see.

When I saw Claudine Gay go through the mutilation of her character and career, because of her making the poor choice to remain silent about anti-Semitism, even though many White men before her have led Harvard and were anti-ANY PERSON OF COLOR, I felt a mix of frustration with her for not speaking up and love for her as she suffered the public lynching. As a Black woman who has been navigating these spaces and have had to endure the constant demeaning comments, questioning of my ability and intelligence, and even my character, I felt pain for her. It seemed unfair that the hundreds of years that racism has been able to thrive at Harvard, her one indiscretion caused her to have to be the one to carry the consequence for the hundreds of years where racism was allowed to exist at Harvard. Just like lynchings, many times the victim did one little thing that the White leaders did not like and so their bodies were exposed and the person was torn limb from limb, hanging from a tree like strange fruit in shame.

Now I am seeing the same public lynching of Fani Willis, because of one mistake. I find myself frustrated with her, because in all of her elegance, she has this questionable (not illegal) relationship with Nathan Wade. At first I felt troubled as she openly shared about their relationship, their trips and adventures together. She was bold and proud of the relationship. I kept doing research to see the timeline of the relationship and if they had made a connection before he was divorced. That all seems very ambiguous. And even if there was not an overlap, I was frustrated that she chose to mix her business with pleasure. I know people have work affairs all of the time, but just because it is a common practice, doesn’t make it right, not illegal, but just unwise to do. Yet, I sense that they may have fallen in love with one another. Through their common struggle of being Black and working to be successful in their field, a bond has developed. Maybe it was hard to hold back. Haven’t we all gone through something similar? The human heart is hard to tame. You may not be a Christian, reading this, but this makes me think of Paul when he wrote the following in Romans 7:20-25: “Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?  I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.” As humans we all struggle to resist our heart, our minds or our human desires. Trump is a great example of this. Being a man who has cheated on each of his 3 wives, mishandled his money and even struggles to tell the truth, we see that people make bad choices. Why do people want to discount Fani because of the one time she actually seemed to fall in love with ONE person, but at the wrong time, and still want to make a man like Trump president, who has repeatedly only lived to satisfy himself, no matter who he hurt? The sad thing is often Black people are not allowed to be human. We are not allowed to make mistakes. On the plantation, if we made one mistake, we were beaten, killed or sold away. There was usually an instant consequence if we displeased the master even on the smallest level, but the master could rape 10,000 enslaved women and still be the pastor of the local church or the mayor of the town or write the Constitution. Reminds me of when Harriet Beecher Stowe would not help publish Harriet Jacobs autobiography. Jacobs was “tainted” because of how she used sex to free herself from her master’s desire to rape her. Jacobs became aware of the master’s plans to use her as his sex slave when she was a teenager, so she got herself pregnant by someone else repeatedly, and then after the last child was born, she hid herself in a crawl space in the house so she could watch her children grow up, without the master finding her. She wanted to own her body! She eventually escaped to freedom and wrote her story. Her story was not “holy” enough for Stowe. Stowe did not feel the desperation of Jacobs who did not want to be raped. Either way, her body was going to be misused! Jacobs made the best choice she could with what she knew because she was too afraid to run away since she was so young. So instead of using the human experience of an actual slave, Stowe created her own fictitious Uncle Tom’s Cabin (I love this book by the way), where he looked more “holy” according to her standard of approval, all the while she passed up an opportunity to help Jacobs gain freedom and support in writing her story and building a new life. The self righteousness of Whites against Black people, often makes them overlook the sins of their own community, especially when they cannot be in control. This same imbalanced grace existed after slavery, in the form of legalized lynchings, where most of these murders are left without ever seeing justice. Many of the lynchings were for mistaken identity, small infractions, jealousy of Black progress or for breaking the Jim Crow standards, and all without any justice. Today we go through the same symbolic lynchings for our mistakes if we are in a position where we are not welcomed by White supremists.

My frustration with Fani is that the position she has placed herself in, called for her to have stellar character, because there would be no grace for her. She should have known someone would be looking through every part of her life to discredit her and she gave in. I wanted her to make it through this unscathed, because our democracy depends upon someone stopping a crooked man from being the leader of our country. The Republican party will be destroyed if they do not find a person of better character to lead it. I want to see both parties have stronger candidates, because this way I know that no matter who wins, at least our democracy and the vision of the Constitution are protected. There was a time when no matter who won the election, I did not fear for my life or the health of my country. It is disappointing to see people I know of strong faith, willing to dismiss even how Pence’s life was in jeopardy while Trump was president. Right now our democracy is in danger and Fani is seeking to somehow hold us accountable to this. How could she be so messy??!! So much is depending on this. I sometimes want to yell at her, “Sis! Why couldn’t you do better!!!”

Even with how Fani made some decisions I would not have made morally, she did not break the law. Her responses to the lawyers, her mannerisms, her irritation, her boldness, her strength, all remind me of when I have had to face people who I knew were seeking to discredit me because of my race. These same people would try to find any and everything wrong in my life to denounce my right to be in the spaces I have been. I have used the firm tone, the glare, and drawn that line in the sand that communicates, “You will not dismiss me.” When working in these spaces, you have a choice to back down and just try to earn their approval, or you can stand. You can choose to escape slavery, taking hundreds of people with you or you can stay on the plantation like Harriet Tubman’s sister did (and she died soon after).

I can imagine Fani’s father, like mine, taught her to never give in to when racists try to discredit her and her right to exist. I remember my father teaching me that even at the risk of losing friends, jobs, position, etc. to never accept racism; that I should look it full in the face and stand against it, and that I should always have something in my back pocket as a ram in the bush just in case the White supremists succeed in diminishing my right to exist in the space (i.e. a job, money, an opportunity, etc.). When I asked him about what if doing that could bring consequences, my dad taught me that even if I lose everything, I can always come to my family and they will support me, while I rebuild. Nothing is worth accepting racism. From a little girl, I was taught this. So as I watched her boldness, her attitude, her defiance, I felt all of it. Every single time she said, “My daddy taught me…” I FELT ALL OF THAT. I have been there, and through all of my frustration about her carelessness, I loved her for how she reminded us of what the focus should be. I loved how she maintained control of how much those who questioned her could intrude on her personal life. For every single time I have had to face racism like this, I felt vindicated by her strength. I feel so schizo, so confused about how I should feel about Fani in those moments. One moment feeling triumphant (“You better tell ’em Fani! Let ’em know!”) and the next moment shaking my head (“Oh sis, you could have done better. Why you mess this up like this sis!”).

I see her ex-friend who has been testifying against her and I remember how in academic spaces that were not an hbcu, often Black people do not support one another. We tend to be too focused on tearing one another down, to elevate ourselves. I felt the hurt of that, because I have not just gone through racism in these spaces, but I have been disappointed by my own community. Frederick Douglass tried to escape the first time and a fellow enslaved person told on him. Denmark Veasey was stopped because another enslaved person told on him. Fred Hampton was murdered because another oppressed person told on him. Emmit Till was murdered with a Black man showing the men where he was staying. Our own African ancestors sold us into slavery to the Europeans during the time of the Middle Passage. We as a people have this horrible habit of not loving one another well when in spaces where we think White supremacy will always win. We don’t support one another in these spaces, when if we could come together, we could successfully stand against racism and White supremacy. We betray one another if it leads to our own elevation. Fani’s ex-friend, for whatever reason, saw an opportunity to progress and used that opportunity to help the racist efforts to discredit Fani. I felt that pain too deeply. It is a phenomenon I will never understand.

Fani frustrates me for moral and strategic reasons. We have to be above reproach when trying to navigate these spaces, because America still struggles to see our equal human worth. Let me be clear, however. I am not sure she is a person of faith, but for me, I live for an even higher purpose than trying to prove to White people that I am worthy. My experience has taught me that seeking their approval is often not enough, because oftentimes my inferiority is so ingrained in their worldview that I could never do anything to be good enough. This is why I have to keep my eyes on God, because living for God and seeking to live according to his standard, I am able to find my worth in Him alone. Yet, even in all of my frustration with her, I love her because her fight is a reflection of my human experience and watching her defiance somehow made me realize that I am not alone in this struggle. I see her fighting through what some may want to be a public lynching (because how dare she try to hold Trump accountable for his actions! How disrespectful!), but she may rise above it and that gives me hope.