Tired

Spoken Word by Sydney Hill

In the wake of this movement, poet Sydney Hill allowed us to share her work across social media. Now, she returns to perform her piece, “Tired,” the way her writing intended. Transcribed below:

I am tired. 

As I take a break from studying and browse social media following the “not guilty” verdict of yet another murderous cop caught on camera, released to shoot another day, my eyes swell with tears because I am so tired. I’m tired of comment sections that I know will only enrage me when I see another “if he just complied” or “it’s not always about race” or “what about black on black crime” as if that serves as some sick justification...I mean really, replacing the n-word with thugs as if we can’t see through the translucent veil you’ve convinced yourself no longer exists. I am tired.

I am tired of you trying to rewrite this country’s rotten past to fit some sort of heroic narrative as if my people weren’t brought in here in chains, broken and beaten, sold off like cattle but treated lesser all for the purpose of building up this stolen country literally brick by brick, dime after dollar only to be shunned by the very thing we created. I am tired.

I am tired of you refusing to accept the lasting effects of something that we can never get over because we are living and breathing everyday in the ashes of the lives you tore from us and torched. I am tired of it being so inconceivable that racism is still alive and well as if Jim Crow’s grandsons didn’t take up his cause in the house and senate. I guess all the bad feelings were washed away with the hoses you turned on us. The hate disappeared like hundreds of black and brown girls never to be talked about or seen again. Please pick up a book as your school system failed to teach you about cause and effect, cyclical behavior that has led to our constant state of emergency. I am tired. 

And, let me be very clear. I know that you are not your grandparents, and most of you could never fathom tying the noose, but allow me to reassure you that with every “why don’t you people just (insert privileged suggestion here),” you carry on your grandparents racist legacy. And just as you inherited their hate, we inherited our fear and mistrust. That’s why we don’t trust doctors who experimented on us. That’s why we don’t trust the governments that bombed us. That’s why we don’t trust officers whose badges once read “slave patrol”. 

And, for the record, blue lives have always mattered, it’s the black ones that never did. So we find ourselves yelling it so much that we don’t know if we’re informing you or reminding ourselves because seeing black bodies dead on the street or locked up in the pen sometimes we forget our own value. An officer doesn’t get to serve as judge, jury, and executioner. And then you turn around and tell us to trust the legal system. That’s why we say “woke”, because ‘HELLO Wake up, America’. In the age of information, where at the tip of your fingers you can discover cold, hard facts about how we are prosecuted more harshly for the same crimes, contributing to prison labor, a system that feels oddly familiar, and you can’t be bothered to fact check the hate rhetoric you spew, you make me tired. 

But, how can I be tired? As my privilege led to a degree that deserving others will never have the opportunity to attain, I sit here tired. I’m tired of my so-called educated colleagues refusing to acknowledge their own ignorance and bias. I’m tired of those who are down for the cause staying quiet. You have the right to remain silent and you do so to our detriment.  I am tired of you standing up for 45 when you lived to tear down 44, because now we should respect our leaders. Excuse me your hypocrisy is showing. I am tired of feeling useless every time I hear of another atrocity that people will sweep under the rug. I’m tired of you writing off my passion for my people as hate towards yours. Worse, I am tired of fearing for the safety of every single black person I know, especially my black fathers, brothers, friends, and sons, not because they are criminals but because they may fit the description, because it is about race, and I am tired of you denying it.