The Eulogy of "Get Used to It"

All eulogies to Coretta Scott King, Rosa Parks, and others who reside in their heaven cautioned let not their legacies die with their physical passing. A recent conversation with a friend gives me the slightest reason to wonder if such a misfortune has actually come to pass.

I lamented to her how unfortunate the situation was, and she responded, “You… might as well get used to it. I hear gunshots all the time. [Wait] ‘til the weather heats up. [Brothas] get crazy!!”

Her quick, snappy dismissal led me to wonder for a brief moment in time if I was not a dewy-eyed idealist visiting from Pleasantville.

“You…might as well get used to it.”

Stunned by her matter-of-fact acceptance, and lack of empathy for my distress I responded, “To get used to gun shots is to accept that shootings are an acceptable element of life. Since I wasn’t raised in Sarajevo or South Central, I’ll never get used to it.” The response is distant, not slightly condescending.

The statement is the truth. I won’t ever get used to hearing gunshots, and not simply because it wasn’t a part of the cacophony of my childhood life. Children who are growing among violence more extreme, more often, and more penetrating than a shooting at a gas station, know that’s not the way life should be. They should not feel fear as frequently as the take breath. They may become less sensitive than I am because of the occurrence, but the essential knowing that it’s wrong, and that there is an alternative remains.

FLY, Facilitating Leadership in Youth, exemplifies this belief. Many of the children in this youth-development organization in Barry Farms supports their academic and leadership potential been immersed in as much violence as wealthy children in Cleveland Park are saturated with privilege and opportunity. Yet, they are leaders in their school’s, neighborhoods and city-wide resistance campaigns. “Getting used to it” is not an option.

Acceptance is not even a possible frame of mind given black American’s history of resistance, America’s history of resistance, women’s resistance…Get used to involuntary servitude? To second class citizenship? To public humiliation, to substandard education? Accept unequal wages and inhumane work conditions?

Perhaps my response, not slightly condescending, was appropriately dismissive.

It may still have been inappropriately defeatist.

Before there was a powerful voter registration movement in the Civil Rights South, there were slammed doors and “You’re wasting your time.” And still, workers persisted, returned to the back door, the side door, work, or church, until gradually grew a force.

Before there was Malcolm X, there was bitter Malcolm Little, deaf to any voice but those that echoed powerlessness and self-defeat. His evolution to an empowered, articulate, and world-respected leader, partially initiated by conversations and teachings of a fellow Muslim inmate, is legendary.

It’s very tempting, though, as I enjoy the comfort of a middle-class life, to accept her opinion as her own, assume she’ll pick another battle to fight, and move on to highlights from Chappelle’s “Block Party.” The world will continue either way.

But it’s not responsible, and with privilege there is responsibility to contribute to progress. We’re often reminded, through gunshots out the window, church fires in the South, debilitating achievement gaps in school, we’re not there yet.

Without my friend’s support, commitment, and resounding voice, there is one less person actively resisting. Without a critical mass, resistance is indeed futile.

Crucial to a resistance campaign, as Parks’s (Rosa and Gordon), Scott’s, and Friedan’s have taught me, is not just fighting the conditions of imprisonment, but the apathy that those conditions inspire in powerful people.