‘You’re very special’

Note: This commentary has been edited to remove a reference to rioters “actively shooting” Wednesday inside the Capitol. While there were firearms-related arrests during the siege, there have been no reports of rioters shooting.

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What strikes me the most is that apparently, white nationalists do not fear death the way so many of my friends in America fear death.

The way a Black man making brief eye contact with a cop fears death. The way a brown child breaking a rule fears death. The way an immigrant being told he should not be where he is, the way a sister who wraps her religion on the outside of her body, fears death. The way a father who scales a wall, the way a woman who raises her voice, the way a man who wears whatever he wants to, fears death. The way anyone who feels the backhand of this country against their face and still finds the courage to walk down a public street with their children in song, fear death.

It amazed me, to see how uncomplicated it was for a white supremacist to live. That the grandmother within them did not scold them. That they were not born with the emergency brake of survival that keeps you or I from storming the Capitol or wearing hoodies at night or telling our white colleagues that maybe they could re-think that racist thing they say and re-say all the time, maybe, if they wanted.

I guess if anything, I want to be more like them? In the sense that I want to be cherished. On Wednesday, I watched the president tell armed terrorists inside the nation’s capitol that they were, get this, “loved.” That they were “very special,” and that they should just, you know, go home.

This is all still unfolding, and I hesitate to write anything since it’s 2021 — who knows what the next few minutes will entail. The situation is also much larger than what I can write about on my own, so forgive me; I am just stuck on this one thing. That in this moment, I am thinking of white power, and how I want some. Not the power over others part, obviously; but that private power, the empowerment that makes you precious. Imagine being passionate, reckless, sad. Imagine being grown and having a tantrum the size of a coup, and inviting all of your friends. Imagine making terrible, treasonous, violent mistakes on purpose and your country looked at you softly and said, “I know how you feel.”

Thinking about it more, I suppose a white nationalist mob being let into a well-guarded building is familiar to me, the way white invincibility is familiar to me — in life, in art, in policy. To be white in America is to be strong and emotional and forgiven and safe.

So when we are outraged that they made it as far as they made it, I think what we are really upset about is how far we know so many of us wouldn’t. It hurts to see what white people are truly capable of, that is, that they can respect even the most outrageous among us, have patience and compassion, withhold violence. Under our outrage is envy — the wish that America loved Black people, or Indigenous people, or Asian, Latinx and Arab people, or immigrants or Muslims or queer or trans or female-bodied people as much as it loves a white armed terrorist mob staging a coup.

And under the envy is a need, and the need never changes. To be seen, to be believed, to matter.

This is why I vomited my whole life after watching President Donald Trump’s remarks, where he dramatically met this need for his own people.

Trump looked our country in the eye and said, “I know your pain; I know you’re hurt,” and, had he been talking to all of us, he would have been right.

Moments later, President-elect Joe Biden looked our country in the eye and said, “America is about honor, decency, respect, tolerance. That’s who we are, that’s who we’ve always been.”

And he was talking to us, but he was wrong.

Christy NaMee Eriksen is a poet, teaching artist and organizer whose work is grounded in social justice and community engagement. She lives in Juneau.

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