Moral Reckoning

Black Youth and Bearing Witness

I watched a video clip on Instagram yesterday of young Black streamers doing commentary on what they themselves have seen in the Epstein files, and it broke something inside of me thinking about the trauma this is causing our society, survivors of sexual assault, and then, these young Black men.

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It reminded me how the innocence of Black youth has never been protected. Really. We were always aware that violence lurked nearby, whether for us, for our kin, or for our neighbors. That knowledge lived in our bodies early, keeping us hyper-alert. With all that is occurring now, I feel it physically. I feel the heaviness in my eyes, the tenseness in my gut and chest. I take deep breaths to steady myself. I make myself look away, even though I’m compelled to stay and absorb it all, as if survivors might somehow feel my deep sorrow for the horror they’ve endured.

When I came across the video of these streamers, I found myself wanting to protect them from what I was feeling, even though I know I cannot remove the historical memory of old violence reemerging within them.

I felt weak at my core listening to these young Black streamers do this emotional heavy lifting. Here they were, providing a platform to confront this enormous evil by men (and some women) that has harmed countless victims and shaped our body politic for who knows how long.

And then it struck me that these young Black men were defending women, defending children, defending innocence. They were bearing witness for innocence in a country that has never offered them the same decency.

It is not these young men’s burden to solve an American crisis born of centuries of denial and refusal to reckon with its sins. But this kind of bearing witness carries real weight. Despite the risk of deepening their own trauma, these young men have not turned away. They hold up the truth. And if enough of us do, we may yet move this country away from the horror it keeps repeating and toward the kind of moral reckoning Martin Luther King Jr. demanded more than half a century ago.