When They Call You A Terrorist
A Black Lives Matter Memoir
by Patrisse Khan-Cullors & asha bandele
“Could it be that we matter?”
― Patrisse Khan-Cullors, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir
If you’re going to read one.
If you’re going to read just one book that looks at the current racial disparity in the United States, here. If you’re going to sit down and read one story that showcases exactly how so many Americans live their lives — suspected, harassed, and presupposed to certain fates — this is the one.
Patrisse Khan-Cullors, the founder of #BLM, is an academic and scholar — and a Unitarian minister with an advanced degree in religion, which is one of many things I didn’t know about her extraordinary story and movement — yet her memoir is a deeply personal account of the harm enacted on her father, brother, partners, friends, and herself by callous institutions.
There was an incredible amount of beauty and evocation in Patrisse’s work — from finding soulful work to the art of relationships — here are three takeaways I’ll highlight.
Land of the Free: Some Restrictions Apply
When Elián González was on the news, I was just a kid. As Dad told me about Cuba under Castro, he told me we should be grateful to live in a free country. In America, he said, “You never have to worry about someone kicking down your door in the middle of the night and dragging you out, sometimes never to be seen again, and never telling you why.” I shuddered to think about those poor “other countries” where such things happened. The part of When They Call You a Terrorist that gutted me the most was that very thing happening to Patrisse and her family in their beloved Californian neighborhood, for no other reason than being a Black family. As police question her on a bogus suspicion, claiming someone tried to “shoot up the station,” they already doubt her, asking her if she’s innocent, why she sounds scared. She says, “Because you have your shotguns pointed directly at me and my family.”
“Later, when I hear others dismissing our voices, our protest for equity, by saying All Lives Matter or Blue Lives Matter, I will wonder how many white Americans are dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night because they might fit a vague description offered up by God knows who. How many skinny, short, blond men were rounded up when Dylann Roof massacred people in prayer? How many brown-haired white men were snatched out of bed when Bundy was killing women for sport?”
― Patrisse Khan-Cullors, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir
Liberty and justice for all has actually historically meant liberty and justice for all for straight + white + wealthy men. Be ruthlessly clear on that. It is precisely because I love my young, crazy, petulant, brave country that I insist we can and must do better.
“….I tell them that even as we are labeled criminal, we are actually the victims of crime. And I tell them there are no stats to track collateral deaths, the ones that unfold over months and years spent in mourning and grief: the depression that becomes addiction to alcohol that becomes cirrhosis; or else addiction to food that becomes diabetes that becomes a stroke . Slow deaths . Undocumented deaths. Deaths with a common root: the hatred that tells a person daily that their life and the life of those they love ain't worth shit, a truth made ever more real when the people who harm you are never held accountable.”
― Patrisse Khan-Cullors, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir
One-Third to One-Half of Humans Shot by Police are Disabled
Secondly, because Patrisse’s beloved brother Monte has a mental illness, she bears witness to his horrible treatment and abuse, including being tortured while detained in Los Angeles County Jail. Patrisse’s memoir illustrates the absolute human rights violations enacted in the United States against people with mental illness. It was from disabled advocate Imani Barbarin (@crutches_and_spice/ https://crutchesandspice.com/) that I first learned that between one-third and one-half of Americans shot by police are disabled. Yes, you read that right. You can read more here. The Treatment Advocacy Center reports people with untreated mental illnesses are 16 times more likely to be shot by police. The Ruderman Foundation’s white paper, featured in the Wall Street Journal, reports one-half of people killed by police have a disability.
Defund the Police may sound radical, but what this illustrates is we ask the police to do too much. We ask them to be the front line when Americans are having mental health crises. Imagine if we set reallocated funding from policing to mental health first responders. The stories indicate fewer Black people and other POC would be killed on the streets.
“What is the impact of not being valued?
How do you measure the loss of what a human being does not receive?”
― Patrisse Khan-Cullors, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir
And the Greatest of These is Love
The final thing that deeply got me was the amount of LOVE in Patrisse’s work. At its foundation, she conceived #BlackLivesMatter as devoted to radical inclusion, love, and compassion for all. For ALL. Trans black women and straight white men: radical inclusion means it doesn’t matter how the good Lord (okay, and social, cultural, and historical context) made you, it’s how you show up to do the deep work of confronting the serious problems in our young, crazy, petulant brave country.
Women like Patrisse remind me why I am proud to be American: because of people who have her kind of courage, to stand up say “This isn’t right,” again and again and again until enough voices are fearlessly and relentlessly dedicated to change. Patrisse’s work reminds me the origin of the word courage is the Latin cor — of the heart.
“You are brilliant beings of light. You have the power to shape-shift not only yourselves but the whole world. You, each one, are endowed with gifts you don’t even yet know, and you, each one, are what love and the possibility of a world in which our lives truly matter looks like.”
― Patrisse Khan-Cullors, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir
Readability: Selah. I found myself putting it down and pacing many, many times. Absorbing, beautifully, elegantly written, and also holy s*** impactful.
Relatability: Mind expanding. Soul expanding.
Recommended for: Everyone. Especially every American. Should be canonized in college English.
Follow Patrisse Cullors on Twitter @OsopePatrisse, and at her site here.
