Last summer the intersection at the bottom of our street was ripped up for repairs. I waited in our bougie car for the traffic cop to signal me through. My partner was in the passenger seat and our two and a half year old son was in the back, in his car seat.

The officer made a hand signal I couldn’t understand. When I didn’t do what he was asking, he pointed at me and started yelling at the top of his lungs. His face went red and he was spitting. He was a big burly white guy, like me.

I had an instant bodily reaction, familiar from being bullied as a child and preteen by men in other uniforms who looked like him, and from teenage violence in which I lashed out, sometimes to defend myself and others, sometimes to exact blind revenge on my peers for the sins of men who looked like that cop. The feeling is a shock wave of rising heat, a flood of cortisol and endorphins I can feel singeing the roots of my hair.

It’s the biochemistry of both patriarchy and the revolt against it. It’s exhilarating to the extent that you’re pretty sure things will turn out all right. Continue reading “That Time White Supremacy Meant That I Didn’t Get Shot”