Over the last couple of weeks, I have avoided attending protests demanding justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and the countless other black Americans murdered by the police over the decades. This is not due to a political incompatibility — as a black man who has experienced various forms of antiblackness both in and outside academe, I wholeheartedly support the Black Lives Matter movement and the fight for racial and social justice. Rather, it is my very identity as a black man that has made it difficult to imagine myself attending protests without being completely drained of my emotional energy in the process.
I fear that attending a protest will cause me to experience intense emotions that I have been trying to quell, although perhaps such an emotional release is what I would need to process my pain alongside my community. But as a late-stage Ph.D. student, I find that this involved, time-intensive approach to emotional processing conflicts with the productivity required of me by academe.
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