Corinne Litchfield

Nearly 20 years ago, someone told me that people will only say or do certain things if they think they have a home with you, meaning they will make offensive comments or act inappropriately because they think you are okay with it.

That concept has been on my mind a lot for the last 9 months. I guess you could say it’s fully gestated and ready to be birthed, because I’m writing this today to post across my online platform and clarify what does and does not have a home with me.

You do not have a home with me if you cannot understand why all lives don’t matter until black, brown, indigenous, women’s, and LGBTQIA lives matter.

You do not have a home with me if you think believing in Jesus absolves you from aligning yourself with a political party that has been complicit in allowing one man to encourage and enable hate crimes and sedition.

You do not have a home with me if you refuse to comprehend why there is a call to defund the police by communities of marginalized people who have experienced racial profiling, harassment, and police brutality, all of which have been well documented.

You do not have a home with me if you think it’s funny to mock mental health issues, or if you think anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, OCD or a host of other diagnoses are not real and can be overcome by willpower.

You do not have a home with me if you infantilize or mock people with disabilities, or don’t consider accessibility to be your concern.

You do not have a home with me if you say you “see both sides” and are unwilling to speak up when you bear witness to hateful, oppressive behavior.

You do not have a home with me if you are unwilling to carefully consider your thoughts, beliefs and actions towards people of a different race, gender identity, sexual preference, religion, ethnicity, or ability than your own AND determine whether those thoughts, beliefs and actions are in alignment with your highest, best self.

Who DOES have a home with me? People who are willing to be honest in their struggle to address their biases and prejudices. People who are willing to take a deep dive into their belief systems and say, “Hey, this belief is messed up, I need to replace it.” People who are willing to have conversations on hard topics and find resources that will help make them better allies.

I am overwhelmed: by police brutality, by the pandemic, by the actions of the US administration on a 24/7 basis, by my own personal & professional issues. I feel that when it comes to being proactive on the first 3 things, I can't do much more than sign petitions, share content & post my own feelings on the interwebs, and vote. That never feels like enough, however.

I've posted before about where I live in Baltimore. To provide more context, I'm in West Baltimore, within a 3-mile radius from where, five years ago, protests and riots happened over the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody. I am within walking distance of a mural of Ta-Nehisi Coates, beloved native son and author of many award-winning essays and articles on topics of reparations, racism and growing up in Baltimore.

I hadn’t lived in Baltimore two weeks when I was mugged at gunpoint right by my apartment building. It was a crime of opportunity and I was very fortunate in many aspects:

The man who mugged me was satisfied with the $20 bill I had on me at the time. I was somehow able to talk him out of taking my phone or wallet. I wasn’t physically harmed.

I had four Baltimore police officers in my apartment within 10 minutes of my call to 911.

In the weeks to come, I shared my story with several city officials, including Sheree Briscoe, then-Major of Western District of Baltimore Police; Marilyn Mosby, State’s Attorney for Baltimore; Leon Pinkett and several city council members; Barbara Robinson, then-state senator and Nick Mosby and Antonio Hayes, Maryland House of Delegates members. 

I repeated my story several times over and wrote multiple emails. I met several of these people in person, getting hugs and vows of support.

Through all of this process of sharing, no matter who I spoke to, I was very aware of the fact that my white privilege was giving me a wider audience. My white privilege gave me the tools to share my experience and my white arrogance gave me the assurance that my voice would be heard.

In many situations or incidents, there is little opportunity for what I call a white-people solution (WPS to keep this simple). What constitutes a WPS:

calling the police for minor complaints or infractions

calling property management for issues with a neighbor

reporting a vehicle as abandoned or stolen without checking in with a few neighbors first

writing letters of complaint or calling city officials about various issues

Five years after the 2015 uprising, Baltimore remains tense and traumatized. Our infrastructure is chock full of corruption and career politicians that barely advocate for Baltimoreans of color. There is so much mistrust and disillusionment with our local officials, and I understand why. When you are part of a group that has been marginalized and disenfranchised for over a century, it is difficult to see the value of attending neighborhood association meetings, or contacting city council, or voting.

And I can completely understand why black Baltimoreans wouldn’t see the value in any of those things. Because I come at the problems with white-people logic that leads to WPS, I have an inherent belief that the systems will work for me. I have seen it happen. But we all know WPS will not work when applied by black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). The systems won’t allow it. 

And that’s why those of us who rely on WPS must bear witness. We must hold up our smartphones and record interactions we encounter between BIPOC and law enforcement. We must explain to others why ascribing WPS to other races and cultures won’t work. We must amplify the message that BIPOC are sharing and give them the platforms to do it without fear of recrimination. We must define a new type of white-people solution that ensures the problems of BIPOC are acknowledged and resolved with compassion.

Selling my car yesterday dredged up some old stuff, some of which I expected to surface and others I assumed had been worn down to nothing with time. The news about Mary Oliver's death hit me hard as I was already feeling so raw, but in truth I wasn't well versed in her poetry. I read some online yesterday and, for the first time in at least a year, I wrote a poem of my own. (I won't be sharing it here without considerable edits.)

On my way home today from turning in my license plates, I took a different route home that wound along Falls Road, taking me past beautiful old estates and The Ivy, a bookstore I'd heard of but hadn't visited. I can't turn down such serendipitous timing, so I went in and picked out Blue Horses by Mary Oliver. I expect to read through this collection and feel once again inspired to write more poems. Word therapy is a blessed thing.