By Nicole Akoukou Thompson
Tacos de Zanaharos and the Ensalada de Mercado caught my eye as I scanned the menu of an upbeat eatery, serving Mexican street food at a premium price. “Frustrating,” I thought, “I could’ve gotten better tacos at half the price in my own neighborhood.” I closed the menu when the waitress returned, ordered and looked over at my group of quasi-estranged white college friends—we’d gathered to celebrate a birthday.
By the time I’d taken my seat, the group had already started in on margaritas and had fastened on a subject: North Korea. More specifically, they were diving into a conversation about Donald Trump’s poor relations with N. Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong-un and how that would ultimately lead to our deaths.
“I can’t believe we’re all going to die because Trump is an idiot,” said the thin brunette birthday girl, sighing. “He’s not my president.” She then expressed this had caused her some sleeplessness. I shrugged and glanced downward, scanning a wrinkled drink menu which advertised fresh-clipped cilantro or mint in nearly every drink. I negotiated a bitter grin as I thought, “He’s not your president? OK! But I bet your mother voted for him, and your father.”
I couldn’t spare empathy for a white woman whose biggest fear was something that hadn’t happened yet and might not. Meanwhile, my most significant fears were in motion: women and men dying in cells after being wrongly imprisoned, choked out for peddling cigarettes, or shot to death during ‘routine’ traffic stops. I twitch when my partner is late, worried that a cantankerous cop has brutalized or shot him because he wouldn’t prostrate himself.
As a woman of color, I am aware of the multiple types of violence that threaten me currently—not theoretically. Street harassment, excessively affecting me as a Black woman, has blindsided me since I was eleven. A premature body meant being catcalled before I’d discussed the birds and the bees. It meant being followed, whistled at, or groped. As an adult, while navigating through neighborhoods with extinguished street lights, I noticed the correlation between women’s safety and street lighting—as well as the fact that Black and brown neighborhoods were never as brightly lit as those with a more significant white population.
I move quickly through those unlit spaces, never comforted by the inevitable whirl of red and blue sirens. In fact, it’s always been the contrary. Ever so often, cops approach me in their vehicle’s encouraging me to “Hurry along,” “Stay on the sidewalk,” or “Have a good night.” My spine stiffening, I never believed they endorsed my safety. Instead, I worried that I’d be accused of an unnamed accusation, corned by a cop who preys on Black women, or worse.
A majority of my 50-minute bus ride from the southside of Chicago to the north to join these women for the birthday celebration was spent reading articles about citywide shootings. I began with a Chicago Tribute piece titled “33 people shot, seven fatally, in 13 hours,” then toppled into a barrage of RIP posts on Facebook and ended with angry posts about police brutality on Tumblr. You might guess, by the time I arrived to dinner I wasn’t in the mood for the “I can’t believe we’re all going to die because Trump is an idiot” shit.
I shook my head, willing the meal to be over, and was grateful when the check arrived just as someone was asking me about my hair. My thinking wasn’t all too different from Michael Harriot’s ‘Why Black America Isn’t Worried About the Upcoming Nuclear Holocaust.” While the meal was partly pleasant, I departed thinking, “fear of nuclear demolition is just some white shit.”
Sadly, that thought would not last long.
I still vibe with Harriot’s statement, “Black people have lived under the specter of having our existence erased on a white man’s whim since we stepped onto the shore at Jamestown Landing.” However, a friend—a Black friend—ignited my nuclear paranoia by sharing theories about when it might happen and who faced the greatest threat. In an attempt to ease my friend’s fear, I leaned in to listen but accidentally toppled down the rabbit hole too. I forked through curated news feeds. I sifted through “fake news,” “actual news,” and foreign news sources. Suddenly, an idea took root: nuclear strike would disproportionately impact Black people, brown people, and low-income individuals.
North Korea won’t target the plain sight racists of Portland, Oregon, the violently microaggressive liberals of the rural Northwest, or the white-hooded klansmen of Diamondhead, Mississippi. No, under the instruction of the supreme leader Kim Jong-un, North Korea will likely strike densely populated urban areas, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington D.C., and New York City. These locations stand-out as targets for a nuclear strike because they are densely populated U.S. population centers. Attacking the heart of the nation or populous cities would translate to more casualties. With that in mind, it’s not lost on me that the most populous cities in the United States boast sizeable diverse populations, or more plainly put: Black populations.
This shit stresses me out! There’s a creeping chill that follows me, a silent alarm that rings each time my Google alert chimes letting me know that Donald Trump has yet again provoked Kim Jong-Un, a man who allegedly killed his very own uncle. I’ve grown so pressed by the idea of nuclear holocaust that my partner and I started gathering non-perishables, candlesticks, a hand-crank radio, and other must-buy items that can be banked in a shopping cart. The practice of preparing for a nuclear holocaust sometimes feels comical, particularly when acknowledging that there has long been a war on Black people in this country.
Blackness is bittersweet in flavor. We are blessed with the melanized skin, the MacGyver-like inventiveness of our foremothers, and our blinding brightness—but the anti-blackness that we experience is also blinding as well as stifling. We are stuck by rigged systems, punished with the prison industrial complex, housing discrimination, pay discrimination, and worse. We get side-eyes from strangers when we’re “loitering,” and the police will pull us over for driving “too fast” in a residential neighborhood. We get murdered for holding cell phones while standing in our grandmother’s backyard.
The racism that strung up our ancestors, kept them sequestered to the back of the bus and kept them in separate and unequal schools still lives. It lives, and it’s more palpable than dormant. To me, this means one thing: Trump’s America isn’t an unfortunate circumstance, it’s a homecoming event that’s hundreds of years in the making, no matter how many times my white friends’ say, “He’s not my president.”
In light of this homecoming, we now flirt with a new, larger fear of a Black genocide. America has always worked towards Black eradication through a steady stream of life-threatening inequality, but nuclear war on American soil would be swift. And for this reason I’ve grown tired of whiteness being at the center of the nuclear conversation. The race-neutral approach to the dialogue, and a tendency to continue to promote the idea that missiles will land in suburban and rural backyards, instead of inner-city playgrounds, is false.
“The Day After,” the iconic, highest-rated television film in history, aired November 20, 1983. More than 100 million people tuned in to watch a film postulating a war between the Soviet Union and the United States. The film, which would go on to affect President Ronald Reagan and policymakers’ nuclear intentions, shows the “true effects of nuclear war on average American citizens.” The Soviet-targeted areas featured in the film include Higginsville, Kansas City, Sedalia, Missouri, as well as El Dorado Springs, Missouri. They depict the destruction of the central United States, and viewers watch as full-scale nuclear war transforms middle America into a burned wasteland. Yet unsurprisingly, the devastation from the attack is completely white-washed, leaving out the more likely victims which are the more densely populated (Black) areas.
Death tolls would be high for white populations, yes, but large-scale losses of Black and brown folks would outpace that number, due to placement and poverty. That number would be pushed higher by limited access to premium health care, wealth, and resources. The effects of radiation sickness, burns, compounded injuries, and malnutrition would throttle Black and brown communities and would mark us for generations. It’s for that reason that we have to do more to foster disaster preparedness among Black people where we can. Black people deserve the space to explore nuclear unease, even if we have competing threats, anxieties, and worries.
Jacqui Patterson, Director of the Environmental and Climate Justice Initiative, once stated:
African American communities are disproportionately vulnerable to and impacted by natural (and unnatural) catastrophes. Our socio-economic vulnerability is based on multiple factors including our lack of wealth to cushion us, our disproportionate representation in lower quality housing stock, and our relative lack of mobility, etc.
If you’re Black and nervous about nuclear war too, but you’re also broke and can’t afford to head to a protected island, be sure to make an emergency plan for yourself and your family. Design a shelter plan, an evacuation plan, and consider what goods or equipment you may need. Keep necessities on hand: non-perishables, canned goods, medical supplies, several gallons of water, a communication device, tools, a flashlight, fresh batteries, garbage bags, and duct tape. This information could be useful for everyone, but Black people this is for you. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also publishes great information on Emergency Preparedness.
In case of nuclear attack or any emergency, pay attention to the news and take advisories seriously. If evacuation is possible, safely find your way to an area that’s a bit of a distance from commercial ports, airfields, or centers of government.
In the words of Issa Rae, “I’m rooting for everyone black,” so please stay safe out there!
Nicole Akoukou Thompson is a Chicago-based creative writer with a varied background in journalism, education, social media, and brand management. Thompson is passionate about LGBTQ, women’s, and POC experiences, exploring those themes in Latin Post, Madame Noire, and Vital Voice, among others.
In addition to writing, Thompson dabbles in graphic design, ceramics, DIY crafts and goods, and cooking. Find Nicole Akoukou Thompson on Twitter at @escritoria, or on Instagram at @surecliveegrl or @southsidefoodcraft. Also, feel free to stop by her websites, nicoleakoukou.com or southsidefoodcraft.com.
