Why the Folding Chair Matters
We must redefine our relationships and reclaim our communities if we want to leave the world better than we found it.
This essay originally appeared on Kerra’s Substack Water in My Bones on August 17, 2023. Reposted with permission.
I thought it was too late to write this essay.
Until I found this posted on Instagram this morning:
Honestly, I thought Black people surrendered the phrase pictured above like we had any jazz music created after 1965. Turns out, I found out.
That’s a good thing because, after all the hot takes and the memes, I can say my peace about why the folding chair matters. Sit back and take notes. Here’s the TLDR version:
The folding chair matters because it’s a resistance symbol.
Black people are expected to sing “We Shall Overcome” or comfort white people who “just can’t imagine” or are “heartbroken” after any and every racial incident — like when “strange fruit” rots on southern trees, a police officer kneels on our neck until we can’t breathe, a teenager kills everyone inside a church, or when a routine traffic stop ends in hanging in a jail cell.
However, when several white people physically assaulted a Black dock employee, a collective, ancestral “Aw hell naw!” (also known as the “Black Signal”) erupted from every Black person within a mile radius. Bystanders joined the melee. One cell phone video showed a Black man wielding a folding chair while another captured a Black man (later nicknamed “Aquamane” on the interwebs) swam across to help.
As a Black woman on a five-year quest to learn to swim, dive, and map sunken slave ships, I know we don’t just jump in the water. Here, the water is turquoise and almost clear where I practice swimming. Even then, I shriek like a Baptized baby when seeing a manta ray whose fins stretch wide like angels’ wings.
Within minutes of the brawl, the Black internet sprung into action like The Avengers. Memes of Black historical figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Harriet Tubman were photoshopped to be holding folding chairs. Creatives digitally inserted a folding chair in Black pop culture icons like the painting featured in the television show Good Times.
Several other Black friends and I temporarily changed our social media profile photo to a folding chair. We posted and shared memes to show solidarity with the Black people involved in the fight.
“It must have been a red-alert emergency for a Black man to jump in the water and swim to help out,” I texted a white bestie. “We don’t know what’s in that water.”
Our laughing at the memes skidded to a halt when the same bestie responded that one of her non-Black social media acquaintances wrote a “violence is not funny” post in response to the Montgomery incident.
“I just can’t with these idiots,” my friend said. “Does she not understand the history of this country? Does she even know any Black people?”
Apparently not.
The brawl was about four centuries and counting in the making.
I say this as a person who wrote a book and produced a docuseries about restorative practices. The International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP) defines restorative practices as a “field within the social sciences that studies how to strengthen relationships between individuals as well as social connections within communities.”
I am not advocating violence to alleviate racial violence. I have witnessed the power of restorative practices to restore relationships, repair harm, and build social capital. However, we must redefine our relationships and reclaim our communities if we want to leave the world better than we found it.
We redefine our relationship by recognizing one exists. The efforts in Florida and other states to create a revisionist or erase history and even ban books featuring mostly BIPOC and LGBTQ+ authors are deeply troubling.
Redefining Relationship: Some lawmakers wanted to erase swaths of Black history from school textbooks. Learning about actual history instead of creation myths indoctrinated by enslavers made white children “feel bad.” Imagine being in school and learning that your people came from a “dark continent” with no culture, language, or achievements, were enslaved, emancipated by a great politician, not enslaved but lived under a form of apartheid until a preacher came along and announced his “dream” on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Now we can all go to the same bathrooms and schools.
It made me feel really bad.
Reclaiming Communities: Hearing the pride, joy, and sense of community among the staff, students, and parents of a Black-led charter school with whom I’ve worked over the years makes me feel really glad. For students (known as “scholars”) at this school, Black History isn’t a lesson plan for February. It is implemented in nearly every aspect of the school’s culture.
In addition, restorative practices is also baked into their learning experience. Miracles can happen when everyone participates in an environment that honors their sovereignty and humanity.
Humor Helps: A pre-2020 version of me would have firebombed a screed about the Montgomery incident on social media and dragged dissenters in the comments. Today-year-old Kerra would rather laugh and share memes.
You probably expect me to recommend solutions if you’re a non-Black person who has read this far into the article. I’ve got hundreds of them. Voting helps. But here’s the one that counts — do and be better. Otherwise, you may be asked to take several seats or folding chairs.
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