I spent about two years living in upstate New York. I would wake up early most mornings and drive the winding back roads, catching glimpses of the rising sun between the tops of the evergreen trees on my way to work. Work was at a place called Farm Sanctuary, a refuge for animals used for food where they live out their lives under the care and protection of Sanctuary staff. The journey to Sanctuary was something I always valued and appreciated. There was something meaningful about heading somewhere that existed with such deep intention and then arriving there. There was something about the felt experience of traversing the spatial landscape of the area and arriving at this place that took up space in a defined and intentional way in service of care and safety for a community.   

Not far from the Sanctuary where I worked is a Tops grocery store. I would go there regularly on errands, taking the interns grocery shopping or stopping by during lunch or on my way home from work. Farm Sanctuary and this particular Tops grocery store are situated in the predominantly white town of Watkins Glen, New York. Weeks could go by before I would see another person with darker skin, months before I would see someone else who was Black.

On days off, I would sometimes head to New York City or another larger town or city nearby for a change of scenery, where I could feel a little less like the odd one out. It was not that I needed to see myself reflected in others exactly, but instead, I wanted to feel that greater sense of ease and relief that came in spaces where I could see and experience that there are other ways to “be” — even as we share the same space. That it is possible to share space as the dynamic and diverse expressions of who we are. It seemed that I could breathe more easily, more fully when I would travel to those places like there was something I could finally cast off and lay down. 

When I first learned about the shooting at the Tops grocery store in Buffalo, New York — hearing and seeing the names and faces of the people who had been killed — I could so clearly recall the aisles of the Tops grocery store in Watkins Glen that I had walked through many times before. Buffalo is about two and a half hours away from where I had lived. I traveled there several times on my days off to visit one of my favorite restaurants, Allentown Pizza, just five minutes from the Tops grocery store on Jefferson Avenue where the shooting took place, where ten Black people had been killed — targeted explicitly because they were Black. Black like me. 

The week following the Buffalo shooting, I felt something so loud and heavy within me that I could not seem to shake. I sat in my car in a local grocery store parking lot thousands of miles away from New York and could not stop the tears from flowing. The heavy and loud something that I felt seemed so big, angry, vulnerable, and helpless, all at the same time. I could not quite make sense of what it was. I sat with that inner experience of big, angry, vulnerable, and helpless for a moment, knowing that bringing attention to what we are feeling inwardly can sometimes bring clarity. The greater clarity that came was a wondering that seemed to say, “Am I somehow wrong for feeling all of this?” — a need to make some sense of things. 

I went home, sat in front of the computer, and opened a web browser, searching for something that might match what I was feeling inside. I came across a resource from the University of Colorado Boulder that read, “White ascendency is the system of ‘thinking and behavior that arise from White mainstream authority and advantage, which in turn are generated from Whiteness’s historical position of power and domination’ (Gusa pp. 472). This leads to a sense of White entitlement, the notion that it is right and natural for Whites to maintain control over spaces, discourses, and outcomes.” 

Upon reading that, an inward sense came to me that felt like, “Yes, something about this resonates with what I am feeling.” Then, I came across an article with a phrase included in the title that read, “The Violence of White Entitlement … .” 

“Yes, that!” my inner voice seemed to say. And then I discovered another article titled, “Counterclaims: Examining and contesting white entitlement to the space of the university through the labour of anti-racist student organizers” Reading those pieces helped me put things together in a way that felt like a sort of sense was made — recognition that I was not wrong for feeling that the violence in Buffalo seemed incomprehensible; the big, angry, helpless, and vulnerable of it all. 

There are undoubtedly many factors that contributed to what took place in Buffalo, and one dimension that felt so alive for me at that moment was the “violence of white entitlement.” I realized that I was trying to process that internalized sense that some people have that only white is right, natural, and correct — the insistence on reproducing spaces that default to whiteness and white-dominant culture as the source of power, dominance, and control. Anything that deviates from that is perceived and experienced as a threat to be eliminated. When others who exist outside of whiteness take up space or claim space, a reactionary counterspatial claim invested in the maintenance of white dominance can emerge in the form of white entitlement.

The violent, reactionary, and “counter” quality of it was so clear in the instance of the Buffalo shooting. Black people who were simply existing in space, living their lives, and grocery shopping to feed themselves and their families had to be eliminated from the perspective of someone invested in maintaining whiteness as the source of power, dominance, and control. This investment and entitlement can also exist in not so explicit ways, but still insidious and pernicious, in the routine instances of our daily lives and the communities in which we live and work.  

Later that evening, I reached out to one of my brothers, asking him if he had a moment to be with me to help me hold and keep that big, angry, helpless, and vulnerable feeling — the incomprehensible — company. What came as we shared and held that space together was a remembering of how important it is that we take up space — and that we take up that space not just to keep it for ourselves but to hold the spaces that we create so that those spaces may welcome and hold others, as well.

I was reminded of how important it is to recognize that our ability to take up space and be and breathe fully is amplified when fellow members of our communities are able to exist in those spaces and be and breathe fully, too. I remembered the legacy of Harriet Tubman, who was motivated by the idea that “I go to prepare a place for you” — a person who, on their journey to freedom, knew that that freedom could only truly be realized as a project of co-liberation with a community.

As I remember those morning drives to Sanctuary, I cannot help but long for those spaces we create for ourselves and each other where it is possible to share space as the dynamic and diverse expressions of who we are. The complexity of what it means to make spatial claims of sanctuary on stolen Native land is not lost on me. Are we willing and able to hold that complexity and nuance together, to not evade or look away, to take responsibility while also practicing deep humility? I have felt how that is possible. I know we can and that I am not alone in trying. I believe in the communities we can build and practice that exist beyond extraction, beyond scarcity, individualism, and competition, and beyond violent counterclaims for space and power.