This is what terrorists are doing to try to silence someone: death threats, swatting and more. I call them terrorists because they're using terror tactics to try to silence someone. She's very brave in standing up to them.
White supremacists 'swatted' my home to silence me. I will not be silent
Author Ijeoma Oluo’s son was endangered when someone called police, pretending to be him, and said he murdered two people – and the harassment didn’t stop there
...
I started writing because every single day I was living a half-life. I started writing because I was tired of taking in every racist joke, every insult, every assumption. I was tired of hearing the locks on people’s cars click down as I walked past theirs in a grocery store parking lot. I was tired of worrying about my brother’s safety when he went on tour. I was tired of worrying that I might die at each traffic stop. I was tired of seeing black body after black body lying in the street like so much garbage after an encounter with police.
And I was so very tired of being silent through it all. Silence was not helping me. It was killing me.
These last years, since I started writing, I have been as free as I can imagine a black woman to be in this country. I have been able to speak openly, without reservation, about my lived experience and the experiences of my community. I have been able to look at white supremacy and call it what it is. I have not had to worry about losing my job; it is my job. I have not had to worry about losing friends (they left many essays ago). I have not had to bite my tongue in order to provide food for my family. I have not had to bend over backwards to prove that I am a “nice” Negro in order to not end up in HR for my “attitude problem”. I know that if I encounter violence because of my race, while I will not be avenged the way that white people would be, I will be heard and believed in a way in which few people of color are.
And the price I have had to pay for that is that I get fairly regular death threats, occasionally my personal address and the addresses of my family members are posted online, occasionally my financial information is posted. And then, of course, the swatting.
If I let this work go in order to avoid paying that price, every other price of existing as a black person in America still waits for me and my family. It does not go away. It does not make my sons more safe. It does not make me more safe.
...
White supremacists 'swatted' my home to silence me. I will not be silent
Author Ijeoma Oluo’s son was endangered when someone called police, pretending to be him, and said he murdered two people – and the harassment didn’t stop there
...
I started writing because every single day I was living a half-life. I started writing because I was tired of taking in every racist joke, every insult, every assumption. I was tired of hearing the locks on people’s cars click down as I walked past theirs in a grocery store parking lot. I was tired of worrying about my brother’s safety when he went on tour. I was tired of worrying that I might die at each traffic stop. I was tired of seeing black body after black body lying in the street like so much garbage after an encounter with police.
And I was so very tired of being silent through it all. Silence was not helping me. It was killing me.
These last years, since I started writing, I have been as free as I can imagine a black woman to be in this country. I have been able to speak openly, without reservation, about my lived experience and the experiences of my community. I have been able to look at white supremacy and call it what it is. I have not had to worry about losing my job; it is my job. I have not had to worry about losing friends (they left many essays ago). I have not had to bite my tongue in order to provide food for my family. I have not had to bend over backwards to prove that I am a “nice” Negro in order to not end up in HR for my “attitude problem”. I know that if I encounter violence because of my race, while I will not be avenged the way that white people would be, I will be heard and believed in a way in which few people of color are.
And the price I have had to pay for that is that I get fairly regular death threats, occasionally my personal address and the addresses of my family members are posted online, occasionally my financial information is posted. And then, of course, the swatting.
If I let this work go in order to avoid paying that price, every other price of existing as a black person in America still waits for me and my family. It does not go away. It does not make my sons more safe. It does not make me more safe.
...