We’re Still Here

I haven’t watched a lot of television lately, mostly since managing my 7-month-old and the rest of my life leaves me feeling pretty tired by the end of the day. But one show I get sucked into without fail is Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 

Last week, I watched the episode about “fighters,” namely Tony Danza and Terry Crews. It followed their lineages back pretty far, Danza’s back to the 1700s and Crews’ back to where “the paper trail runs out.” It turned out that Danza’s great-grandfather was a saloon owner in Brooklyn; Danza was himself a bartender while he moonlighted as a boxer in Brooklyn. Crews had a story that was sadder, but more familiar to me personally: his father was in and out of his life, and it turned out that his grandfather was the same for his father, in and out of jail, on chain gangs in the 1950s. 

The thing that impresses me every single time I watch this show is that, in spite of all their ancestors went through—willing immigration from Europe to Ellis Island, forced immigration from West Africa to the American South, centuries of enslavement, the Holocaust, the Great Depression—the person, their progeny, is sitting in front of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. learning about all of it. 

Which means someone survived. 

Someone lived long enough to give life to someone else, who lived long enough to give life to someone else, who lived long enough to give life to someone else, until we get to the person sitting in front of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 

Earlier this month, I asked myself, “What does Black History Month mean during an ongoing pandemic, after the world witnessed a man murdered two summers ago?” What came to my mind was, “We’re still here.”

It breaks my heart to think of the incalculable loss of life the past two years, the same way I can hardly think about what my and other ancestors bore. I can’t fathom what it would be like to survive the torture of a concentration camp, but know your family did not. And having a child now, I literally cannot process my baby being taken away from me, sold to someone like property. 

But after so much sorrow, I’m still here. 

So, when you’ve lost a deal, or an LP doesn’t resonate with your message, or it looks like your fund isn’t going to close as soon as you thought it would, you can remind yourself, “I’m still here.” 

When you’re not sure what to do, or why you’re even doing what you’re doing, sit quietly and hear that small, still voice, the voice of your ancestors rooting you on to continue building on their legacy. 

You’re still here.