Guest column: What it means to be a Black photojournalist covering the protests in Detroit

Valaurian Waller has been documenting the protests in Detroit over the past 11 days. To see her work, check out this photo essay.

As a photographer, I spend most of my time making people feel comfortable. Comfortable with my camera, comfortable with how I’ve captured them, comfortable with the space I take while in theirs.

The current state of things has made me think more deeply about the parallels of my photographic strategies to my personal life. I spend so much effort, time, and practice making people comfortable with me taking space, especially white people. 
 
To be a Black woman in America is a practice in constantly having to make yourself more palatable, tolerable — easier for consumption. It's a bitter pill to swallow, having to ensure my digestibility in exchange for my personal comfort. 
 
Above all, I am TIRED. I'm tired and numb. It's been hard really trying to wrap my head around everything because it's become so commonplace that I’m at the point of emotional fatigue.  

To put it lightly, these past few weeks have been uncomfortable. Quarantine, economic collapse, essentially a new plague — the world has been forced to stand still. For all these reasons, both positive and negative, it has brought into focus a greater sense of how we are all connected, and I hope that this upsurge in civic activity continues and grows to cultivate deeper and lasting change. 
 
That being said, I can't say that I'm the most optimistic. I've been to plenty of protests and demonstrations, and I always find myself getting wrapped up in the energy and conviction of the crowd, but then nothing happens and the cycle repeats. 
 
I will say that I've never seen this many white folks as mad about police brutality. Maybe there's an awakening happening? I think I ended up taking a lot of photos of white protesters because I was just shocked at the turnout. 
 
In my experience, there was a stark contrast between the main protest downtown and others I’ve attended — namely, the march across the Belle Isle bridge. Both protests were peaceful and full of energy, but the Belle Isle event also felt inviting and warm because there were more families and older folk as well. 
  
Frankly, I’d feel more hopeful if these protests happened in the suburbs of Detroit. What does Grosse Pointe, Harper Woods, St. Clair Shores, Birmingham, and Bloomfield Hills plan to do to be a part of the solution? They’re part of the metro area and an integral part of the problems and solutions. Detroiters have always fought this fight. The city is majority Black so, systemic racism isn’t treated as a myth here because we’re a blatant example of what happens when it goes unchecked. 
 
Either way, I'm tired of being tired. I'm tired of having to constantly prove my worth, I'm tired of having to convince people that I deserve to be in the spaces I occupy, and because of all of this I feel numb. There's only so much you can take before you just shut down that part of yourself, and I'm definitely there. 
 
I haven't been vocal on social media because I don't even know what to say. I don't know what else I can do that hasn't been done or said or thought to convince society of the necessity of this movement. I'm tired of having to argue and plead my case. I'm tired of having to jump through the mental hoops people put up to deny my humanity and value. 
 
What I do know is, it's become evident that as a Black woman, it is not up to me to fix systemic racism and police brutality against my people. White supremacy created these problems and have allowed it to fester, therefore white people need to step up and do the work to dismantle it. It's going to be a long, arduous road ahead. Most of which will be mental, and needs to be consistent. Black people have carried this burden for too long — time to lay it down.