And they flew the flags at half-staff.
“George Zimmerman was hunted at night by Trayvon Martin, at 2am”
I felt something. I tried not to. I tried to silence that thing. I tried to shake it off and keep it pushing. Got bills to pay, kids to feed. Got to just keep. It. Pushing.
Half-staff? What does that mean to me? Nothing. They already act like we’re animals. We’re “out of control,” our home is a “nightmare of murder and crime,” a “killing field.” They sent in the National Guard to put us in timeout. What’s one more indignity? Half-staff? It’s nothin’ to me. Nothin. It’s all good.
But nah, it’s not all good. I feel that thing within waking up. Do you feel it too? That heavy object we bury down deep, that we silence with a joke, with staged indifference or with tactical ignorance. How else do we get through the day? We try to crush it small in our fists, and exile to the abyss of our spirit… but it stirs, despite our best efforts.
“If I see a black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy I hope he’s qualified.”
Perhaps I should back up. A man was killed in Utah. You may have heard. An important man in America, I’m told. They flew the flags at half-staff. At the White House, in all public buildings, and military posts in all the United States of America and its territories. A mark of respect. For the man killed in Utah. They don’t do that for just anyone, but they did it for him.
“There’s no such thing as white privilege or racism”
It’s a clarion call to the world that we are a nation mourning one of our most precious sons. The man killed in Utah was honored by the White House, news shows, Universities, local governments, governors, on Thursday Night Football and at Yankee Stadium. The Senate unanimously passed a National Day of Remembrance, which falls on the same day as George Floyd’s birthday. The House passed a resolution honoring his life, with votes from politicians who claim to represent our communities.
“Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Kentanji Brown Jackson…you do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to steal a white person’s slot.”
Maybe you, like my mother, did not know who he was before that man was killed in Utah. If so, I envy you. I knew who he was, but ignored him. A bigot with a podcast instead of a white hood is the least of my problems. I got bills, remember?
But they flew the flags at half-staff. And I got the message. And so did the thing in my soul.
We know about messages. This is not the first. We remember. We remember because we’ve got to, the good times and the dark. They all live in the same house. But that thing within, that’s trying to get out, it lives with the dark memories behind a locked door. It’s pounding, shaking the hinges.
“Skin color now gets their own summertime celebration, oh wow, look how far blacks have come, it is now become a racial complaining day.”
But the house has many doors, so let’s open another. A summer night spent packed like sardines with cousins. The plastic clings to me as I rise from grandma’s couch and run up the stairs. It’s a house full of love, laughs, the smell of grease and fried fish, the feel of the scruff of my grandpa’s beard. I can hear their voices, see their faces. It’s perfect. Perhaps you have some memories like it?
“We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act”
But now I see other faces too. Two boys in particular. One with curious, intelligent eyes. Another who looks like he could be my brother, with a smile so vibrant it lights up the darkness. We need that light, because its dark in here. Why is it dark in here? I’m in the wrong room.
The faces of Tamir Rice and Trayvon Martin are seared into our minds and hearts forever. Two boys who we never met, who we can never forget. They were still young enough to have sleepovers with their own cousins when their lives were snatched away. And yet, they flew the flags at half-staff. For the man killed in Utah.
“George Floyd didn’t die because of a police officer. He died because of a drug overdose”
We remember them because they are ours. Just like Mike Brown is ours, and Daunte Wright, Breonna Taylor, Andre Hill, Daniel Prude, Philando Castille, Sandra Bland, John Crawford, Atatiana Jefferson, Stephon Clark, Botham Jean, Laquon McDonald, Walter Scott, Darrien Hunt, Alton Sterling, George Floyd, Eric Garner, Ahmaud Arbery, and Freddy Gray. I don’t need to tell you that there are countless more. Not you. We remember because we’ve got to, even though it hurts.
“It sounds like a young man, [Ahmaud Arbery] was breaking and entering.”
They are not just names, not just faces, not to us. They are a promise. Our promise to stand vigil over their stories, which are not safe from our enemies, even in death. We know that if we forget, we abandon their memory to those who seek to transform their ghosts into demons. Those who keep our names in their mouths only to use them as a weapon to strike at or taunt us.
“Remember what BLM stands for “burn, loot, and murder”
The man killed in Utah made a living doing just that, exploiting our grief and fury to the screaming applause of our neighbors and countrymen, all too willing to be convinced of any lie told of us. And while we mourn the discarded promise of their lives, people like the man killed in Utah make millions off our tears. Because to hate us is quite profitable, it turns out. So after every tragedy, after every life snuffed out by the crushing weight of this country that we built, the man from Utah was there with a smile and a lie about our murdered kin.
“MLK was awful…[h]e’s not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn’t believe.”
He lied about our nature, our competence, our culture, and our parenting. He denigrated our heroes and disparaged the laws that guaranteed our citizenship in this hostile land. He invited the killers of our fallen to his platform to spew lies with impunity. He was, frankly, obsessed with us. It was thus unsurprising that in the hours after his death, at the hands of someone who did not look like us, they called in threats to HBCUs across the country. A fitting ode to the how the man in Utah lived his life. And yet, they flew the flags at half-staff.
“Black women divorced the black man and married the government”
The man killed in Utah was acclaimed for his quick wit and willingness to debate his ideas. Indeed, to vigorously defend your ideas is as American as the hanging tree. Even the New York times said the man from Utah was practicing politics “exactly the right way.”
I wonder though, are all ideas worth our time, or worth our energy? Are all thoughts worth our commerce in that renowned free marketplace of ideas? Must we debate with those who question our very humanity? Should we shout from the town square that we are not animals and need not be caged and beaten and killed? Should we engage with opinions that presume, as a starting point, that we are less than, incompetent, or frivolous? Indeed, perhaps we should!
“Blacks commit more crimes than whites do, they commit more murders, they commit more arsons, they commit more kidnappings.”
But I will not. I refuse.
We have been on these shores since 1619. We built this country. If they are not convinced by now, they never will. Our humanity is not a counterpoint. Our membership in the human race is not up for debate. It is self-evident. It is to me, as it is to you. Those who believe otherwise are our foes. I am not interested in convincing, negotiating or pleading with those who barely see us as people, if at all. A thing is beautiful no matter how many times you call it ugly. And you, my brothers and sisters, are radiant.
In that spirit, and to paraphrase one of our brightest literary stars, “I will waste no more time or language on our enemies, beloveds. But if I ever did, I would tell them that there is a river between what they see and what they know. And they don’t have the heart to cross it.”
I therefore resist the urge here to debunk the myriad lies told about us by the man killed in Utah. We don’t need it. We never did. Instead, I will finally get to the point.
Something is coming. In fact, it is already here.
You feel it too. It has been coming for some time. Most of us have tried to ignore it, but that deep memory in our soul, it is screaming out to warn us all. They think we have flown too close to the sun, and they are gathering to put us back under their heel.
In less than a year we have seen an unprecedented push to bring back Jim Crow, eradicate our stories from public life, and remove our bodies from places and positions they think we don’t belong. They have made it clear that they want us out of their neighborhoods, boardrooms, office buildings, and their colleges. We were always meant to be destitute and under siege with the full weight of the government is constantly pointed at us. They mean to make good on that promise. Our livelihoods, safety, and our peace are all on the line. I don’t know what is next, but I do know it will get worse before it gets better.
Lean times are ahead, and we will not survive alone. Community is our foremost weapon against what is coming, as it always has been. We must look to our elders for lessons on surviving dark times past, but also uplift our youth, who are the key to finding new, innovative ways to bring us together.
Remember that our story is a tale of resilience and resistance above all else. We are a people who have survived and thrived the worst conditions known to man. We survived the slave trade, Jim Crow, we have seen highways erected through our neighborhoods and witnessed our communities put to the flame. We remember it all. Because we remember, we know we will survive this too. We also know we cannot do this alone.
This paper is a call to community. A call for us all to think about how we can help each other as the cold winds start to blow, and the fight to feed and protect our families becomes harder. “What does that mean?” You may wonder. “What can we do?” You may be asking yourself. I have asked myself the same. I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I do have some ideas. My strident hope that this paper will be a tool to express, build and realize our community’s strength and an exchange of ideas about how we can support each other in good times and in the hard times. Because that is what it means to be black in America. And I was taught that I only gotta do two things in life; Stay Black and Die.