Black (Fear/Forgiveness)

We need to dispel the myth

that empathy is ‘walking in someone else’s shoes.’

Rather than walking in your shoes,

I need to learn how to listen to the story you tell

about what it’s like in your shoes

and believe you even when it doesn’t match my experiences.

BRENÉ BROWN

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Seattle, 2020

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“Please I can’t breathe”, “My neck hurts”, “My stomach hurts”, “Everything hurts”, “They’re going to kill me!” You see these words in carton papers, repeated in tons of emails, on posts of social media, as headings of newspapers and standing out in the sky. “In black font, in red text”: people are upset.

You see those words, you know: it could’ve been tú, it could’ve been him, it could’ve been someone that you love. You feel something in your arms, trembling up and down; your eyes are getting wet, you want to clench your fists, but you have no strength. You can’t believe that that was real. Is this the real life?

You want to find an explanation, something that makes sense. You remember the contrast: how police officers have always made you feel safe. You remember that the police car was too small, uncomfortable, even for you who are too small. You’re about 5.20 ft; but Floyd (6.6 ft), he looked way taller than those police officers and for sure they were taller than you. (He was black, he was big: he looked like a strong horse. Four men where needed to put him down.) You can understand why he didn’t want to get in. (Plus, it seems, he was claustrophobic.) Being inside of the police car made you feel sick. “From the police standpoint, which is that of power, we are all potential criminals.” And what’s a criminal you wonder? “Someone who commits a crime.” And what’s a crime? “An illegal act.” But who defines what is legal and what is not? Yes, that is subjective: as long as you are in authority, as long as you have some power, it’s up to you.

A mixture of emotions: fear, anger, revenge, a sense of impotence.

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* * * * * *

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You go back in time to understand. (This couldn’t’ve just been out of nothing.) Open your ears and listen. Voices here; voices there.

“It grants freedom to all Americans… Except criminals.” “The 13th Amendment Loophole was exploited” “You were basically a slave again. The 13th Amendment says that ‘Anybody except for criminals, everbody else is free.’ Well, now if you’re criminalized, that doesn’t apply to you.” But they… “They were arrested for extremely minor crimes like loitering or vagrancy.” “And they had to provide labor to rebuild the economy of the South after the Civil War.” “What you got after that is a rapid transition to a kind of mythology of black criminality.” “The Negro is out of control. A threat of violence to white women.”

The Birth of a Nation from Thomas Dixon’s novel The Clansman “was just a profoundly important cultural event.” “Confirmed the story that many whites wanted to tell about the Civil War and its aftermath.” “And every image you see of a black person is a demeaned, animal-like image: canibalistic, animalistic. The image of the African American male.” “What we overlook about The Birth of a Nation is that it was also a tremendously accurate prediction of the way in which race would operate in the United States.” “[It] was almost directly responsible for the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan. It had received this romantic, glowing, heroic portrait.” “The demographic geography of this country was shaped by that era. Now we have African Americans in Los Angeles, in Oakland, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Boston, New York. And very few people appreciate that the African Americans in those communities did not go there as immigrants looking for new economic opportunities. They went there as refugees from terror.” What?!

“And then when it became unacceptable to engage in that kind of open terrorism, then they shifted to something more legal, segregation. Jim Crow” Segregation laws in the south.” Civil rights movement. Human rights movement. Civil rights: people were criminals for disobeying segregation laws. Transformation of the notion of criminality. Because for the first time arrested was something noble. “Their cause must be our cause too.”

“After the Civil War, African Americans were arrested en masse. It was our nation first prison boom.” “If we give nations their freedom, we will be repaid with crime.” 1861-1865 “It’s with the Nixon era, and the law and order period when crime begins to stand if for race.” 69-74. “There’s a cry for law and order: ‘the wave against drug abuse’.” Drug abuse equal crime problem not health problem. “Blacks with heroin.” And it keeps on and on and on…

STOP!

If you got tired, what about them?

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* * * * *

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For years now, I have heard the word ‘wait’.

It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity.

This wait has almost always meant never.

Justice too long delayed is justice denied.

MARTIN LUTHER KING

What is racism? (Fear) You are just starting to listen to voices you never heard before – they were just too different, a whole world apart. But now, you kept quiet and tried to listen, really listen. Songs and films speaking out their voices.

That’s just the way it is.

“You know, you just gotta relax, the racism thing be bugging you too much.”

“Shit will happen.”

Some things will never change.

“So much tension in the air.” (Fear)

“Can you relate to this? It was so blatant, that you said, ‘God damn! That was racist!’”

Said, “Hey, little boy, you can’t go where the others go – you don’t look like they do.”

“Yeah, all of us melanined people have stories like this!”

You are the child of color.

“I’m sick of being an invisible man for everyone except the cops.”

“How heavy it can be all the time.” (Fear)

The policeman wanna blow out my brains.

“That’s fucked up. That’s cold-blooded.”

“Like it was almost, like it didn’t even happen to you. It was like a fucking movie.”

“You guys over-police our neighborhoods, over-punish us, lock us up for life for some shit that white boys joke about in their memoirs. And then we’re stuck in a cycle we can’t even fucking break.” [Two Distant Strangers, that echo of Groundhog Day For A Black Man]

You don’t feel my pain.

(So many fallen and so many names.)

That’s just the way it is.

“I’m sick of people bragging about the ghetto. The ghetto is a situation we supposed trying to get out, not embrace it.” “What choice do they have when white people are born on the third base and niggas are born outside the stadium?”

“If we’re being really real here, this system rewards you guys with the best possible prize for the only thing you had nothing to do with, being white.”

Said, “Hey, old man, how can you stand to think that way? Did you really think about it before you made the rules?”

He said, “Son, that’s just the way it is.”

“Look, I realize now, it don’t matter what I say or what I do or how I try to do it, this dude just wanna… He just wanna kill me.” Every black man in America knows this.

“All we can do is live, brother.”

“Because of our shared lived experiences, black people can find some sort of hope for the future through unity and through uplifting one another every day.”

And wait, but if not…

What do they have left then? Fleeing away.

Sail away, sail away, sail away…

“There’s an increasing black community living in Merida.” “I love living in Mexico.” “I don’t get stares. No one asks me questions. No one questions my right to be anywhere.” “Never, ‘Nigger do you belong here?’” “People mind their own business.”

“The police… They are minding their own business.” “I don’t feel any fear when I see police officers.” “There’s no stress. There’s no tension. There’s no leave me alone.” “I don’t have fear.”

So before, “refugees from terror” fleeing from the south and now: refugees from terror fleeing to the south. Fleeing as the constant that prevails. That’s just the way it is. As you cannot wait for things to change. Would you wait?

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* * * * * *

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And yet (and yet!) some hope looms on the horizon. (In this context what is good is bad and vice versa, so now hope can loom on the horizon.) You also hear voices of youth, youngsters hailing for a new world, against the uniformity and for diversity. Against old values and for brotherhood. And I pray, oh my God, I do pray, for a revolution! Die Fetten Jahre Sind Vorbei. Somehow you turn back with sadness. May their voices be not eclipsed in the dark, may they remain alive.

And from behind, backstage, a word of wisdom: “Hippies create police; police create hippies. If you’re in polarity, you’re creating polar opposites. You can only protest effectively, when you love the person whose ideas you’re protesting against, as much as you love yourself.”

“Love has to spring spontaneously from within: and it is in no way amenable to any form of inner or outer force. Love and coercion can never go together; but though love cannot be forced on anyone, it can be awakened in him through love itself. Love is essentially self-communicative. Those who do not have it, catch it from those who have it. True love is unconquerable and irresistible; and it goes on gathering power and spreading itself, until eventually it transforms everyone whom it touches.”

And you remembered quite well:

“All mothers [black, white, yellow, blue, purple, red] were summoned when George Floyd called out for his mama.”

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What about the pain that was before? Trevor Hall answers:

Forgive everything that has ever happened

Life is everything we can imagine

Laid out in patterns of pain and passion

You cannot control it so keep your compassion

There are no accidents

And there are no factions

There is no “us” and “them”

Nothing to borrow or lend

No enemy or friend

And only forgiveness can make that happen

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AMEN

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