If Love is the answer, Justice is the measure."
- The Rev. Eric Ovid Donaldson
Several years ago, I took my sons to the rally in memory of Trayvon Martin in downtown Newark - and posted our "hoodie" profile picture on FB - because I wanted to teach them what I considered to be an important lesson: that citizenship is an active - and indeed proactive - privilege and responsibility. As much as they had been fortunate to lead (relatively) privileged lives, they owed it to themselves and, more broadly, to their community to be engaged in helping to shape the contours within which we all live. I wanted them to understand that the response to injustice is protest and concerted action/advocacy thereafter ... and now I can't breathe (again)....
The list is too long - starting even before Trayvon and now extending to Alton Sterling and Philando Castille - and my heart is too heavy now: I can't breathe....
I can't breathe because I realize that I can't protect my sons from the police and that even a supposedly routine occurrence - in Mr. Castille's case, a traffic stop for a busted taillight - can be lethal for them ... and I wonder what kind of world and American society has evolved on my/our watch and am now too weary and wounded to be angry anymore. It's almost enervating. Almost. But I realize that if it has to change, I, too, am going to have to summon the emotional energy and commitment to help change it ... and to enlist my sons in this effort, too.
I can't breathe because I am absolutely devastated by the post-mortem press conferences - or, in Mr. Castille's case, the livestream of the incident on FaceBook - that evidence the decimation of families and loved ones for whom the loss if felt most acutely. My prayers extend to them, but they deserve more: they deserve my individual - and our collective - action.
(And if you're tempted to think that prayers are enough, just remember how hollow and angry you feel when the members of our do-nothing Congress offer their prayers to the victims of the gun violence that they refuse to act to curtail and/or prevent.)
I can't breathe because I'm flabbergasted at the blithe unawareness and/or unconcern on the part of so many of my white friends and colleagues. It reminds me that Privilege has many guises, including/especially the ability to be indifferent to that which doesn't affect you personally. As MLK reminded us a half-century ago, what we/history will remember is not the acts of the bad people but the disengagement of the self-considered good ones....
(Seriously, does any one of us believe that if the situation were reversed - that if whites were routinely killed by African-American police officers - we'd be in a similar position? Can you even conceive of such a situation? I thought not....)
I can't breathe because I can't explain to myself or my sons how Black life, especially in its young male incarnation, has become so cheaply valued. Actually, I weep because this isn't exactly true: I and we have always known that Black life was cheaply valued, but what's new is the cell phone and other videos that show us this reality in such stark relief ... and then we have to connect our current tragedies to a long historical record of tens of thousands of unreported and unrecorded 'race killings' that are as old as our Republic. As the FaceBook meme rightly points out, the violence isn't new, the videos of it are ... and our visceral awareness of this continuing injustice hurts all the more because we can't escape it. It's real, not theoretical or removed. I and we have seen Alton Sterling murdered by the police like Tamir Rice and Walter Scott and _______ (fill in the blank) before him and Philando Castille and _______ (be ready to fill in the blank) after him. The ghost of Emmett Till has arisen anew and we are haunted yet again....
I can't breathe because as I age I get more sensitive, not less. Because I'm more aware of the possibilities for life and thus feel more deeply its pains and tragedies. And because I have to fight disillusionment even harder: weren't we supposed to be better than our parents and the other generations that came before? If so, then why is this still happening at such an alarming rate and on such a massive scale - 559 African-Americans killed by police and counting so far this year alone!?! - and it's now just another unfortunate component of our collective existence. As a friend pointed out so powerfully earlier this morning in a FaceBook post, THIS IS NOT NORMAL!!! Unless we allow it to be....
So what can I and we do to catch our breath and regain our sense of well-being? The first thing is to vote. It's the most powerful form of protest available to us. We underutilize it to our peril, as is abundantly clear in these instances of police killings and the accompanying slaughter of innocents that have also become routine (as President Obama has described them repeatedly and with a heavy heart). I will hold my elected officials accountable - both locally and nationally - to making the police protect and serve us rather than occupy and terrorize us and to having the hard conversations about addressing our violence problem and taking systemic actions to address it. Further, I will engage my sons (and daughters) in their civic duty to participate and advocate. After all, it's their chance to help us improve the world that they're inheriting. And, finally, I will educate - especially those who are insulated by choice from this ongoing tragedy - so that we can see this for what it really is: beyond race, this is a humanity problem.
For those of us of faith, if we truly believe that we're all Children of God, then we have to act this way by actively loving our fellow humans - be they of the same or different nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, race, etc. - and by seeking to create a world in which their individual and our collective humanity is affirmed, valued and encouraged by the ways in which we live.
That sounds like a noble, ethereal goal, but it's not. It starts very simply: every day, my African-American children (and especially my sons) should feel and be free to pursue happiness in our country and our world as should your children and other loved ones be. And when we realize that this will only happen because of our collective empathy and engagement, starting with addressing and eradicating our suicidal cultural propensity toward violence. In three words, our goal should be, as a friend pointed out, "No More Hashtags."
And when this day comes, I will be able to breathe again....
I can't breathe because I realize that I can't protect my sons from the police and that even a supposedly routine occurrence - in Mr. Castille's case, a traffic stop for a busted taillight - can be lethal for them ... and I wonder what kind of world and American society has evolved on my/our watch and am now too weary and wounded to be angry anymore. It's almost enervating. Almost. But I realize that if it has to change, I, too, am going to have to summon the emotional energy and commitment to help change it ... and to enlist my sons in this effort, too.
I can't breathe because I am absolutely devastated by the post-mortem press conferences - or, in Mr. Castille's case, the livestream of the incident on FaceBook - that evidence the decimation of families and loved ones for whom the loss if felt most acutely. My prayers extend to them, but they deserve more: they deserve my individual - and our collective - action.
(And if you're tempted to think that prayers are enough, just remember how hollow and angry you feel when the members of our do-nothing Congress offer their prayers to the victims of the gun violence that they refuse to act to curtail and/or prevent.)
I can't breathe because I'm flabbergasted at the blithe unawareness and/or unconcern on the part of so many of my white friends and colleagues. It reminds me that Privilege has many guises, including/especially the ability to be indifferent to that which doesn't affect you personally. As MLK reminded us a half-century ago, what we/history will remember is not the acts of the bad people but the disengagement of the self-considered good ones....
(Seriously, does any one of us believe that if the situation were reversed - that if whites were routinely killed by African-American police officers - we'd be in a similar position? Can you even conceive of such a situation? I thought not....)
I can't breathe because I can't explain to myself or my sons how Black life, especially in its young male incarnation, has become so cheaply valued. Actually, I weep because this isn't exactly true: I and we have always known that Black life was cheaply valued, but what's new is the cell phone and other videos that show us this reality in such stark relief ... and then we have to connect our current tragedies to a long historical record of tens of thousands of unreported and unrecorded 'race killings' that are as old as our Republic. As the FaceBook meme rightly points out, the violence isn't new, the videos of it are ... and our visceral awareness of this continuing injustice hurts all the more because we can't escape it. It's real, not theoretical or removed. I and we have seen Alton Sterling murdered by the police like Tamir Rice and Walter Scott and _______ (fill in the blank) before him and Philando Castille and _______ (be ready to fill in the blank) after him. The ghost of Emmett Till has arisen anew and we are haunted yet again....
I can't breathe because as I age I get more sensitive, not less. Because I'm more aware of the possibilities for life and thus feel more deeply its pains and tragedies. And because I have to fight disillusionment even harder: weren't we supposed to be better than our parents and the other generations that came before? If so, then why is this still happening at such an alarming rate and on such a massive scale - 559 African-Americans killed by police and counting so far this year alone!?! - and it's now just another unfortunate component of our collective existence. As a friend pointed out so powerfully earlier this morning in a FaceBook post, THIS IS NOT NORMAL!!! Unless we allow it to be....
So what can I and we do to catch our breath and regain our sense of well-being? The first thing is to vote. It's the most powerful form of protest available to us. We underutilize it to our peril, as is abundantly clear in these instances of police killings and the accompanying slaughter of innocents that have also become routine (as President Obama has described them repeatedly and with a heavy heart). I will hold my elected officials accountable - both locally and nationally - to making the police protect and serve us rather than occupy and terrorize us and to having the hard conversations about addressing our violence problem and taking systemic actions to address it. Further, I will engage my sons (and daughters) in their civic duty to participate and advocate. After all, it's their chance to help us improve the world that they're inheriting. And, finally, I will educate - especially those who are insulated by choice from this ongoing tragedy - so that we can see this for what it really is: beyond race, this is a humanity problem.
For those of us of faith, if we truly believe that we're all Children of God, then we have to act this way by actively loving our fellow humans - be they of the same or different nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, race, etc. - and by seeking to create a world in which their individual and our collective humanity is affirmed, valued and encouraged by the ways in which we live.
That sounds like a noble, ethereal goal, but it's not. It starts very simply: every day, my African-American children (and especially my sons) should feel and be free to pursue happiness in our country and our world as should your children and other loved ones be. And when we realize that this will only happen because of our collective empathy and engagement, starting with addressing and eradicating our suicidal cultural propensity toward violence. In three words, our goal should be, as a friend pointed out, "No More Hashtags."
And when this day comes, I will be able to breathe again....
- Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
- Man never is, but always to be blessed:
- The soul, uneasy and confined from home,
- Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
– Alexander Pope, "An Essay on Man" (1734)
- Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
- Man never is, but always to be blessed:
- The soul, uneasy and confined from home,
- Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
– Alexander Pope, "An Essay on Man" (1734)
