[img]139|left|||no_popup[/img] I was writing a whole other essay on a completely different topic when my husband walked by and said he was surprise that I wasn’t writing about Trayvon Martin. I had mentioned to him the other night that another innocent black teenager had been killed in cold blood. Every so often, I talk about these things to put the fear of God into him. We do have our own black child to protect – and it never is too early to start worrying. My main job as a mother is to make sure I never end up on the bad end of a phone call from the authorities. I can’t count on anyone else to do it.
I told him I wasn’t writing about it because, what is there to say? Our country has a long and sordid history of black folks dying at the hands of white people (and yes, I know the Martin shooter was white and Hispanic) with no repercussions. There are endless police shootings all across the country where the (now dead) black teenage boy or man is (later to be found) unarmed. The killer cop or vigilante (often the same thing) is walking the streets to shoot again. Who can forget the countless pictures of burned, and lynched, and castrated black men hanging from Southern trees like so much Spanish moss – while mobs of white men gather around, grinning like rictus corpses? Having seen one too many, I never can forget.
What Could I Expect?
Perhaps I’ve become desensitized to all these killings, past and present. My lack of outrage startled my husband. But shouldn’t this almost constant barrage of violence against blacks be what I expect in modern day America? Try an internet search “Innocent unarmed black man killed,” or some derivation. Excluding death penalty executions of innocent men by various states (a whole other topic), the list is endless. New York City, Chicago, Texas and Florida top the long list of cities and states where someone dies in a pool of his own blood. Some are running from the police (an action I and Harold Baer think justified). Others are just walking in the wrong place at the wrong time. None is ever carrying a gun, though there often is that claim. All are acting suspicious. Let me translate suspicious for you – being black in America and walking about minding your own business.
Before my (white) husband left the room, I asked him – what did he think the chances were he’d go to prison if he stabbed me, here, at my desk, with one of my letter openers, in cold blood. He paused and sighed. He didn’t speak for a few seconds. He admitted it wasn’t a one hundred percent likelihood. He pantomimed his “black lady went crazy” face and hands, and decided he’d get off. Then I asked him if a Middle Eastern friend of ours would go to jail if he killed his blonde American-born wife. Absolutely, he said, then wandered from my office muttering something about that being justice in America.
That is the crux of it, no? Black men are going to be violently killed in disproportionate numbers. They are going to jail in disproportionate numbers. They are unemployed in disproportionate numbers. They are in poverty in disproportionate numbers, and they are dropping out of high school in disproportionate numbers. No one is going to save them from an uncertain destiny. Our world saviors seem to be busy with other business.
Why Should I Try?
Like any good American, I’ve decided I can’t solve the world’s problems, nor the desperately sad list above. When we have a bi-racial President who has made no move to address any of these problems, why should I think I could give it a go? The world will not be changed by this essay, nor a thousand just like them that will very likely populate the remaining newspapers and various blogs in the coming days and weeks. Some will think the victim guilty. Others will shake their heads and even update their Facebook pages with messages of solidarity with the victim and his family. None of it will make a difference.
All I have some control over is what happens here in my house. Daily, I read books, peruse scholarly articles, and surf the internet, trying to figure out how to make sure my son beats the odds. I never want to my son to witness something like this. Unfortunately, I think I have to teach him that he could be a victim (and how to avoid Trayvon Martin’s fate). A healthy fear of the police, of anyone carrying a weapon, and a polite and when absolutely necessary obsequious demeanor have kept me from harm. It will be one of the first lessons I teach my two-year-old.
With George Clooney getting arrested, and Bono saving Africa, I only wish the white savior complex extended to our own country. Maybe one day some white movie star or rock star will save black men from the tyranny of those with power or from those who our authorities can’t touch. Perhaps some multi-millionaire will end racism. We can only hope.
Jessica Gadsden has been controversial since the day she discovered her inner soapbox. She excoriated the cheerleaders on the editorial page of her high school paper, transferred from a co-educational university to a women's college to protest the gender-biased curfew policy, published a newspaper in law school that raked the dean over the coals with (among other things) the headline, “Law School Supports Drug Use”—and that was before she got serious about speaking out. Progressive doesn't begin to define her political views. A reformed lawyer, she is a fulltime novelist who writes under a pseudonym, of course. A Brooklyn native, she divided her college years between Hampton University and Smith.
Ms. Gadsden’s essays appear every other Tuesday. She may be contacted at www.pennermag.com
