Black Lives murder?

On Thursday, July 7, in Dallas, Texas, a lone sniper shot twelve law enforcement officers, killing five, during a protest demonstration organized by the Black Lives Matter movement in response to the police-involved deaths of two black men, Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, LA, on July 5 and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, MN, on July 6. The Dallas assailant, Micah Johnson, cornered and refusing to surrender, before being killed by the police, while evoking the name and cause of Black Lives Matter, expressed anger about the fatal shootings of Sterling and Castile and his desire to kill white people, especially white police officers.

Detractors to the Black Lives Matter movement were swift to condemn…

On Friday, July 8, conservative radio talk show host, Rush Limbaugh, denounced Black Lives Matter as “a terrorist group” waging a nationwide “war on cops.”

That evening, Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska and 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate, wrote in a Facebook post: #BlackLivesMatter is a Farce and Hyphenating America Destroys Us…self-descriptions that put any race in front of being an American…further divide our nation…Shame on our culture’s influencers who would stir contention and division that could lead to evil such as that in Dallas.

Many, some more or less prominent than Limbaugh and Palin and more or less predictable in their responses in more or less similar terms, have decried Black Lives Matter from the time of its founding in 2013.[1]

I rise and write in defense (not that the movement needs my approbation) of Black Lives Matter.

In two ways.

First, by reading and reflecting on what the Black Lives Matter movement says for itself:

Who We Are: Black Lives Matter is a chapter-based national organization working for the validity of Black life. We are working to (re)build the Black liberation movement. This is Not a Moment, but a Movement.[2]

What We Believe: Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.[3]

In a recent blog post,[4] I closed:

I confess…my anger; ever a companion of my sorrow. The deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile are but the latest killings (murders?) that stir in my bowels my racial animus. A few years ago, I crafted a shorthand self-statement: “I am a 60+ year old African American man born and raised in America”; my Cliff Notes autobiographical testament to my ever-present lens of race through which I look at life and the world. Sadly, angrily, I see no reason to dispense with it.

In this my witness to an ineffaceable element of my ontology, I laud Black Lives Matter’s self-profession.

Secondly, I voice my support of Black Lives Matter as I look back, through my lens of race, at a slice of relatively recent history…

In 1954, author Richard Wright published Black Power, in which, chronicling his journey to Africa’s Gold Coast (later, Ghana), he extols the virtues of the possibility of a people’s empowerment.

On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his iconic I Have a Dream speech in which he sorrowfully noted that 100 years after Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, “the Negro still is not free” and, thus, declaring, in part, “I still have a dream, a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. One day this nation will rise up and live up to its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’” King, at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement, calling for equal rights for blacks, also championed the phrase, “Freedom Now!”

In the latter 1960s, Black Power was the core political slogan of Stokely Carmichael (later, Kwame Turé), a chief organizer of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, who uttered it as a statement of solidarity for all who yearned to bring into the present that then still long future day of collective black econo-socio-political might.

During this same period, Black is Beautiful, from the writings of South African activist Steve Biko, became a rallying cry in America for all who sought to dispel racism’s stigma, both imposed and internalized, of the inborn ugliness of black folks’ physical features. Black is Beautiful, coupled with economic empowerment, was a hallmark of the preaching and teaching of human rights advocate and martyr, Malcolm X.

In 1968, the Godfather of Soul, James Brown, sang, shouted, “Say It Loud, ‘I’m Black and I’m Proud’”; the song becoming an unofficial anthem of the Black Power movement.

In 1969, singer, songwriter, and civil rights activist, Nina Simone, produced “To Be Young, Gifted and Black”, encouraging black youth to embrace their God-given graces.

Following King’s assassination, his wife and fellow civil rights activist, Coretta Scott King said:

Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won. You earn it and win it in every generation. That is what we have not taught young people or older ones for that matter. You do not finally win a state of freedom that is protected forever. It doesn’t work that way.

From Black Power to “I Have a Dream” and Freedom Now! to Black is Beautiful to “Say It Loud, ‘I’m Black and I’m Proud’” to “To Be Young, Gifted and Black” to, now, Black Lives Matter – all bespeak the labor of liberation from a culture of oppression and devaluation.

Amen, Coretta, a luta continua…

 

Footnotes:

[1] On February 26, 2012, in Sanford, Florida, Trayvon Martin, 17, was shot and killed by George Zimmerman. On July 13, 2013, Zimmerman was acquitted of second degree murder and manslaughter. In reaction to what was and is perceived as the systemic devaluing of black lives, Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi founded Black Lives Matter; the movement becoming nationally recognized through organizing street demonstrations following the 2014 deaths of two black men at the hands of police, Eric Garner on July 17 in New York City and Michael Brown on August 9 in Ferguson, Missouri.

[2] http://www.blacklivesmatter.com

[3] Ibid.

[4] fatal encounters…again and again, July 7, 2016

another night of horror

Last night, another deadly (will this, I dread, be daily?) horror. During a public demonstration in Dallas, Texas, hundreds of marchers walking in peaceful protest against the days before police-involved killings in Minnesota and Louisiana, shots rang out.

The assailant. A sniper.

The target. Police officers. Several were wounded. Five are dead.

The day. The deadliest for law enforcement in the city of Dallas and one of the deadliest in the history of American law enforcement.

The reason. As yet, not fully known. Although a nearly conspicuous immediate speculation, if not conclusion, might name the cause as a violent, vengeful reaction to fatal encounters with the police. There is and can be no justification for this wholly unconscionable, utterly contemptible attack.

I grieve for the slain and wounded officers, for their families, friends, and fellow officers, for the city of Dallas, and for (again, I must write, for I, over time, have learned and deeply internalized at my soul’s depth the necessity of including) all of us who love life, our own lives, the lives of our loved ones, and the lives of all, for all lives matter and who, therefore, hate violence and vengeance.

In this spirit of revulsion, I reflect on the tellingly prophetic words of Martin Luther King, Jr.:

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy, instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it…Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.[1]

In the Spirit of love, I remember names. Names are important. For me, the most important words I know, for they bear the power of recognition and recollection of our incredibly individual, yet wondrously common, sacred humanity. So, as it was and is essential that I remember Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, the men killed by police in these immediate previous days, it is and will be equally imperative that I memorialize Brent Thompson, 43, a Dallas Area Rapid Transit officer; to date, the only identified victim of last night’s deadly assault.

In that same Spirit-love, I pray that we, as Americans, with our nation, our very selves so terribly, tragically divided, whatever our thoughts and feelings, opinions and convictions about police killings and the killings of police, will not be driven to fear or given to greater suspicion of “the other.” Rather, still within the bright light cast by our annual July 4^th national celebration of the ideal (still to be realized fully) of our unity in liberty, that we will gather the bloodied threads of this and all tragedy to create, indeed, to recreate a bond of our common destiny.

To do that, I believe, is to make America great again. To do that is to hear and heed another of Martin’s prophetic teachings: We must live together as brothers (and sisters) or perish together as fools.

 

Footnote:

[1] Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967), page 67

fatal encounters…again and again

On July 5, 2016, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Alton Sterling, a 37-year old African American man, was shot and killed by police. Police had received an anonymous tip that a man, wearing a red shirt and selling CDs outside of a convenience store, had brandished a gun. Sterling, matching those two descriptive elements, was confronted by police officers, who tackled and pinned him to the ground. Amid the tussle, an officer yelled, “He’s got a gun!” At least one officer fired his revolver at pointblank range into Sterling’s chest. All this, captured on a bystander’s video.

On July 6, 2016, in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, a suburb of St. Paul, Philando Castile, a 32-year old African American man, was shot and killed by police. Pulled over for a broken taillight, Castile, according to the eyewitness testimony of his girlfriend, Lavisha Reynolds, riding in the front passenger seat, informed the officer that he had a gun, which he was licensed to carry. Reaching for his identification, the officer commanded Castile to keep his hands in view. Castile complied and, nevertheless, was shot 3-4 times, within moments, dying. Reynolds then livestreamed the aftermath of the shooting via Facebook.

I have a variety of responses…

I cry. Foremost, I grieve for Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, their families and friends, and (as I’ve learned to think and to feel over time in reacting to these all too many shocks to the soul) for all of us for whom death, especially needless, unavoidable death, enshrouds our hearts with sadness.

I call for the advance nationwide, continuing in some jurisdictions, only beginning in others, of the reformation of police policy and procedure, particularly in regard to the black community and elements of criminal-profiling related to race. How much of the latter was involved in these instant cases? It’s difficult to know. However, historic mistrust between police departments and black communities and the intensified scrutiny of fatal encounters with police tracing back in near time to the August 9, 2014, killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, provoke suspicion. DWB, WWB, SWB, BB (driving while black, walking while black, sitting [or standing] while black, being black) remain cautionary classifications for many African American parents in counseling their particularly male children about public life in America.

I confess my wariness, my lack of sanguinity about the wholesale benefits of police reform. Policies and procedures and with them instruction and training of police officers can, must change, but none of it has any necessary causal relation to the transformation of hearts and souls, for there, racism abides.

I confess, too, my anger; ever a companion of my sorrow. The deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile are but the latest killings (murders?) that stir in my bowels my racial animus. A few years ago, I crafted a shorthand self-statement: “I am a 60+ year old African American man born and raised in America”; my Cliff Notes autobiographical testament to my ever-present lens of race through which I look at life and the world. Sadly, angrily, I see no reason to dispense with it.