So Much the Same: no justice and no peace

My grandfather died last week. 

He lived as colored and negro before he was ever granted black or African American. A world war two veteran, he risked his life for America only to return to its abuses. Somehow he survived. Somehow he thrived. Sent his three children to college, traveled the world, lived just two months shy of 100 years.

I find that last bit the most remarkable. 

Ninety-nine years in America is a long time for a black man. Hell, 12 is a ripe old age for a black man in America, I say with every ounce of irony I can conjure.

Years ago I had a conversation about the ills of racism in America with PaPa. He was adamant that I focus on how far we have come. He pointed out that the descriptors on my birth certificate mark some level of change, of progress.“Does that mean we should stop?” I asked him.  “If no one is flinging ‘nigger’ at me does that mean I should be satisfied?”

He stopped for a moment. Looked at me and then shook his head. No. No we shouldn’t stop. 

For some reason my grandfather, my PaPa, is running through my head as I am waiting for BART to arrive, coming to the end of an 8-day trip book-ended by my PaPa’s funeral in Houston on one end and a conference in Philadelphia on the other.

My thoughts are heavy. It could be exhaustion or maybe reflecting on my grandfather’s journey through life provides the perfect canvas to paint all my grief all my loss, both personal and social.

Us gunned down in the street by agents of the state requires deliberation and evidence before the loss of life can be deemed tragic or unjustified by the American masses. Video isn’t enough, we need sound. We are guilty until proven innocent…guilty of what I am unsure.

I hopped online when my plane landed and Twitter, awash in RIP hashtags and outrage and mourning, brought me to tears. Just like that. Visions of every black and brown person I’ve ever loved swim before me because our lives are clearly viewed as disposable.

Maybe its our melanin. Maybe it is the visible proof of the enslavement written epigenetically in all of our progeny. Yeah, maybe we are a reminder of America's original sins of genocide and torture and it just can’t bare it, just won’t. America has to wash us out Lady Macbeth style- damn spots that we are.

I thought I was out of tears for all of this. Cried out when Zimmerman was released into the wild like some poisonous gas. But there have been so many…so many more. So many that the names begin to jumble and the timeline is a mess in my head because we are daily targets and nothing, not body cameras or being a child or respectability politics that demand we comply with raised hands, saves us. Our black and brown bodies are shot over and over and over again. 

And like entertainment, like the lynching postcards of old, those bodies are displayed on a loop. A warning. This is what I can do boy/gal. This is what you are worth. This is how little America cares.

I can’t bring myself to ask right now…can’t bring myself to beg for America to stop murdering us. It seems insane to beg for my humanity from the very thing stripping it daily.But yesterday my friend of 22 years, my 6'2 brown skinned brother, drove 2 hours to see me, to share a meal. And we laughed and we debated and we reminisced. And then he got into a car and drove two hours home through the dark Pennsylvania and Maryland night with only a thin layer of metal and wisp of grace to see him safely home. 

And for him I asked. For him and every person I love that has been kissed by some variant of brown I will continue to ask…please stop. Please stop killing us. Please. Stop.

At church on Saturday we celebrated my PaPa’s long life. We shared stories of his driving on long road trips and ability to eat any meal no matter ow horribly prepared. We marveled at how much the world has changed in the hyphen he lived between 1916 – 2016. He carried a computer in his pocket and waved at his granddaughter in Uganda through Skype. 

All that and the thing that strikes me the most as I arrange my thinking to a world that no longer includes him, is not all of the changes he experienced, but how black people’s place in it has stayed so very much the same.

Overlapping

I am guilty of apologizing. I don’t mean the good kind, the kind that shows that I was wrong or inconsiderate to someone (although I try to be a good apologist where that is concerned), I mean the kneejerk additive to my language when I have an opinion or what I have to say might disappoint. I mean the kind that reflects some internal need to take up less space.

It is funny to think of brash and opinionated me as suffering from such a thing but I do. I’ve noticed it recently in emails, “I’m sorry, but you missed the deadline…”, “I’m sorry, but that doesn’t fit with the plan…”. I considered it a courtesy, a politeness in a world that often forgets its manners. 

But I’ve been reading articles lately that speak to the over-representation of apologetic language in women’s speech and how we are perceived because of it. 

Without fail, the response to this observation is that "women are just wired that way. Women are nurturing." If that is how women are wired then why would I try to stop "apologizing" since I'm wired to do so? Doesn't that mean I'm trying to  adopt maleness?                     

                                                                 

I don’t believe that to gain equality women should have to adopt the mannerisms that have been labeled as “manly” to be successful. Equally, I do not believe we should adopt the ones that women have been saddled with because…women. Unfortunately, sometimes these behaviors are snakes eating their tails. Do women apologize because we are told, in a million subtle and explicit ways, that women should be polite and likable or are we polite and likable because we are women? 

We are taught to be quiet, and “ladylike”, and considerate, we are told to be compliant and chaste. The idea of our maternal instincts is pushed to the forefront to guide/shame us into behaviors that we may not possess, or if we do, we may not want to exhibit. It can ingrain itself. A few months ago I found myself in a middle seat sandwiched between two men on a packed flight. Neither yielded the armrests and I found myself reluctant to push the issue. And yes, you can insert here my own agency and personal choice not to voice a complaint, but I’m not alone.

I suspect our generalized behavior (of course there are women who do not fall in this category) comes from social indoctrination. Part of the reason I suspect conditioning over genetics is that I find I have adopted parallel behavioral tics as a result of my blackness. Society has strict definitions. For women, the "appropriate" behaviors are those that people are convinced are the very foundation of femaleness, the opposite holds true for blackness. With blackness, the acceptability protocol is a stricter and narrower definition of whiteness. 

Wade in here with me for a moment.

I know how blackness is received in this country (if you need a primer check here, here, here, and here) and as a result I am always aware of my language and demeanor. I am aware of the space I inhabit and how others might feel about the space I inhabit. I have adopted a specific way of being in the world based on all of those things. Would I have been this me if those rules weren’t thrust at me from every direction – I’ll never know.

The messages directed at blackness are not the same as the ones telegraphed to women but they share similar threads. Threads of "acceptability". To be acceptably black my use of language, my clothing, my posture, my ability to swallow insults - subtle and not- about people who look like me, are essential. I can (and do) move away from aspects of what people's idea of "appropriate blackness" is, but there are consequences for doing so. 

There are labels.  For women..."Slut," "Easy," "Stuck up," "Bitch."

For black people..."Uppity," "Angry," "Ignorant," "Ghetto," 'Nigger."

There are actions. For women, you are catcalled, paid less, raped.

For black people, you are less likely to be hired, arrested, murdered. 

The restrictive space that society "allows" my blackness, my womaness, can be stifling. The rules are limiting of the true expression of who I am, who I strive to be, the parts of myself that can safely flourish. Who I am permitted to be based on my interwoven demographics, both black and woman, sometimes feels like a tiny space. Like every step I take, every expression, is a revolutionary action. And, I suppose, it is.

I won't miss the Cosby Show

I don’t listen to R Kelley. Even on the radio. It is my silent protest against a pedophile. Avoiding Michael Jackson is more difficult. He is an institution to most Americans and beyond reproach…at least people seem to think he is beyond reproach. Woody Allen is easier for me, I don’t like him and don’t have any inclination to watch his movies and I wouldn’t know Roman Polanski if he slapped me on the butt and called me sweetheart. 

All of those men have the horrible distinction of being accused (and widely believed), if not convicted, of being sexual abusers/rapists of some kind. And with their lack of convictions trailing behind them, and their “genius” pushed out in front of them, there has been an extended debate about whether their personal lives should detract from their artistic ones.

One of my oldest friends asked me about Bill Cosby today. My immediate answer was that he’s a rapist asshole and I followed that by acknowledging that we, societally, support rape culture. We are so busy fretting about Bill Cosby’s legacy and discussing the impact his greatness has had on comedy and television and black people…I wonder who the hell is worrying about the impact his raping has had on his victims.

While I don’t believe a person is only the worst thing that they have done, I am conflicted when the worst thing you have done leaves a string of traumatized victims in your wake while you were able to bask in money and fame. Absolution of those crimes because of money and fame seems despicable.

The truth is, if someone makes amazing art, sings like an angel, or portrays the human condition in film in a way that moves people…the art does live on. The art doesn’t change because our knowledge of the person changes. But damn, our support of that person should.

I grew up with the Cosby Show. I’m of that generation. It was lovely to see a family on TV that so closely resembled mine, a brown family that just like the white ones, had a happy ending at the end of the half hour. But giving a generation a warm-and-fuzzy in the 80s doesn’t absolve Bill Cosby of his Quaalude-filled past, and it certainly isn’t more important than the horror he’s thrust on a trail of women so extensive it is has tipped the scales into a full blown crowd.

I know the dangers of convicting someone before all of the evidence is in, but this isn’t a legal proceeding, Bill Cosby has managed to evade those,  all that is left is the court of public opinion. And for those that believe that 40 women’s voices aren’t enough proof of wrong doing, Bill Cosby’s admission should be. But if nostalgia, of a pretend father as the head of a pretend family espousing values that in real life he shat on, takes precedence over real women then…well…I don’t have words…

If we continue to worship at the altar of Mr. Pudding Pops because he broke new ground so many decades ago then we are telling me and every woman before and after me, it doesn’t matter if someone violates our bodies and minds, as long as he’s funny or talented or rich when he’s doing it. I have three nieces…and I’ll be damned if I let them learn that lesson from me. I’ll call it rape and him a rapist and politely decline his reruns.