The Weight of It All: Reflections of a Black Father on the Killing of George Floyd
— June 4, 2020 —
The first time I saw the bystander video of George Floyd, handcuffed, lying face down in the street, pleading for air as a Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee into his neck—for eight minutes and 46 seconds—until he suffocated, a sense of horror overcame me. The televised shock of it all recalled the black-and-white flag once flown from an upper story window of the NAACP headquarters in the 1920s and ‘30s that broadcast five chilling words: “A MAN WAS LYNCHED YESTERDAY.”
That’s what I saw the day after Memorial Day, on “CBS This Morning” with co-host Gayle King, in the middle of my breakfast: a lynching.
“I am really speechless by what we are seeing on television this morning,” said King, her voice cracking after two stories aired back-to-back: one with footage of Floyd’s death; another of the racist incident in Central Park, New York, in which a white woman called 911 to report an “African American man threatening her life” after a Black bird watcher simply asked her to leash her dog. “It feels like it’s open season and there’s just not a safe place to be as a Black man in this country.”
Where can a Black man (Ahmaud Arbery), a Black woman (Breonna Taylor), a Black child (Tamir Rice) feel safe in America? That this is even a question speaks volumes about the systemic and generational dehumanization of Black lives in our society, a legacy of our country’s original sin: slavery.
When you’re not counted as human, it’s easy to be killed like a dog in the street.
I don’t say this for dramatic effect.
No humans involved
The origin, perpetuation, and human toll of racist ideas that permeate American culture and infect policies and institutions have been examined by scores of sociologists, historians, political scientists, cultural theorists, writers, artists, and others. We can’t pretend we don’t know what ails us.
At times, the exhausting weight of it all leads me to wonder if the only Black man that can survive an encounter with police is Luke Cage, the Marvel Comics superhero, given his two traits: super strength and bulletproof skin.
In her influential 1994 essay, scholar and novelist Sylvia Wynter dissects the societal consequences of the acronym N.H.I. (No Humans Involved), which was used unofficially by some officers of the Los Angeles Police Department to classify their response to calls involving African Americans. Quoting science historian Stephen Jay Gould, Wynter notes that “systems of classification direct our thinking and order our behaviors.”
It’s no wonder artist Dread Scott felt compelled to unveil an updated version of the provocative NAACP flag in 2015 that read: “A MAN WAS LYNCHED BY POLICE YESTERDAY.” This was after Walter Scott, an unarmed Black man, was fatally shot five times in the back while running from a police officer in South Carolina.
In a 2016 interview with the arts publication Hyperallergic, Scott explained the message behind his work:
“During the Jim Crow era, Black people were terrorized by lynching — often public and publicized extralegal torture and murder of Black people. It was a threat that hung over all Black people who knew that for any reason or no reason whatsoever you could be killed and the killers would never be brought to justice. Now the police are playing the same role of terror that lynch mobs did at the turn of the century. It is a threat that hangs over all Black people, that we can be killed by the police for no reason whatsoever — for a traffic stop, for selling CDs, for selling cigarettes. Shot to death, choked to death, tasered to death, driven to death. Standing still, fleeing. Shot in the chest, shot in the back. Hands up, hands down. Point blank range or at a distance. And the police never face justice for their crimes. It is a vivid concentration of the complete illegitimacy of this whole system.”
A leading cause of death
A study published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences revealed that Black men are more than twice as likely as their white peers to die from police use of force. For young men of color, police use of force is among the leading causes of death among all young men ages 25 to 29, not far behind the diseases of cancer and heart disease, researchers found. The study urged community leaders and elected officials to treat police violence as a public health issue.
At times, the exhausting weight of it all leads me to wonder if the only Black man that can survive an encounter with police is Luke Cage, the Marvel Comics superhero, given his two traits: super strength and bulletproof skin.
For young men of color, police use of force is among the leading causes of death among all young men ages 25 to 29, not far behind the diseases of cancer and heart disease, researchers found.
I, like too many Black men I know, have had the emasculating experience of being pulled over by police. In my case, twice in the span of four hours – once, as two friends and I searched for a place to get ice cream before heading to a late-night screening of a movie; and again, after the movie, on our way home. This was in the 1990s in a tony Los Angeles neighborhood. We (three young Black men in our 20s) were stopped while driving in a used car for looking “suspicious,” one of the officers said.
It made little difference who I was (a college student at the time, wearing a baseball cap emblazoned on top with the word “STANFORD”); what mattered was what I represented—another N.H.I.
There’s a particular strain of dehumanization that occurs when you’re spread eagle against a police cruiser, patted down, and asked if you have any drugs or weapons on your person (this was during the second stop). To stand your ground in a situation like this, to assert that you’ve done nothing wrong to deserve this harassment, is to risk your life. Your goal is to simply survive through compliance.
During the car ride home, my friends and I fumed with rage. But at least we lived.
A few bad apples
In the wake of Floyd’s murder at the midlife age of 46, a clip from Chris Rock’s 2018 comedy special has gone viral for how close his take on police brutality cuts to the bone:
“Whenever the cops gun down an innocent black man, they always say the same thing: ‘Well, it’s not most cops. It’s just a few bad apples. It’s just a few bad apples.’ Bad apple? That’s a lovely name for murderer. That almost sounds nice. I’ve had a bad apple. It was tart, but it didn’t choke me out. Here’s the thing. Here’s the thing. I know being a cop is hard. I know that shit’s dangerous. I know it is, okay? But some jobs can’t have bad apples. Some jobs, everybody gotta be good. Like … pilots. Ya know, American Airlines can’t be like, ‘Most of our pilots like to land. We just got a few bad apples that like to crash into mountains. Please bear with us.'”
Sometimes you gotta laugh to keep from crying.
I’ve been heartened by the sheer number of nationwide protests demanding justice for George Floyd and the international expressions of solidarity from demonstrators as far flung as Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. To see people from all walks of life, faiths, and geographies, shrug off the social distancing demands of the coronavirus pandemic and risk their lives to stand against the pandemic of racism shows the world is on fire for justice.
Even Nickelodeon, the children’s network, went off air for eight minutes and 46 seconds in support of the Black Lives Matter movement to say nothing of Pope Francis who, during weekly prayer at the Vatican, said “we cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form…”
To see people from all walks of life, faiths, and geographies, shrug off the social distancing demands of the coronavirus pandemic and risk their lives to stand against the pandemic of racism shows the world is on fire for justice.
Justice is riot prevention
For me, the U.S. protests triggered flashbacks of the 1992 Los Angeles uprising that erupted after a jury found four police officers not guilty in the arrest and beating of Rodney King. I was a high school senior at the time and after a 40-minute school bus ride from the San Fernando Valley to South-Central Los Angeles, recall barely making it home safely before dark as looting and violence erupted and parts of my neighborhood went up in flames.
I condemn acts of destruction, but as Martin Luther King observed in a 1967 speech at Stanford University, “as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.”
As Father’s Day approaches, I’m thinking of the Black fathers, wrongly killed like Floyd, whose names did not become hashtags, who are not here to receive heartfelt cards, gifts, hugs, and kisses from their children.
I’m thinking of the striking illustrated portrait of Floyd from @bloodmilk on Instagram that reads: George Floyd, father of two, from Houston, Texas. Called Big Floyd & Gentle Giant by his friends, loved by all who knew him.
But mostly I’m thinking of his six-year-old daughter Gianna, just two months older than my own, who during a segment on “ABC World News Tonight” innocently declared, “Daddy changed the world.”
In the days ahead, I pray we can transform our collective trauma and anguish into the actions necessary to make Gianna’s words come true.
This life-changing moment made me think about my own dad, who became a father at 43. As my parenthood journey unfolded, I noticed that most of my friends had become parents earlier in life yet, here I was, changing diapers and battling sleep deprivation at (nearly) 40. I told my wife, “Parenting is definitely a young man’s game.” But is it really?
Where most of my friends were preparing for their children’s middle and high school graduations, I was mastering the art of the swaddle, perfecting the one-hand baby wipe, and learning to decipher my daughter’s gurgles and whimpers. It occurred to me that I had so much more to offer my daughter at the sure-footed age of 40 than I did at, say, 28, when I was still coming into my own.
Fatherhood@Forty: Memoirs of a Gen X Suburban Dad™ is a creative outlet to share my experiences and connect with other (relatively) late-in-life dads.
Here are a few factoids about me, Johnathon Briggs, the editor behind this blog:
I’m a former journalist (Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune).
I love exploring Chicago and the Midwest with my family.
I remain on a constant quest to stay fit.
I support charities that fight HIV, uplift families affected by incarceration, and ensure African American boys graduate from college.
I’m a comic book geek (mostly Marvel, but a bit of DC and Image Comics).
I’m a child of the ‘80s, so please expect occasional references to the Golden Age of Hip-Hop.
As a reporter for daily newspapers, I had the opportunity to interview fascinating people and to test out great products and brands for my readers. I hope to do the same for you as I blog about the moments that make up this adventure called fatherhood.
This life-changing moment made me think about my own dad, who became a father at 43. As my parenthood journey unfolded, I noticed that most of my friends had become parents earlier in life yet, here I was, changing diapers and battling sleep deprivation at (nearly) 40. I told my wife, “Parenting is definitely a young man’s game.” But is it really?
Where most of my friends were preparing for their children’s middle and high school graduations, I was mastering the art of the swaddle, perfecting the one-hand baby wipe, and learning to decipher my daughter’s gurgles and whimpers. It occurred to me that I had so much more to offer my daughter at the sure-footed age of 40 than I did at, say, 28, when I was still coming into my own.
Fatherhood@Forty: Memoirs of a Gen X Suburban Dad™ is a creative outlet to share my experiences and connect with other (relatively) late-in-life dads.
Here are a few factoids about me, Johnathon Briggs, the editor behind this blog:
I’m a former journalist (Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune).
I love exploring Chicago and the Midwest with my family.
I remain on a constant quest to stay fit.
I support charities that fight HIV, uplift families affected by incarceration, and ensure African American boys graduate from college.
I’m a comic book geek (mostly Marvel, but a bit of DC and Image Comics).
I’m a child of the ‘80s, so please expect occasional references to the Golden Age of Hip-Hop.
As a reporter for daily newspapers, I had the opportunity to interview fascinating people and to test out great products and brands for my readers. I hope to do the same for you as I blog about the moments that make up this adventure called fatherhood.
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