Stacia L. Brown

For Alton. For Philando. For All.

1.

070616-national-Alton-Sterling

He had a grin made of gold. Veneers once considered as hip as the compact discs he was selling. Remember the ’90s, when yellow gold was preferable to platinum and the cassette tape had yet to become entirely passé, but if you were still playing those when CDs were all the rage, you were clowned through the halls of your high school? In locker-lined hallway parlance, you were “an impossible herb.” Alton Sterling was in high school in the 90s. I know because we are nearly the same age. He was 37. I will be 37 in mere months.

I still play CDs in my car. It has a six-disc changer. The CDs I play are mostly burned, from the MP3s I listen to everywhere else. I do not purchase them, neither in stores or in the street.

For me, these are the details — the gilded teeth, the compact discs — that stand in starkest relief. They feel like relics: the former a trend I wish would fully fade, the latter a medium I thought already had.

Time tends to forget cities like Baton Rouge. Like Ferguson. Like Charleston. Cities adjacent to larger, more tourist-friendly ones, cities that, no matter how large or small, still seem to function as sleepy and insular towns, cities where blight may be easy to cover with natural beauty, by simply directing a driver three miles to the left or the right.

To those who live without, cities like these seem quaint, kitschy, preserved in the amber of time bygone. Until a massacre. Until the body of a teenage black boy is left dead in the street for four hours. Until someone videotapes one of the scores of police confrontations that happen to the town’s black residents every day — and until one of those videos happens to be of a brutal, unjustified murder.

We are jarred into recollection then. Time isn’t what forgets cities where trends seem to linger for decades past their prime, where hustle men still sell CDs in a largely disc-less society. It’s the rest of us who forget, the rest of us who rarely have occasion to consider the gross neglect of a slow-ambling city’s black schools or their lead testing or their water supply or their police force. Sufficient unto every hometown, after all, is the evil thereof. We are too busy reckoning with the corruption next door. We have not considered the mostly silent, daily terrors stalking other towns.

By the time the national press gets involved, by the time they see something salacious enough to remind us, we are awestruck, woebegone, looking for the logical ties between Baton Rouge and Baltimore, Baton Rouge and Los Angeles, Baton Rouge and the Bronx. They are not so unlike us, we say of the town’s time “forgets.” We should fight for their basic human rights as fiercely as we try to protect our own. And we do, as long as the news cycle lasts. We do, until the next tragedy of large scale takes precedence, until the little things — gold teeth, compact discs — are all we can still bear to remember.

2.

ad_212147518-e1467877947114

He served tater tots and rectangles of spongy pizza to students at J.J. Hill Montessori Magnet School in St. Paul, Minnesota for over a decade. I imagine it was work that he enjoyed. The scent of school cafeterias is pungent. It is not an odor everyone can stomach. Cafeteria workers are not always respected as they should be. It is not a profession whose thanklessness everyone can stomach. Philando Castile was younger than Alton and I by five years. He was 32, and he was driving, a privilege only appreciated by those who have not always been able to feel its benefits. The ability to regularly transport one’s family in a car is no small accomplishment, no minor blessing.

We can assume that Philando knew well that privilege, his girlfriend in the passenger seat, her daughter in the back. We can also assume he knew his rights, owner as he was of a legally registered gun, the presence of which he reportedly notified the police, while reaching for his driver’s license and registration. The gun was in the glove compartment, where it could be retrieved in case of danger, where it was concealed from the children in his life, from the family he was chauffeuring through town.

There is no gradation of deservedness in situations like these. There was no more justification for Alton to be executed while already apprehended than for Philando to absorb several bullets in quick succession while reaching for the identification an officer asked for, reaching from within the former comfort of his own car.

They are both dead, regardless of the details, when they should both, by most accounts, still be alive. Alton’s 15-year-old son should not be sobbing for a father who can no longer reach out and envelope him. Philando’s girlfriend Diamond Reynolds’ four-year-old should not need to console her mother. Still so certain of her toddler-body’s invincibility, of her spirit’s ability to heal whatever hurts, she should have no cause to put either superpower to the test.

And the rest of us should not find ourselves debating the psychic, emotional, and ethical merits of viewing and disseminating the recorded details of victims’ murders. It’s a sad state of affairs that we so often bicker over whether or not we should watch the myriad ways that black folks can die.

3.

Minneapolis is not like Baton Rouge. It’s 8.4 percent black, where Baton Rouge is 58.5 percent black. And Minneapolis is like Baton Rouge: it does not do right by its black population. Its police force perceives immediate ill intent in the black residents they’re meant to serve.

There is no city in this country any safer or objectively “better” for a black family than another. This is true for many reasons and racial bias in police forces is just one. But we delude ourselves, don’t we, searching for someplace seemingly more progressive, some place where our breadwinners can find legitimate work — even with a criminal conviction, some home in a community where crime is rare but not so rare that we’ll be mistaken for breaking into our own front doors, should we ever misplace our keys. Some place where we can pull calmly over to receive a broken taillight citation and feel somewhat assured that, if we comply, we will not die.

We have always longed to live, and this country has long been ambivalent about that yearning. But we owe to Alton and Philando, we owe to ourselves and our children, what we have ever been owed: some semblance of life, the inordinate idea that, as long as we draw breath, that life can still improve. Against odds, in spite of history, alongside the omnipresent ache of injustice. We have always longed to live and we only can do so by reaching for one another, through melee and misty eyes, reach though our arms tremble with fear, adrenaline and rage, reach and fill the empty arcs of our own arms.

As in the bowels of ships, as in the segregated front-line trenches, as in the backs of paddywagons, the corners of one-room schoolhouses, along the chain gangs, outside governor’s mansions, on the curb where someone deeply loved was reminded of that love one last time, while bleeding out, reach for what will always find you. Us. All we will ever have for certain in this American life is us.

slb

, ,
, , , , , , , , ,

60 responses to “For Alton. For Philando. For All.”

  5. Heart-rending. I would like to say more, but I will need to sit with this a while.

    Reply

  6. I am not black, I am not living in the United States. But I am sobbing reading your post. It rings true in so many ways. You have an amazing talent in writing.

    Reply

  9. This is beautiful and so poetically written. I got goose pimples throughout the whole post. There’s not much more I can say here. You understand the plight of black people so deeply, and as a black woman, I have utmost respect for you.

    Reply

  11. It’s good that there are people who really want to make a difference in Thai work such as yourself. Thank you!

    Reply

  13. Great post! It is sad that this is happening in our country.
    I am not black but I am of color and I am a minority… I have experienced discrimination and prejudice first hand. However, I feel that police brutality goes beyond color… these cops who do these things have a problem and it is the “system” that is failing us and is failing the other good cops as well who obviously are becoming the victims here. If there’s a cover up, it should stop asap, they should rehabilitate their people, reshuffle them, incarcerate the guilty… there should be a regular psychological tests for these cops who do these heinous things coz obviously it is not normal.

    More power to you!

    LIVE ❤ LAUGH … BELLE PAPILLON

    Reply

  16. My heartfelt condolences go to the victims of the police shooting. It is sad, really sad that in the 21st century, we are still faced with issues of police brutality. It is not only happening in America. In my country extra-judicial killings by police are on the rise and no one is taking responsibility. Are there any aliens up there?

    Reply

  20. As the bitter debate about how our police forces treat out non white citizens escalates it has exposed a truth many minorities know.
    Learning the facts of life are vastly different if you are black or white.
    There are conversations that white parents do not have to have with their children. Reaching puberty the only awkward “talk” I had with my parents was about the birds and the bees; black parents dreaded “talk” is more about survival in a country of systemic racism and state sanctioned brutality. No amount of education manners or talent will protect them from these facts of life. These were facts I would learn later in life. It’s time now for white adults to have “the talk” among themselves. http://wp.me/p2qifI-3C2

    Reply

  26. A a black man with two sons and a daughter I am genuinely afraid for them in a country that has truly never embraced them fully. I pray for better days in America but how long have we been asking for human rights. This needs to stop and it must begin with whites, blacks, and others sitting down and hammering out real solutions to these old problems. Well written post that I agree with entirely.

    Reply

  32. I think it truly does start with black and white people sitting down together, and white people taking the time to truly listen without trying to correct or interject. We do that really often when listening to black people and it’s not truly listening at all. This really is the solution. It starts with individuals. I hope & pray that there will be a day when you no longer have to fear for your kids. Sending you love!

    Reply

  39. I don’t want to teach my black cousins, and sisters, and brothers, to not go near a gun. Or walk around with a hoodie or bookbag. Not to walk at night, or walk a certain way. I don’t see white people telling their children to do that. So why us? RIP Philando Castile.

    Reply

  40. OMG this is so well written I just had to finish and leave my remarks letting the author of this poetic expression of black life know this is inspiring. I have a WordPress blog myself that I wanted to dedicate to technology and my journey there of, however after reading this I feel inspired to share more of my personal journey throughout this experience called Life in America. Thank you for this, the world needs to know the every day plight of African-Americans here in America.

    Reply

  41. Thank guys, now i know you feel about the sudden death of mankind, keep the same spirit of mourning our love ones, i know they are resting in peace, be blessed everybody

    Reply

  43. It just that the bad cops cause themselves to get more attention on the social media, with the terrible decisions they make in life. But they are good cops out there but the bad ones going too far to the point they need to be put in their place.

    Reply

  46. I love your writing format …it’s beautiful
    And so true! I found myself one time or another brainstorming of where I could possibly move to avoid such acts of violence and discrimination. A place to raise my children but just like you so perfectly put it there is place to hide.

    Reply

  50. Beautiful post. The homage you paid these two victims has left me teary-eyed in my office. I am a new blogger, the Latina daughter of police officers and the best friend of a black man. I stand between these two forces and often times, I find myself struggling to find a solution to the issues of police brutality and the institutionalization of African Americans.

    If you could take a moment, please check out my post “Black&Blue: How Our Nation Can Change.” Here, I address the issues and propose viable options that can help as grow together, in all communities, from last week’s tragedies.

    Please read here: http://www.hungryhornyhonest.wordpress.com

    Reply

  52. Beautifully written. My heart goes out to the grieving family and friends. Here’s to a future where all lives matter no matter what.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: