I stood my ground

We are at this table yet again. Unintended invitees to a bitter soup served cold. The best kind of revenge they say. Of course I'm talking about the Jordan Davis murder trial. By now we know all the players and they know their lines. A white man with expressed racial bias comes across an unarmed black teenager and assumes him threatening. The white man demands fealty from the black teenager who bucks back. Heated words are exchanged and the toxic mix of lax gun laws, moronic bravado and good old American-style racism leaves the teenager dead. Then the outrage comes, the trial, the verdict and more outage after the verdict. On and on ad infinitum forever and ever amen.

Since last week a lot of people have discussed how anybody would be confused on finding Michael Dunn, Jordan Davis' murderer anything built guilty. How a white man who routinely uses racial slurs and stated he hated black people can put on a sweater vest and be transformed into Mr. Rogers; while all black men no matter what their station in life are Willie Horton. Gangsters. Thugs. Gang bangers. Violence an immutable trait coiled under our very surface. A russet dermis overlaying a truculent soul.  We are always dangerous. We are always the villain. The killer of Susan Smith's children, the shooter of the banker with the dead pregnant wife on the Charles River Bridge and just recently the man who shot himself then lied and told the police a black male attacked him. It's an all too easy excuse. I mean it has been proven that black men can weaponize anything. That we are all a hare's breath from the long arm of the law.

I had just returned from working in India for about four months. I returned to work that Friday afternoon. There were several new employees. I was introduced to them as their manager when the oddest thing happened. I was speaking with one of the new hires, a charming woman that reminded me greatly of Diane Wiest, when she saw the hint of my tattoo peeking from behind the sleeve of my polo shirt. She asked "Is that a tattoo?"

"Yes," I said.

"May I see it?" I pulled up my sleeve. She looked at it. "I used to volunteer at a youth center in Newark and I used to work with a lot of ex-gang members. All of their prison tattoos had meanings. Were you in a gang?"

"Do I look or sound like I've ever been in a gang?"

"Well I don't know. You are black. I think." she smiled at her own deduction. It took every fiber of my being to not break out singing "America!" from West Side Story complete with Jerome Robbins choreography. "I was a member of the Northside Quips," I snapped, "where blood and glitter ran in the streets after every rumble." She just stared at me for a moment, my shade lost upon the train wreck of her mind.

A few weeks later during our annual evaluation period she wrote in her review, in true conservative fashion, that God lead her to understand the job, and I assume ostensibly me, treated her like a slave and she was nobody's n-word. I fired her on the spot.

These kinds of interactions are what black parents are talking about when they give their children "The Talk."

The Talk is the conversation that some black parents have with their children, primarily boys as they reach puberty. Because once a black boy grows pubic hair he's no longer cherub-cheeked Arnold Jackson (Gary Coleman) he's darkened by Photoshop OJ Simpson. For us as black men there's no transitional period. We don't get to use youthful exuberance as an excuse for reckless behavior. We don't have a nation rally behind us when we've been caught stealing street signs and sentenced to a public ass whoopin'. We get shot. Or arrested at staggering numbers. So our parents have to give us "The Talk." To make sure that we are aware that America does not afford us an even playing field. That in many cases the field is slanted to make it harder for us to even get on it. That when you go about your life that there are going to meet people fearful of you for no reason. That they may harm you. That you simply being alive proves a greater threat than influenza or their drunk husband. So be careful of furtive movements. Make sure your car's inspection and registration is current and up to date. Don't loiter in predominately white neighborhoods. Don't give the police a reason to arrest you or worse. Don't give that white lady walking her dog any reason to shout rape. Don't give that teacher any reason to send you to the principal for back-talk.

In full disclosure: I didn't get The Talk.

And you know what? I'm glad I didn't. From the time I was a small child my mother and father told me I could be whatever I wanted to be and go anywhere in this world that I wanted to. There was no limitations on my progress or my imagination. There was no talk of averting eyes. There was no mincing of words. When I got a grade of unsatisfactory in behavior in fifth grade it wasn't because I misbehaved. It was because I argued with my teacher who erroneously said the Civil War was fought over state's rights. I corrected her.  My parents told me to boldly step forward. They didn't teach me to be fearful or subservient. But to speak my mind and follow my heart. So when President Obama said that he could have been Trayvon I understand that he means it not in a literal sense. But in a sense that he would never run from a white man questioning him or his purpose in any neighborhood. I've been pulled over by police on my way home to my mother's house when I was just out of college. The white police officer asked me what I was doing in "this neighborhood" as if to imply the impossibility that I could actually live along a tree-lined street of stately homes. I didn't tell him I lived nearby. Why should I have to? Instead I told him that as a tax-payer I can drive my car anywhere I wanted in Winston-Salem. And if he had no other reason to stop me then he should let me go on about my business. We as black men are under constant surveillance. So our well meaning parents try to prepare us for life and safety. But as Tonyaa Weathersbee stated on The Root this week that keeping black children safe is making it okay for some whites to be racist.  

Let's put these recent murders into perspective. Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis were in a place that they had a legal right to be. They were not committing a crime. They had no duty to retreat when confronted by an attacker or angry motorist. They had the right to meet force with force. They had the right to use deadly force if they reasonably thought their life was in danger. They had the right to stand their ground. But in America it is unreasonable to think that an unarmed black man is the victim and not the aggressor.

There once was a white woman in Thailand

It was the winter of 1999, and my partner and I had taken a 3-week vacation to Southeast Asia, our first of many trips to the region. We had just spent a week in Hong Kong visiting friends before flying to Bangkok, Thailand. The city was so exotic. An intoxicating and toxic mix of people, pollution, industry, commerce, culture, cuisine and the sex trade. We were walking down Surawong Road near Patpong, the notorious market made famous during the Vietnam War as Thailand's throbbing, degenerate heart of the sex industry---a place where you can buy a knock-off Gucci watch (which I did) as easily as you can traffic a human for intercourse (that's for the memoirs darling).  The weather was hot.  Now I love hot. But Thai hot is hot as hell. Literally, it felt like hell. I never understood how the Thai people remained so aloof from their weather, walking around as they did all crisp and pulled together despite the staggering heat and humidity.

Thailand is a languid country so we walked at our leisure.  Down the street a ways I saw a white couple walking toward us. When you travel to countries where you're a racial minority other non-locals stick out and I assumed they were tourists like us. As we approached each other the woman looked up and spied my partner and me. There was an imperceptible tensing in her neck and her bright smiled hesitated. Her lips curled downward slightly. She quickly moved her handbag from her left hand (the hand closest to us) and moved it to her right shoulder while grabbing her husband's hand tightly. As a black man living in the U.S., I've experienced this on numerous occasions; white women gripping their bags more tightly as I approached, or crossing the street, or locking the car door (before automatic locks kept them safe), or holding their breath in elevators when it's just me and them. It's just another one of those tiny indignities you learn to ignore as an African-American male. But somehow, here, thousands of miles from home immersed in another people's culture, I was still perceived as a threat. A criminal.  As she passed us I blurted out over my left shoulder "Bitch, I did not fly six thousand miles to snatch your purse." Her face blanched. She was robbed of what color she had. Her husband turned back toward us with confusion and, in an instant, I was that black man. You know, the angry-for-no-reason black man.  Even here, on the opposite side of the globe from America, I was cast in the part racism had written for me over the last four centuries. But in that moment I didn't care. They quickly retreated and a few minutes later I was enjoying a Singha beer at a bar on Soi Cowboy.

Fourteen years later, I had another moment not unlike that one in Thailand.  Last week was the 50th Anniversary of The March on Washington---the only march that ever truly mattered to me and the march that changed the world. I was born after The March. I was too young to remember water hoses and viciously trained German Shepherds. I never sat at the back of a bus. I never went to a segregated school. I didn't cry when Dr. Martin Luther King died because I was barely three years old.  I was the first generation to reap the benefits of the work he, Medgar, Dorothy, Martin, Viola, Fannie Lou, Malcolm and others did. I never saw a sign that read "Colored Only." I had white teachers and I had white classmates and white friends. We went to Hanes Mall where we shopped together at The Merry-Go-Round and Thalheimers Department Store. We were supposed to be the generation that received a payout after that bounced check Dr. King famously spoke about was re-deposited. But somehow, as always, human beings get in the way of lofty Aquarian ideals.

This was a tough summer. The conservative Supreme Court of the United States finally fulfilled Judges Roberts' and Thomas' promise to nullify anything that looked like racial justice by dismantling a major part of the Voting Rights Act and further diluting Affirmative Action. Then, my home state of North Carolina enacted the most severe restrictions to access to voting in the last five decades, all under the guise of stopping "voter fraud" that Republican leaders described, oxymoronically, as "both rampant and undetected."  They claimed these restrictions had no sinister intent, but merely contained a law to make you show ID at the polls. That's all.  What they didn't announce was the law planned major cuts to early voting, closing polling stations in left-leaning colleges (a direct assault on the legality of young voters at historically black colleges and other institutions), banning publicly funded voter registration drives, banning same-day registration, and---my personal favorite---allowing for unlimited amounts of monetary contributions to state politicians from anonymous corporate donors. So, essentially, huge businesses like Walmart or the Koch Brothers or Art Pope's Super P.A.C. could secretly donate millions of dollars to politicians willing to work on their behalf without the voters of the Tarheel State having any rights whatsoever to that information.

And then there was the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman verdict. 'Nuff said.

It seemed the exoneration of a grinning George Zimmerman, Jr., who was on trial after he murdered an unarmed teenager, gave the right-wing the green light it needed to commence a blitzkrieg on everything black and male in America.  From Bill O'Reilly's Talking Points, where he laments that the plight of black America is due to deadbeat dads and Lil' Wayne lyrics, to Rush Limbaugh's go-to checklist of black-on-black crime, Al Sharpton and the ever-present Black Welfare Queen. They kept trying to stoke racial animus with their "versions" of Trayvon. White conservatives, swollen with self-rightenousness, bombarded FOX News and Briebart with what they thought was the Gretchenfrage of the moment:  What's Wrong with the Black Community? Tim Wise and Tom Scocca, two white men who are allies in the fight against racism had their say. But it was Joe Walsh's racially charged and detestable bastardization of the I Have a Dream speech that was my personal white-woman-in-Thailand moment.  This ousted Tea-Bagging jackass had the nerve to spew racist fuckery in what he, and the rest of what has become a thinly veiled cabal of right-wing bigots, think was a clever parody of Dr. King's words. So listen up assholes 'cause I'm only gonna say this once:

My parents chose the schools I went to because I lived in a good neighborhood.
I grew up with my father in a loving household.
I have never shot another black man.
I said "no" to gangs and drugs.
I graduated from high school.
I am not a father and if I were it would not be any of your business (didn't your wife accuse you of being behind on your child support in the tune of $117,00?).
My family has never been dependent on the government assistance.
And I am not alone in this. Millions of other black men are just like me.

Now that you have this information, I would like to ask white conservatives like Joe Walsh a few questions of my own: You love to quote Dr. King and claim you judge people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. Then, why am I constantly followed in stores?--I don't steal and there's no need for me to shoplift.  Why was I pulled over by the police and asked what I was doing "riding around" in my own neighborhood?--I grew up here and have been living here more or less for more than 45 years.  Why did the Winston-Salem/ Forsyth County School Board try to track me into remedial classes (twice) even though I tested in the 95th percentile on most of the state's standardized aptitude tests? Why was I asked to submit to a drug test when I worked at Credit Suisse when the two white male applicants that were hired to work under my supervision were not? Why did that well-meaning white man I met at the bar while out drinking with friends try to give me that ridiculous, stereotypical jive handshake? As if he'd just watched a rerun of Sanford and Son. Why do you always tell me I'm so "well-spoken" as if that's a surprise? Why was I asked if I worked in the mailroom when I was coming out of that meeting in the conference room wearing a $700 Hugo Boss suit? Why did you call me a bum when i saw you drop a five dollar bill when you were exiting the subway and I was just trying to hand it back to you? Why was I directed to unskilled labor jobs when I went to the Winston-Salem's employment services agency after I finished college? (The counselor, and yes she she was white, didn't even bother to look at my resume at first).  And why do white women automatically hide their cellphones, iPads and necklaces (often attempting to be discreet, but failing) when they see me walking toward them?

So why, Joe Walsh, if I've done everything I was supposed to do am I STILL being treated like a criminal? I'll tell you why:  because you live in a world of fear and vitriol. A world filled with deflection. A world where your anger is vindicated not by your own shortcomings but by the idea that you are better than me. You don't want to help poor, black, indigent, underemployed, institutionalized black men. You want to use them as chips in your high stakes game of racial poker.  So you pour your hate on Trayvon Martin and others like him because the black president of the United States said he could have been Trayvon 35 years ago.  But what you're really fearful of is that Trayvon Martin could grow up and be president 35 years from now.  So the real reason you continue to criminalize me is because a forward-thinking, hard-working, smart, politically and socially aware black man is not your greatest dream but your worst nightmare.

North Carolina to pass law prohibiting youngsters from carrying candy without a permit

Raleigh, NC

The Republican controlled General Assembly is poised on passing an unprecedented law. In the second-degree murder trial of the slain teenager, Trayvon Martin, defendant George Zimmerman was found “Not Guilty.” After the facts of that tragic night were revealed in the courtroom, North Carolina is prepared to be the first state to make it a law that you must have a permit to carry packaged candy in your pockets if you're younger than twenty-seven.

Attorneys Mark O'Mara and Don West, defense lawyers for George Zimmerman, proved in open court that a bag of Skittles can become weaponized in the hands of a teenager. The proposed law is not without controversy.  State Representative Simon Le Bon (R-Tobaccoville)--no relation to the lead singer of the 80s band Duran Duran--who introduced the bill assured the public that this was the right thing to do. "I've seen this time and time again. These packaged candies get in the hands of the wrong people and innocent people are murdered. How many will be killed by the rainbow before we do something?" he said in a passionate plea on the legislature floor.

Unlike the Stand Your Ground law that passed in NC in 2011 by a party line vote, the Hide Your Candy law has divided the Tarheel GOP. Christopher Hewitt--no relation to the actor who played Mr. Belvedere in the 80s hit sitcom--V.P. of marketing for the powerful N.C.A (National Candy Association) said in a tersely written email to its members that making people have to get permits to carry candy in their pockets is a slippery slope. "Liberals along with that uncircumcised Hittite Obama want to take our candies away from us. This is unprecedented. What's next? Nabs?...or God forbid they try to stop us from buying multi-candy-packs!" This caused an uproar in the candy carrying community. Many called their state representatives telling them they were law-abiding candy owners. But others in the conservative movement think this is a great way of curtailing crime. Ultraconservatives Alex Jones and Larry Elder both agree that keeping candy out of the hands of "young black thugs" (a euphemistic term coined on the right) is paramount to keeping America safe. Mr. Jones reported on his website that thousands of young black men were stockpiling packaged candies. A commenter affirmed that he could not find a Now And Later anywhere in Duvall County, Florida. Mr. Elder on his daily radio show said that he knew for a fact that the New Black Panther party was giving out free candies to new recruits.

Rachel Jeantel, who is now the official spokesperson for the New Black Panther Party responded to the questions of the free candy giveaway with the short statement "That's real retarded, SIR." Mr. Elder's accusations have angered many civil rights leaders who said this legislation smacks of racial profiling. But Republicans fired back that its not racial profiling siting the high profile case of Belinda Carlisle--no relation to the lead singer of the 80s girl group The Go-Go’s--who reported being terrorized in her Alamance County home by a black youth. "I was so scared. I could see a pack of Starburst peaking out his pocket. I literally feared for my life."

The Zimmerman defense team put Dr. Anthony Michael Hall--no relation to the actor from the 80s movie The Breakfast Club--on the stand where he proved empirically that black men have an extra set of suppressed DNA that causes them to be able to turn innocuous objects into weapons. Under oath Dr. Hall said that he has seen in experiments he's conducted "Black men viscously injure each other with bags of Paz Easter bunny marshmallows." When asked how the doctor came to these conclusions, he explained that he would randomly kidnap young black men, lock them in cages for several weeks or sometimes years, without food, water or human contact, then at gun point make them fight each other by using any snack food necessary. "They quickly turn violent with just the slightest bit of provocation," he said.

The state is divided on the Hide Your Candy law. But most people are just fearful like Appavoo Parumel--no relation to my college math professor--who works as a cashier at the 7-11 near the Lewisville exit on Highway 52 in Clemmons. He said he's seen a lot of young men buying candy and putting them in their pockets. "They come in here and buy a lot of candies. Mostly M & M Peanuts. That's the scariest to me. They have peanuts on the inside."

African American parents also expressed a higher level of concern for their children, especially boys. Vernice Ledbetter--no relation to my Sunday School teacher--expressed emotionally, after church at the Greater New Jerusalem A.M.E.C.O.P.D. Zion Church of Christ in Christ in Hendersonville on Sunday where they held a prayer vigil, that every time she sends her teenaged son out to the store she's afraid he may not come back. "I tell him. If he's going to buy candy walk slowly and always, always keep the candy out in the open where people can see it. Expect to be followed. I would hate to get a call that my son is dead because somebody felt threatened because he was walking around with candy in his pocket."