The Counterpublic Papers vol. 5 no. 6

Every now and again there’s a spate of articles about the future of black leadership. I must’ve read reams of these when I was young and in graduate school.

…

The hug.

Near the time I pressed send on my last letter, I had someone ask me about the hug.

(A little over a year ago Amber Guyger, Dallas police officer killed Bortham Jean, in his apartment. She allegedly thought it was her apartment and when she did so seeing a man she allegedly thought was in HER house, she immediately shot him. Because she was white, he was black, and well….police killings, people took it as some kind of victory when she was actually charged for his murder. Her trial ended last week, and she was sentenced to ten years. After her sentence Jean’s brother gave her a hug. Which was then followed by a hug from the black female judge.)

For a brief moment in time—actually I don’t know how long because I’m not really on facebook anymore for all I know folks are still talking about it—this was fiercely debated by black people online. For some this is yet more proof that black people have something wrong with them—only someone who really didn’t love themselves would actually hug the person who killed their brother. For others this is simply an example of black people’s capacity to forgive in spite of an anti-black world.

I don’t believe in internalized oppression—I don’t think the data bears it out, and I don’t think my personal experience bears it out—so I tend to toss “this is proof of how messed up black people are” out of hand. I tend to think that the people who are still here both have the right to deal with grief the way they see fit. I also tend to think that, given what we know about the effects of death row executions on the families of the victims (from what I recall these families rarely receive closure) forgiveness isn’t about the perpetrator (although there are exceptions—I recall reading a wonderful story about a mother who basically adopted her son’s killer) but about the victim taking that space back. So I can see the brother taking that step to make sure he was able to move towards being whole. What that brother does doesn’t have any effect on me, and likely has no effect on us. Although as I type what he does likely has an effect on the people around him.

But then there’s the judge. This is the same judge that told the jury they could consider stand your ground law. They could, in other words, consider the possibility that a woman walking into an apartment that wasn’t hers could conceivably use stand your ground law to justify shooting someone sitting down in his own apartment.

While I have no problem with the brother of the victim working to get closure through forgiveness…I do have a problem with the judge doing so.  The odds are incredibly slim that this judge interacts with people who’ve committed crimes who aren’t police, who may be black, who may be lower income, the way she interacted with Guyger. That’s a problem. Because in that moment, she’s acting as the state. And while there are a range of crimes that may very well be deserving of the soft side of the state—the parent who is arrested for falsely listing her address in one neighborhood over another to get her child in a better school—I don’t think police murders are one of them. Even when they’re committed by accident.

….

Over the weekend Atatiana Jefferson was playing a video game with her nephew in Ft. Worth. Her door was open and a neighbor called the police to have them check on it. A police officer came, saw her in her own home playing video games, asked her to identify herself, and shot her. She died on the scene. In her own home. With her nephew next to her. The officer resigned today, and odds are he’ll be tried. And maybe now, given the context, he’ll be found guilty.

I remember around the time I became single, and hadn’t yet bought a car…so there were times where the house looked unoccupied. Once a few kids used my backyard to hang out in, perhaps not knowing I still lived there. My neighbor called me...and I had a decision to make. Do I call the police? Do I come back myself?

I did call the police. But I won’t forget the conversation. I had to take extra steps to tell them that I ONLY wanted the police to drive by the house. And I then told them that because the kids were likely to be black like me that I didn’t want them harassed in anyway. With Atatiana Jefferson and Botham Jean we’ve now extended the number of places you can be black and die in. You can be black and be shot by the police on your couch, in front of your television.

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In a couple of weeks I’m going to be at Vassar speaking on the future of freedom as part of a 50th anniversary Africana studies conference event. What does the freedom to be free in one’s home even mean given this? I’m unsure…and I'll probably write more about this next time but I’ll end with Pam Grier: The harmony of the human song is going to be what people listen to. The soul is going to win. My name is Lester Spence. This is the Counterpublic Papers.