If you are of a certain age, you probably got “The Talk” from your parents – or even your grandparents.
While my white friends had the luxury of just squirming
through an awkward discussion about the mechanics of sex, I, and others who
share my skin color, often received a different kind of lecture on the facts of life.
The Talk centered on how to behave in stores. How to
act around police. How to respond in the streets.
One wrong slip, we were warned, could cost you dearly.
Being at the wrong place, at the wrong time and always the wrong color, could be
deadly.
Many of my friends, now parents themselves, wanted to
free their children of the burdens and fears that come with The Talk. They
sought to let it lapse, mothballing it as a part of a
shameful history.
After all, this is the “flattened” era, powered by digital know-how
and technology. This is supposed to be a time when King’s “Dream” has
finally come into view. This is the Age of Obama.
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| A sentiment born by many. Photo courtesy of Roberto Gonzalez/AP |
With all of that, many reasoned and rationalized that The
Talk is not only outmoded, but also inhibiting at a time when our children
have to embrace their full power in order to compete effectively. We resented The
Talk, this notion of having to act differently than our peers. After all, that’s
what the marching and lobbying of the past was supposed to resolve, and in
many of our minds, had resolved.
Except for those glaring reminders that still emerge, those
mind-numbing, soul-crushing incidents whose steady presence belies the usual
title of “aberrations.” This time it was
Trayvon Martin. Before him there was Oscar
Grant. Before him, it was Amadou
Diallo. And before him, Yusef
Hawkins. You can go back as far as Emmett Till. The circumstances
vary, but the theme remains the same – unarmed young black man seen as a threat
to a jittery, if not angry, one who isn’t black. Slaying ensues.
And those are just the high-profile cases, where names
are known. Countless others remain unknown, just words on a police blotter, a
brief in a local paper – if they were lucky.
The verdict in the George Zimmerman murder trial means
many things to many people, but a distinct message sent is that it is open
season on those deemed “threatening.” That the definition of self-defense now
extends to tracking and killing said “threats.” For the record, that group
historically has been darker in hue. Brown like me and mine and condemned to assumptions
of criminality because of it.
Some have long advocated for such exterminations of “undesirables,”
and still do, proven by perusing the web. This trial seems to have codified those
notions.What played out in the national spotlight is the
continuation of a meme that black male lives have little value and their
presence always is suspect.
Yet the mirror image of that assessment is the mounting
body count in urban centers across the country, from Oakland to Chicago to New
Orleans to Philadelphia,
where black men gun down themselves with as much regard as George Zimmerman has. Beyond any chicken-egg, cause-effect debate, the result of the attitude
prevails: maimed or dead black males. And justice in these cases frequently remains at an impasse, be
it due to prosecutorial incompetence or a “no snitching” intransigence.
Human extermination, in Dachau, in Bosnia,
in Sudan,
in Sanford, Florida, in Philly, is
morally bankrupt, no matter the color or gender bearing the weapon. But
cheapened life makes that weight of conscience remarkably light. And social
acceptance renders it lighter still. Those reminders keep repeating.
Yes, in Florida, there is a devastated mother and father
whose 17-year-old son was slain for being black, and making someone who was not,
afraid, just by his mere being. But in Philadelphia, there are scores of
equally devastated parents grieving sons who are killed, when you boil it
down, also for being black in the wrong space and time.
There are those willing to parse and qualify how one
murder is totally illegitimate whereas others, though tragic, are somewhat expected,
even accepted. Yet tolerance of the latter allows room for the former. They are
all value judgments on the worth of black – and in many cases, brown – males. Anger at one outrageous incident does not negate the many others that are still happening, most of which occurring without the benefit of 24/7 cameras or pundits, markers of merit in this media-fed era.
In this nation of wealth and laws, most Americans find it
difficult to wrap their minds around a reality that holds that a boy returning
home from the store with snacks could be killed because he made someone “nervous.”
Just as they don’t condone one boy killing another, before either of them sees
21.
Until you add race. Then somehow it all seems to make sense. Even
when it doesn’t.
So for as much as my generation may want to put The
Talk to rest, until something real changes, we’d be remiss not to offer that well-worn lecture, at least for a while longer. To do otherwise may just further
endanger those we hold most dear, even today. In 2013.
Real change began after Emmett Till was slain. It must continue, beginning with us, if the slayings of Trayvon, Oscar, Amadou, Yusef and all the rest are ever to make sense. Not just to black people, but to the entire nation -- and world.
