Blackness is A Psychological Oppression
There will be no justice for Philando Castile.
White supremacy establishes conditions for blackness to survive. It says “walk right and talk right, dress right and impress right, don’t rock the boat and we’ll pretend you’re white — or at least somewhat white — in many circumstances. Just don’t speak out about white supremacy. Don’t threaten our position at the top. Accept that you (a specific black person) are one of us, but don’t think about trying to make that true for all black people.”
Philando Castile played by the rules. He had a job working in a school with kids and was on his way to work. He broke no laws. He was legally carrying a gun, which he told his officer about. And yet when he was asked to retrieve his license and registration, he was presumed to be reaching for a gun and was shot and killed.
Philando Castile should show us that no amount of behaving “right” can make a black man white. He did everything “right”, everything the hand-wringers have been telling us for years that black men were shot for doing “wrong”. And yet he ended up dead just like the rest.
He was caught on tape just like we were always told would be necessary for justice to be reached. And yet his killer got off scot-free just like the rest.
Before we even had a weekend to mourn, a pregnant black mother of 4 was shot and killed in front of her kids after she called the cops to report that her home had been robbed.
Where do we go from here? I honestly don’t know. I had always figured there would be some low point, some case where a jury would say “this is wrong. Cops need to be held accountable”. I assumed we’d use that case as a wedge to split open the whole damn system and go from there. I thought that case was Tamir Rice. I’d hoped it would be Philando Castile. I now understand that there is no such case.
I just want to cry, to curl into a ball and sob at the hopelessness I feel. I want to give up.
Instead, I’m going to do what I’ve done for some time now, what I have to do to survive. I’m going to shut those emotions down and go about life. I’m going to continue to fight because I’ve turned off my capacity to react any other way.
I'm going to yell and scream into the void. There is no justice, so there can be no peace, not around me at least.
I still get asked why I write about race so much, about politics so much. For black people, race isn’t a political matter. It’s a very real life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness matter. Black people have never had liberty in America. So many of us are losing our lives. How am I one supposed to even consider happiness in such a world?
Many of us lose our lives - to the blue arm of the law or to vigilante hate crime or to lead poisoning. Many more lose our liberty - to the "justice" system or to segregation or to discrimination. I’ve been pepper sprayed, tear gassed, handcuffed, and had a gun pointed at me, all in “liberal” cities like Portland or Los Angeles.
Our emotions tell us that the system will never be unbroken, that not only is this America but that it always will be America. Either those emotions shut us down or we shut them down. I didn't notice it at first. A curt word here, a muted reaction there, an hour spent staring at a wall, doing nothing. But over time I have strangled my ability to feel.
The dead faces of so many black men and women are burned into my mind and I cannot forget them. I carry the dead with me; their visages and voices haunting my dreams.
And now I don’t fully understand how to interact with the living, or at least the non-black. I lash out in pain and anger at those around me because they know what is going on and yet they do so little to stop it because it doesn’t affect them.
I asked once if black Americans might become the revolutionaries America fears that we are. I fear that time has come… Many of us will see this system fall — or break our bodies against it — by any means necessary.
I feel like it’s slowly killing my humanity, like what makes me good and vibrant is being lost to the iniquity of it all, like what’s being left behind is so much hopelessness and rage.
In such a fight there is little room for the normality of life, and it can be hard to relate to people who don’t understand that. Because they are among the living, and we, among the dead.
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