Weeping Over Strange Fruit By the Rivers of Babylon
From time to time during the reign of this current conservative Triumvirate, a number of individuals have cited the Bible to either justify power or to chastise those in power.
An example of the one’s use of scripture to justify power is when former Attorney General Jeff Sessions used Romans 13 to justify removing immigrant children from their parents. An example of one’s use of scripture to chastise power is when former FBI Director James Comey cited the book of Amos shortly after retired general Mike Flynn pleaded guilty of lying to the FBI.
So concerned about justice was James Comey, that no expense was spared; not even a presidential election, but I digress.
The intersection of police brutality and COVID-19 living reached the city of brotherly love (and sisterly affection). However, I felt neither as I witnessed my people continue their struggle for their humanity to be seen and honored on that October night as they attempted to vote and as they attempted to handle a domestic dispute. While reflecting on it, I was reminded of a passage of scripture; Psalms 137, particularly versus 1 through 4:
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept, when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?
I can imagine my ancestors at the banks of Charleston’s inner harbor, weeping as they remembered Sierra Leone, whose laboring bodies would be utilized for the entertainment of the captors; in addition to their use for both pleasure and profit. I can’t help but ponder the process one had to undergo to transport themselves from an existence of torment on the fields to a state of joy to entertain one captors and their guests with their fiddle playing or with their songs of Africa or their spirituals.
While Babylonian poplars became a resting place of Israelite harps, those of the American South bore stranger fruit.
Blood on the leaves, blood at the root.
Fast forward to the continuation of a delayed basketball season during a pandemic disproportionately taking the lives of Black people compared to everyone else and yet law-enforcement allows Black lives no reprieve. As Black people were murdered by police, America expected for Black athletes to entertain them. NBA players were expected only to shut up and dribble, not mourn over the blood of the strange fruit that laying in the streets.
Blood on the concrete, blood on the policeman’s boot.
Selah
It is my personal belief that voter turnout isn’t the greatest determinant of this presidential election; rather the ability of the white power structure to suppress the Black vote will be. Black people received blame for the election of Donald Trump from multiple factions due to their lack of voting in the 2016 Presidential election. However, it wasn’t that Black people didn’t simply turnout to vote. Those who did vote had their votes suppressed; in Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia to name a few.
The tool kit to suppress the Black vote is expansive. We’ve seen voters purged, districts gerrymandered, the post office sabotaged and voter ID laws instituted. The most visible tool is the manufacturing of long lines to vote. The point is to exhaust voters; long lines will discourage voters from voting. Where some find inspiration at seeing Black people holding the line to save this nation from itself, I am disheartened.
A few days ago in Philadelphia, while made to wait in a long line in an attempt to vote, during a pandemic, Black people maintained their resolve by tapping into their joy within to keep them in that long line via doing the Cha Cha Slide.
While watching the Rachel Maddow Show that same night, I was frustrated because rather than challenging America to consider the injustice of how Black people must vote, Rachel chose to rest in her marveling of Black folks dancing in response to being made to wait to vote.
Did we remind you of the happy slaves you once read of in your history books?
Later that day, Walter Wallace Jr. was murdered by police in front of his mother. Police said Wallace rushed them with a knife. His mother said he was having an episode due to a mental illness. In the end, another Black man needlessly killed and we’re told it was self-defense on the part of the officers. Funny how white people charge at officers all the time and are never killed, let alone shot. We’re told that we’re being prayed for and we’re called on to forgive.
I don’t want your prayers and I don’t feel the need to forgive in the moment. I am angry. I don’t speak for all Black people, but trust that Black people too are angry. One simply needs to look on the evening news and see our anger poured in the streets.
Our anger isn’t rooted in a tantrum of the moment but in our long-suffering. Our anger is rooted in our journeying while bootless. With every generation, our hope lay with new feet and yet those feet also get bloody from the hard road.
But we keep on walking because our soles are strong.
It is our strength that is made an excuse for America’s failing to reconcile with us. America expects us to walk bootless. Black people demanding boots is just us not desiring to be successful I suppose?
Jared Kushner doesn’t have the sole to walk in America while bootless. But our bloody feet is no badge of honor.
I applaud my people for tapping into their joy to keep them strong at the ballot box. I believe in the power of God’s love to forgive our offender seventy times seven. At the same time, I shame our nation for compelling us to dance and forgive; this doesn’t have to be and yet, the social order dictates that it is so.
Why are we expected, and even guilted into, forgiving after our people are murdered by police unlawfully; for a traffic violation, while running away from police or for simply waking in the middle of the night in one’s own home? Why must we forgive when our loved ones are murdered in a church; whose only sin that day was to pray with a white supremacist?
Why are we expected to perform the Cha Cha slide, Cupid shuffle, Wobble or any other line dance as the state attempts to suppress our vote? Technology has consolidated a camera, video and audio recording, a GPS navigation system, a computer and a telephone in a smart phone that is unlocked by face recognition. Yet we cannot create a more reliable voting system? Instead of addressing voter suppression, were are cajoled to increase voter turnout at the appearance of hot sauce retrieved from the Black voter media kit. Why are these things expected of us?
Is it because white people fear the display of our anger or that the results of our resolve will leave them behind? Do they believe it to be a fair exchange for our possession of skills, talents and beauty? Maybe it’s because they believe the same way we have a higher threshold for physical pain, we too have a higher tolerance for emotional distress.
Any of those are plausible.
Yet I believe we’re expected to always make lemonade from the lemons we receive (and like it) because we’re regarded as less than human and our dehumanization is connected to a perceived powerlessness we’re ascribed. White supremacy ranks us as less than human and therefore we are looked upon and treated as such. Some of us view ourselves similarly. It’s why our bodies hung from trees and why they languish in the streets.
In the eyes of many, our purpose on this land was and is tied to what our labor produces; we and our ancestors are the investment capital that is the basis for the modern economy. Our perceived value, our perceived worth is based on what can be extracted from us.
It’s why Black college athletes are made to play football during a pandemic, why Black people are overrepresented in essential work during the pandemic, why the masses of Black children attend underfunded and under resourced schools. It’s why there is a private prison industry.
If we cannot be exploited, we are therefore useless.
But the Negro question has always been about place and space; never about purpose. Where we are housed simply defines when and how we’re dehumanized to that we can be exploited. We, like animals, are considered creatures of instinct and not emotion; governed by impulse and without a will. We are seen as simultaneously with soles and without souls.
However, we too are made in the imago dei and the image of God is the image of a liberator.
I do believe as Dr. King did that we as a people will get to the Promised Land but like the ancient Israelites on the road to Canaan, we too will get tired, grow frustrated and get angry because we are human. I am exhausted from seeing or hearing of the murder of another of my countrymen; whether at the hands of a police officer or otherwise. I am exhausted from watching my people constantly have to utilize their joy in lieu of get justice.
I don’t want to have to risk the life of my children in exchange for going to school. My children are suffering because they’re subjected to a new form of public education. I shouldn’t have to risk my own life in exchange for making a living. Where is the joy in that?
I don’t desire to reside in a place of anger; I desire the human decency to spend time in that space to process the world around me, to gain clarity and to heal. Black people have a human right to be angry. Black people have the right to defend themselves when threatened or attacked. We also have the right to retaliate evil with joy and grace.
The Black radical tradition isn’t built on a desire to be as our captors; racist and capitalist that is. Rather, our struggle is rooted in our being humanized in the eyes of the world. Whether we approach the ballot box dancing or with guns in hand, don’t marvel at our display. Respect our humanity. Rather than trivialize our struggles, regard them as worth your attention and action.
May our joy, our protest and our resistance serve as a call to action.
Respect our space to be angry; our space to be human, as YHWH respected the space of the Psalmist in the same chapter mentioned above, Psalms 137, in versus 8 and 9. But thankfully, because of YHWH’s great love, we are not consumed.
We remain here; weeping by the rivers of Babylon, serving as the patriots this nation so desperately needs. May we forever stand, true to our God; true to our native land.
