Every Black Emotion is Interpreted as Aggression
…and our resilience is viewed as acceptance
If you’re Black, you’ve had this experience…it usually starts like this:
“Calm down!” or “Relax!”
If you’re a Black man, insult is added to injury:
“Calm down, BRO!” or “BRO, Relax!”
This exchange usually follows an offensive action perpetrated by a white person. Maybe they felt they were in a petting zoo and whisked their hands into our sistas’ hair. Or maybe they feel so comfortable with “All Day” that they don’t mind saying “nigga” in front of you. Whatever the case, any response that you give other than smiling and grinning is assumed to be aggressive.
I’ve seen post after post of people damn near begging white folks to be sympathetic to the most recent murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. And white folks have shown up, marched, and some have even been at the end of the militarized Police whipping sticks.
But that don’t change perception. And it is this perception that Black people have to deal with on a day to day basis. And it is this perception that leaves so many unarmed Black people dead at the hand of fearful officers. Until we deal with that perception, nothing will change.
One of these two men fired 76 shots from three different guns into a packed theater, murdered 12 and injured 70. The other man was jaywalking. One man stood trial before a court of his peers, and after 4 months was sentenced to 12 consecutive life sentences. The other man was shot six times, died, and his body was left in the street for four hours.
We already know which man is alive and which one is dead. It is said that Mr. Holmes was arrested without incident. He was allowed to plead insanity and newspaper after newspaper after magazine article after blog dedicated page upon page to what could have possibly gone wrong with Holmes.
On the other hand, Mr. Brown was vilified. He had marijuana socks. He stole cigarillos. He cursed at the officer. The same newspapers and magazines and blogs that looked for all the possible humanly things that could have pushed poor Jamey Holmes over the edge, dedicated an equal amount of pages to the “dark, criminal past” of Michael Brown.
And who can forget his murderers testimony?
And then after he did that, he looked up at me and had the most intense aggressive face. The only way I can describe it, IT (emphasis, my own) looks like a demon, that’s how angry he looked. Darren Wilson, Grand Jury Testimony
Despite the damning words of an officer who supposedly is trained to handle high stress situations without causing casualty, Officer Darren Wilson’s comparison of Michael Brown to “a demon” was not held against him. He walked free without any charges being filed.
Everything that I could possibly say is wrapped up in the above cases. Holmes was known to have murdered several people, was dressed in tactical gear, had weapons on himself and in his vehicle and yet the arresting officers never felt threatened. Brown, on the other hand, was merely walking in the street, had no weapons on him, yet the incident escalated to the point where Brown would be shot dead.
A few years back an article that appeared in Slate circulated throughout Black social media. The article, “I Don’t Feel Your Pain,” written by Harvard anthropologist student, Jason Silverstein, said what Black folks have always known — and Michael Jackson said best, “They Don’t Care About Us.”
A recent study shows that people, including medical personnel, assume black people feel less pain than white people… …Sometimes the target was white, sometimes black. In each experiment, the researchers found that white participants, black participants, and nurses and nursing students assumed that blacks felt less pain than whites. Jason Silverstein
Silverstein, like many critics of racism, assumed that this bias was based on status more than race. And scholars sought to debunk the whole study due to the fact that Black people held the same bias, which, of course, is a silly assertion. Franz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks explained this mentality quite clearly in 1952 and was given visual support by Keith and Mamie Clark’s doll test where both white and Black children chose the white doll as good and beautiful the majority of the time.
The white superiority complex and institution of racism is at the core of America and her values.
So if Black people do not value or sympathize with Black people it’s merely because it is what is taught to us. But even that conditioning goes out the window when we see Police officers go Rambo on us. We see officers like Eric Casebolt wrestle young Black girls down like he’s lassoing cattle and think it’s a clear cut case of excessive force…only to watch him…and anyone who attacks us, walk.
And, if you want to piss yourself off…scroll down the comments on the YouTube post of the pool (or any racial) incident. Not that you have to go that far. It’s almost par for the course that the general consensus is Blacks are not being treated with a bias at all but rather we are getting what’s coming to us based on our behaviour.
White people doing similar or worst, it’s always written off or humanized…watch any sporting event celebration. Ain’t no white kid who busts a windshield or overturns a car after their favorite team wins a championionship getting put on probation for 5 years like Allen Bullock in Baltimore, trust. This starts as young as pre-school where Black children are suspended twice as often as white kids.
Even little five year old Black children are threatening.
And how are we supposed to feel about all of this? Well, fine of course.
The video of this young sister explaining to the off-screen officer why she was upset went viral early on in the Baton Rouge protest and I, like many Black people, felt every word she said. (We now know this is 17yr old Coco Barnes — see: below to help her deal with the charges that she’s facing)
Then I imagined that she, like most of us, had to decompress, and carry herself off to work on Monday, answer the question, “how was your weekend,” and pretend as if nothing was wrong.
We pretend because it’s all that we can do. Firstly, we don’t feel that we should have to explain to white folk why seeing our people slaughtered bothers us. Secondly, even if we did, forbid the thought that we become passionate in our answers.
“You okay?”
Is the question that would be hurled at us.
The only acceptable answer to that question is “yes.” Anything more than that would be quickly be greeted by “calm down” or “relax.”
And it doesn’t matter if your answer is intelligent and succinct. Nor does it matter if you seek to find common ground. Because the reality of it is the second that you speak and there’s no smile, if you’re a Black man, all they can see is Samuel Jackson’s scripture reading pre-shoot ’em up ‘Jules’ face. And if you’re a Black woman, though your head may not be moving and your eyes focused straight ahead, they see a neck and eyes rolling, hand clapping caricature of a sister.
Because, like that Silverstein article asserts, we have endured and continue to endure living conditions and mental stress on levels that only soldiers from several duties of war can relate to. But I doubt that that’s why white folk disregard our emotions.
The reality is — like Isma’il Latif has often pointed out, our role for white people is to entertain them, cheerfully. Anything beyond that…is seen as aggression.
So white people, next time you feel the need to ask that Black person “how they feel” after you’ve seen protests or police brutality or…whatever…assume that they feel like you would feel…if…no…just take it as a moment for quiet time. Because all of that “are you okay” (when we’re to ourselves) and “calm down” business (after you insist we speak to you) ain’t gonna do nothing but piss us off…and we want to stay employed, and, well, alive.
They dance and sing and make all manner of joyful noises — so they do; but it is a great mistake to suppose them happy because they sing. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows, rather than the joys, of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. Frederick Douglass
https://www.launchgood.com/project/support_peaceful_protester_coco_barnes
