Tag: Tamir Rice

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Letter to My City

There are dead and dying black people everywhere.

I haven’t logged on to Facebook in two weeks, partly because people talk too damn much, partly because I don’t want to watch endlessly looped videos of black and brown people’s slaughter and share sadface emojis because I don’t have any more meaningful words about their deaths.

Words are data-mined and used in targeted ads: Quality proofreading services, Marvel’s Defenders series, black and brown people vomiting blood from gunshot wounds in 4k resolution on your screen — aren’t these new phones amazing? Look at that quality; you can see each individual shudder in that death rattle. Check out these suggested videos. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Cry.

I love Memphis, but does Memphis love me?

Last night, I was driving home from dinner in my mom’s car. My neighborhood is belted by extreme affluence on one end and extreme poverty on the other. I live squarely in the middle, in the liminal space, which is lowkey my existence because I’m the kind of millennial that people aren’t talking about when they talk about millennials. Charleena Lyles was a millennial, too. I wonder if her love of avocado toast is to blame for our failing economy. I wonder how many degrees of separation there are between avocado toast and her murder. There are dead and dying black people everywhere.

I was driving my mom’s car last night to get dinner for my family. My route is always the same when I’m heading west toward home: turn on the rich people’s street to get to the street designated for the not-rich black people, most of whom are dying from incarceration, from poverty, from generations of advancing bare centimeters and you all should be grateful, we could just wall off your part of the neighborhood and leave you in Memphadishu, dude, but I’m cool, bro, so here, have a swig of my 201 Hoplar what do you mean you don’t like IPAs? I don’t even know who Duanna Johnson is, dude. Forget it, we’re building the wall, don’t say we never tried to give you anything.

The rich people’s street on my side of the ‘hood has 24-hour security patrols. The rich people’s street on the other side of the ‘hood has 24 hour security patrols and those police blue eyes in the sky that are possibly the blue eyes of the precogs rifling through our black minds for prethoughtcrimes against the white supremacist order, the better to justify our murders. Data-driven probable cause, but all the artificial intelligence is racist.

My route is always the same. I turn on the rich people’s street to get to my street. As I am sitting in the lane to turn on the rich people’s street, a blue eye — a blue life? — pulls up short, creeps behind me as I am sitting in my mom’s car, a bag of food in my wife’s lap. The other blue eye winks from across the street, as if to say to the blue life behind me, “Do what you gotta do. Fear for your life if you need to.”

Thankfully, my child hasn’t been born, so they won’t have to see my black life taken by this blue life. All I’ve done is buy dinner. I have guacamole in the bag. How many avocadoes is my black life worth? I contemplate having my wife turn on Facebook Live — if I go, I’m going out in 4k. But we’re working-class blacks and we can’t afford 4k tech on a writer’s salary, so I don’t bother. I haven’t committed a crime, but neither did Philando or Sandra or Tamir or Darrius or eight-year-old Aiyana or Laquan or anyone else on this charnel house list that started, really, in 1619. There are dead and dying black people everywhere. Listen to the high definition sound quality of those rattling chains.

That winking blue eye followed me through my dreams. On my way to work, I pass two signs: “I <3 Memphis” and “Memphis Loves Everybody.” Let’s do the math: One of those is true; the other is bullshit. Memphis don’t love me. Memphis loves those other millennials, the ones who think quality avocado toast goes well with craft IPAs. Memphis don’t love me. Memphis glares at me suspiciously in its tourist sandals while I’m going to pick up my slices from Memphis Pizza Cafe, even though I’ve been going there since I was 16 and the millennials Memphis loves just got here last year. Memphis loves grit and grind. Memphis loves urban displacement, platitudes, preserving historic standards, saving the Greensward. Memphis loves being number 3 on the Best New Mid-Sized Cities for Millennial Homebuyers list. Memphis loves progress as long as it comes with a shaggy surfer haircut, a pantsuit, a startup with a Grizzlies blue-and-gold material UI logo, a digital rendering of a pistol, and an insensitive ironic slogan because that’s the new Memphis, man. Memphis loves not loving me and people like me.

I finally log on to Facebook. People are still talking. Dana Loesch is in an NRA ad calling for people to take up arms and defend America in its noble struggle against its oppressed. City, county, and state politicians are still debating whether it’s more economically viable to smother us slowly or to bleed us out with a single bullet. The Commercial Appeal is “exploring” Memphis’ problem with gun violence. A blue life creeps by, armed and armored in the same kind of van that Freddie Gray was killed in. Memphis loves Everybody. There are dead and dying black people all over this city. I love Memphis.

Troy L. Wiggins is a Memphis writer whose work has appeared in the Memphis Noir anthology, Make Memphis, and The Memphis Flyer.

Categories
News News Feature

Afraid to Love?

I am afraid to love my 18-month-old nephew because he is a black boy, and in my country, police hunt and kill black males as if they were the enemy.

On April 4th, yet another unarmed black man was killed by a white police officer, this time after a traffic stop for a broken tail light in North Charleston, South Carolina.

A brave onlooker caught the incident on his cell phone: Walter Scott, a Coast Guard veteran, was running away from Michael Slager when the officer fired his gun at him eight times, striking him in the back. On the video, Slager walks over to the victim and then jogs away to pick up something in the grass. He returns and drops the object next to Scott’s body.

Slager has been charged with murder, fueling hopes that in this case, justice might be served. But I don’t want justice for my nephew, who I will not name here. I want him to live.

Black men, even when unarmed, are far more likely to be killed by police than any other group. My government doesn’t want us to know how many lives law enforcement officers take, so they don’t track the deaths.

Civilians have their own tally: In 2015, police killed more than 300 people, including at least 18 since Scott was slain.

Do you know what it does to your soul when you mark a young black life with a timeline of deaths?

My sister was pregnant with my nephew when George Zimmerman, a self-appointed deputy of a Florida neighborhood, was found not guilty in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was unarmed.

When New York police strangled Eric Garner, also unarmed, for the capital offense of selling loose cigarettes, my nephew was learning to stand on his own.

He was 10 months old when a white cop shot and killed John Crawford, 22, after he picked up an air rifle in a store that sells guns in Ohio, an open carry state.

When an Asian officer in New York shot and killed Akai Gurley, also unarmed, for the capital offense of walking in a dark stairwell, my nephew was walking.

My nephew turned 1 a few weeks before a white officer gunned down 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who stood in a Cleveland park with a toy gun.

This wake that never ends warps my relationship with my dear, sweet nephew. My girlfriend diagnosed me, after listening to me gush about my niece, who is almost 3. When she asked about my nephew, I replied simply. He’s fine.

“I need you to love this baby more,” she told me.

The love is there — I just hold it in a faraway place. I catch myself when I stare into his hazel eyes or run my fingers through his sandy brown hair.

I read the books he brings to me. I chase him in endless loops around his house. He giggles, looking behind him to make sure I’m still in pursuit. He has that intoxicating baby smell of sweetness and potential, but I don’t inhale.

The fewer memories there are, the less there will be to forget. If I love him completely and the police steal him from my family, it might kill me. I don’t want to die. I don’t want him to die. Withholding my adoration, I tell myself, is an act of self-preservation.

I know this sounds crazy. It feels crazy. Racism is crazy making.

My family can distance him from the parts of town where gun violence, gangs, and drugs are common. There’s no way to keep him from police. I cannot guarantee he will never be stopped for driving a nice car or for matching the generic description of a suspect.

Some who read this will insist that if my nephew never runs afoul of the law, I have nothing to worry about. If he submits immediately, even to unreasonable demands by the cops, if he is passive when police are aggressive, if his brake lights never go out, if he never plays loud music, if he swears off hoodies, if he avoids poorly lit stairwells – he’ll be fine.

To those people I say this: You lie.

Some readers will sympathize. Others will empathize. Others will scoff and dismiss me as an emotional aunt who sees danger where none exists. My only hope is that my confession will help me heal before it’s too late.

I want to love, but I’m scared.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said (December 25, 2014) …

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Joe Boone’s music feature, “Venerable Studio Changes Hands” …

What did they do with the hundreds of pictures of Sai Baba that were hanging everywhere?

Yeah Man

About Steve Steffans’ Viewpoint, “Southern Democrats: Down, Not Dead” …

I’m going to get this article tattooed to my forehead so I don’t have to keep saying this over and over again when I talk to any Tennessee Democrat who isn’t from Memphis.

Autoegocrat

About Bruce VanWyngarden’s letter from the editor, “Good Cop. Bad Cop” …

I’ve been an advocate of a constitutional ban on union representation for public employees for quite a while.

But I have to admit, if I were a police officer and had heard and read all of the idiots and their mindless followers blaming “economic inequality” as the root cause for the recent highly publicized police incidents, I’d probably want a good union steward, too.

Nightcrawler

Your call for police departments to “man up and acknowledge their bad apples” is one of the best positioned arguments on the issue I have read. Unfortunately, this posture of “protect your own no matter what” permeates so many organized labor organizations, to the detriment of the reputation of the organization overall. From teachers to bus drivers to NFL players, the representing labor organizations seem to go out of their way to protect even the most obviously unqualified or, at times, criminally inclined members at the expense of the reputation and good work of its majority.

There are bad people in every profession. If others in those professions would acknowledge that and help clean house, it would benefit everyone — fellow professionals and the customers of those professions alike.

rjb

I’m still wondering why no one is talking about the fact that Ohio has an Open Carry law. In fact, the city of Cleveland’s ban on open carry was overturned by the Republican legislature — something the NRA praised. And before you say, “Well, kids are not covered by open carry!” Remember that the officers after the shooting called in: “Shots fired. Male down. Black male, maybe 20.”

Charley Eppes

About Wendi C. Thomas’ column, “The Roots of Protest” …

It appears Obama and the Democrats are going to fix the black unemployment problem by opening the borders to millions more illegals and giving amnesty to those already here. I’ll admit I don’t understand how flooding the job market with an unending supply of cheap labor is going to help African Americans get jobs, but I’m sure all of the black Democratic politicians have it figured out because none of them are complaining.

GWCarver

Every Republican and Democratic administration in the past 30-plus years has refused to enforce the laws that would have fined employers of illegals thousands of dollars per hire. That simple upholding of their sworn duty would have saved those jobs that big business couldn’t export via the myriad of free-trade agreements. It ain’t a Democrat vs. Republican thing.

CL Mullins

The prospect of low-cost labor has been very appealing to both Republicans and Democrats alike. And the lack of any sort of sustained protest from the general public who enjoyed those lower priced goods produced by that cheap labor was also a factor. Call it the Walmart Factor. There are many who scream about what they consider Walmart’s “slave” wages, but they also enjoy the low prices, so they really don’t complain too much.

Arlington Pop

I can agree that public investment in Graceland is nonsense, but what other economic development plans are on the table for Whitehaven? Southbrook Mall? That is even more nonsensical by a large margin.

If it’s all going to boil down to race for everything that occurs, then the point that the money is being spent in Whitehaven rather than downtown or in East Memphis should amount to something. But it is conveniently forgotten in this column.

Brunetto Latini

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Good Cop. Bad Cop.

Let’s say you read a story about a doctor who amputated a patient’s left leg by mistake. He was supposed to remove the right leg, but he was in a hurry and misread a chart, and he was tired from having worked 12 hours straight and, well, he screwed up. That doctor would be criticized in the media. He’d be sued for malpractice. He’d have to go before the medical board and might lose his medical license.

But his incompetence wouldn’t be seen as an indictment of the entire medical profession or an attack on all doctors. His fellow doctors wouldn’t demand an apology from the media or start demonizing patients. They know, as we do, that getting rid of incompetent doctors is a good thing for all of us, including hospitals and other doctors.

The same standards hold true for most professions. It’s just common sense. You want to toss out the bad apples.

So why isn’t that the case when it comes to cops? Why isn’t it possible to acknowledge the difficulty of the job they perform and still criticize those cops who are bad at doing it? In Cleveland, Ohio, the police basically assassinated a 12-year-old boy, Tamir Rice. The cop who did it has a history of mental issues and was deemed unsuitable for police work by another police department. There are protests in the streets and some of the city’s professional athletes are wearing T-shirts that condemn the killing, which was ruled a homicide.

But in Cleveland, as in other cities, the police are rallying around the officer in question. The union head is demanding an apology from the athletes and their teams. Battle lines are forming on social media; there are countless posts about the great work that cops do, and about how difficult their job is. Criticizing the behavior of some officers is portrayed as being anti-police or as being ignorant of how difficult their job is.

I get it. Being a cop is a thankless, life-threatening job. Most cops are good men and women. But police departments need to man up and acknowledge their bad apples. Closing ranks behind the blue “code of silence” is hurting them more than it’s helping them, as is the symbiotic relationship between district attorneys and cops that so often results in a sham grand jury “investigation.”

I’ve grown to respect Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong’s quiet approach to the current situation. His department’s non-confrontational response to local protesters has been spot on, and we should be grateful for it. It’s important that the police recognize that there’s a difference between a legal, organized protest and running through the streets and setting businesses on fire.

And it’s equally important for police leadership to recognize that the “thin blue line” is there to serve and protect us, and when someone in uniform fails in those duties, it’s in their own best interest that he or she be held accountable by their superiors — and their peers.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Chris Rock and a Hard Place

“If you saw Tina Turner and Ike having a lovely breakfast, would you say their relationship’s improved? Some people would. But a smart person would go, ‘Oh, he stopped punching her in the face.'”

The quote is from an interview with comedian Chris Rock in New York magazine this week. It was widely shared online and is well worth the two clicks it will take you to find it. His point with the above quote?

“To say [electing] Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years.”

Anyone who’s been in this country for a few decades can see that racial progress has been made from the pre-civil rights era, but the recent events in Ferguson have opened new wounds and have pulled the covers off a nasty strain of American bigotry.

Rock also said, “I’ve invented a new app that helps you find out which of your friends are racists. It’s called Facebook.” Boy, did he nail that one. The posts on social media vilifying Michael Brown and his family are almost unavoidable at this point. Lots of people now seem to think it’s important to convince others (and themselves) that Brown deserved to die. It’s ugly out there in social media land.

There’s little doubt that Brown was foolishly aggressive with a cop and that his behavior contributed to his death. And there’s no question that the ensuing burning and looting in Ferguson gave those who wanted to turn this incident into an excuse to paint all blacks as “thugs” a great opportunity to do so.

But it’s also likely that if a cop shot and killed a teenager who lived in your neighborhood and left his body in the street for hours in broad daylight, you and your neighbors would be upset and angry. There’s also little doubt that the prosecutor in this case gamed the grand jury system, putting his thumb on the scales to keep Officer Darren Wilson’s actions from objective legal scrutiny.

Little noticed in all the Ferguson furor was the subsequent case of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy who was shot by Cleveland, Ohio, police on November 21st. Unlike in the Brown case, there is video of this horrific killing. The cops pulled up at high speed, screeched to a halt, jumped out, and shot Rice within three seconds. I urge you to watch it, and then try to convince yourself this kid did anything that would make him deserve to die — or that the cops followed any kind of logical protocol. And ask yourself if you really think the cops would have done the same thing to a white kid playing with a toy pistol in a park in the suburbs.

Yes, there’s been progress, but we have a lot more work to do. Ratcheting up the hate and anger won’t get us anywhere. We’ve got to stop punching each other in the face.