Sure, I'll Be Your Black Friend

by Ben Philippe

  The older I get, the more of these conditional friendships manifest and the more value I see in at least trying to keep them. It may simply be cowardice for me. The opposite, after all, is to sit friendless, at the back of the class of life, while desks are eagerly being brought together around you. It is not worth it. Black or white, life gets lonely when lived in red.

  Twenty-Nine

  Sure, I’ll Be Your Bl— RACE WARS!!!

  It’s spring 2020. I’M THIRTY-ONE and I’m in the middle of drafting a book on the quirks and maybe light trauma of having been the Black friend in white spaces all my life. It’s supposed to be a light, conversational read, and I’m on my Carrie Bradshaw bullshit. I spend weeks excavating my mind and old emails for micro-aggressions and tiny emotional scars as I write. I lie upside down on the edge of my bed and stare at the ceiling like a cheerleader gossiping on the phone, remembering slights. And then suddenly, as if the year’s global pandemic wasn’t quite enough, the world is on fire.

  Black people are dying across America, which is nothing new, but the pattern stands out to the world this time. It happens in quick succession. First, Ahmaud Arbery is shot in Georgia and footage of his murder emerges online. His killer is reported as having called him a “fucking nigger” after the shooting. In Kentucky, three plainclothes Louisville Metro Police Department officers burst into Breonna Taylor’s apartment, and she dies with eight bullets shredding through her body. None of her ex-boyfriend’s drugs, the suspicious packages supposedly being delivered to her address and the cause of this no-knock search warrant, were found in the apartment. Finally, in Minnesota, George Floyd is filmed dying with a cop’s full weight pressed on his neck while nearby people exclaim that this is unnecessary and excessive force. “He’s not resisting!” can be heard in the background. He will be the spark.

  From their phones and social media feeds, the world watches the eight minutes and forty-six seconds that he, George, spends with a knee on his neck. “I can’t breathe,” he says before simply crying out, “Mama! Mama . . . I’m through!” His mother had been dead for two years when George Floyd calls out for her as he is lynched. A lynching is defined as a killing committed by a mob; four police officers amount to a mob. Hours too late, the world hears George’s choked whisper of “I can’t breathe.”

  Rapper Megan Thee Stallion’s eponymous song “Hot Girl Summer” appeared on every chart in 2019. But the summer of 2020 is known as the summer of Black Lives Matter. All it took for America to wrestle with itself was for a string of undeniable murders to be caught on camera. The country is outraged but does not appear to realize that the hands around its throat are its own.

  Other nonfatal matches contribute to the flames as well. The Karens of America have also had a rough summer of mandatory social distancing, and their roots are now showing. The plural form of Karens is a Privilege of Karens. In the Ramble area of Central Park, a white woman named Amy Cooper is caught on video threatening to call the cops on a Black man, Christian Cooper—no relation, just one of those ugly little American overlaps. (White and Black people sharing the same last name often means ancestral ownership as some former slaves adopted—or were cursed with—the names of their former owners.) In this particular instance, Christian Cooper has made the mistake of telling Amy that she should have her dog on a leash in this particular area of the park.

  “I’m taking a picture and calling the cops,” Amy Cooper is heard saying in the video, with panic and outrage in her voice. “I’m going to tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life.” Social media has grown vicious after nearly four years of Trump, and Amy Cooper is swiftly torn apart across all platforms. She releases a generic apology after losing her job, and the expected sympathy begins. The media can’t help but highlight her humanity as they admonish her. Who among us hasn’t had a bad day? It’s an argument that usually works on me but for the first time, a pound of flesh isn’t enough. I find myself wishing we’d get down to the bones of this woman I do not know.

  More Karens like Amy Cooper emerge from the woods. The fake viral meme of a Karen archetype gracing the Time Person of the Year cover becomes entirely too believable considering the year we’re having. They’ve always been around, these inconvenienced and outraged manager-summoning white women playing with Black lives that displease them. The only difference is that people are now filming them. Society is taking it upon itself to shame their ilk into thinking twice before doing what they’ve been doing since I was a kid in Sherbrooke. Really, it’s the year of the camera more than anything else.

  It’s clear that America doesn’t quite know what to do with itself to address the moment. Gone with the Wind, which premiered on December 15, 1939, is taken off streaming channels and then re-added, after a backlash to the backlash. Closer to home and eighteen months after its release, my young adult novel is momentarily a top seller on Amazon’s chart. White people are buying books written by Black authors in droves. For a few days, I can barely go three hours without my book being tagged on a list of Black authors “for the moment.” I make no royalties on any of this, but the photos are nice. The gorgeous paperback cover by Steffi Walthall is colorful and harmless; it’s an easy choice for a parent looking for Black books by Black authors that aren’t too political for their kids’ shelves. I’m categorized under “Black Joy.” (If you’ve read this far into this book, you might get the irony.)

  Brief talks of “defunding the police”—really, just of rethinking police departments’ paramilitary budgets across the country—quickly turn to a focus on the removal of monuments and statues aggrandizing the slave owners who built America instead. The world is desperate to fist bump us into being cool again. What will look like a contrite-enough sacrifice to the riled-up hordes of Negroes? From my vantage point, America’s hand-wringing looks exhaustingly performative; little dabs of a wet washcloth around a gaping wound of racism.

  “Marches” turn into “protests” and “protests” lead to “riots” with bursts of “lootings” in between. Which word is given primacy in your mind depends on which narrative comes most naturally to you: “Black people are dying, as always,” “Black people are hurting, again,” or “Black people are stealing, like usual.”

  In the midst of it all—two months into the United States COVID-19 quarantine and over 100,000 American deaths deep—President Donald J. Trump tweets, because he is very attached to that presidential requirement.

  . . . These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen.

  Lines are drawn and sides are taken. Blue Lives Matter. All Lives Matter. AnythingButBlack Lives Matter. I see “Anti-Antifa” T-shirts, which is just grammatically redundant. There’s an easier word there. Footage of armored policemen shoving white people with a strength typically reserved for a criminal do-ragged element joins the media feeds. I’ve stopped writing entirely. A software update is being added to my Blackness in real time; it’s a good time to step away from the laptop and grab a snack.

  I eat nachos in bed, balancing my phone on my stomach, watching with dead eyes the accounts of tearful anguished white protestors sitting on sidewalks watering their pepper-sprayed eyes, not understanding how a cop would do this to them. It genuinely confuses them. Surely, they can’t all just be noticing now? You’re supposed to throw the rope down; not jump in with us, I think. I want them to take me to the safe and shiny world they were in until a few days ago, not for them to be beaten and abused in mine.

  I change my crumbs-ridden bedsheets multiple times a week. I wonder if these white protestors would still have gotten out of bed that day if they knew the cost of chanting “Black lives matter” would be bodily harm, return to a freshly made bed with a bag of Sour Patch Kids, and keep scrolling through it all. “Let’s see how it turns out” is all I contribute to the few group texts I’m on, all discussing the important moment that this summer could be for the movement. Texting them my real thoughts, this Black foreigner’s strange apathy, woul
d probably cost me friends. Everyone wants me to be, assumes me to get, angry about Black lives, having no idea what that would actually look like.

  Do you hate cops, Ben?

  Nope. I also do not hate nurses. Or firefighters. Or EMT workers. Not to mention that there are plenty of Black, Asian, Latinx, and other minority cops in these streets, right? So, no. I don’t hate cops.

  I do not naturally trust cops. I’m not meant to. The societal contract they have with white people is different from the one they have with Black people. My polite conversations with white officers occur with their hands resting on their gun handles, trying to assess if my eyes are glazed. The system isn’t “broken”: it was improperly designed for your safety and my dread. It’s a shelf that starts to wobble the moment you put a single book on it.

  If you’re a minority in America, I suspect you already know this. And if you’re a white person, you won’t fully believe me until you’re at the end of the baton so I won’t belabor the point. I get your apprehension: White parents instruct their children to “find a cop” if they’re ever in danger. Black parents instruct us to “find a nice adult.”

  Late spring turns into summer. “Blackface” is upgraded to a cardinal sin, and old sitcom episodes that feature it are stricken from the record. On weekly comedy podcasts, I cringe through hours of comedians awkwardly trying to side with the right side of history, without thinking about it too hard and losing nothing. My phone’s battery empties faster than usual as I consume it all. I throw out the nachos and candy and begin to eat bright, chemically orange carrot sticks instead after gaining five pounds in quarantine. (Okay, fine: it was eleven pounds. Stop berating me. It was a sensitive political climate.)

  Across the web, MAGA morons swear that there is no way on God’s unvaccinated flat earth that this isn’t some liberal “Antifa” coup on this country. Some of my white friends share a single Black square on their Instagrams. Others become tireless activists of the moment and march every weekend while I stay at home scrolling my phone. I convince myself to feel no guilt in doing so. It’s their time to do the work. I’ll still be Black once they choose to move on to America’s next Moment. For the first few days, I retweet the rioters while keeping safe from danger. I pretend it’s because I am at a higher risk of retribution by angry policemen, but really, I’m a coward who prioritizes his safety over civil righteousness or morality. Or, I’m a foreigner here on a visa who will not risk an arrest on the Brooklyn Bridge. Or, I’m a cynic who does not believe in change when it’s happening in the background of selfies with cardboard that reads CHANGE. All these things are true all at once: I’ve made my peace with that, so should you.

  I Google the others who came before, trying to stir up something cogent and coherent for myself. I have draconically strict opinions about who should have been on the Iron Throne at the end of Game of Thrones; I should have something new and important to say about this, too, no? Now, of all times.

  There’s Eric, the giant unarmed bear of a man, begging for his life, repeating the words “I can’t breathe” while lying facedown on the sidewalk. There’s also Philando; the one with the daughter in the back seat. I find no photos of her but wonder what it’s like to be a four-year-old already aware enough to shout, “Mom, please stop cussing and screaming ’cause I don’t want you to get shooted!” at your agitated mother from the back seat and then watch your father get shot at point-blank, inches away, by a man who will later be acquitted of all charges because he was just doing his job.

  Trayvon was by far the most photogenic of us. The kid was right out of a Nickelodeon sitcom casting call. You wanted to give him a head rub after giving him a speech on recycling. History still went to George Zimmerman, the Florida man who took an interest in Trayvon for the crime of “hoodie” and decided to kill him. Zimmerman will apparently sign your gun if you find him today, and sell you a painting, too.

  I read the comments section of YouTube clips in which people never fail to bring up that racism is not a thing, that whiteness is not prioritized in America, that Black people amount to less than 15 percent of the population, so why do they want 100 percent of the oxygen in the room. These anonymous, typo-riddled thoughts feel “honest” somehow. The underbelly that I’m convinced makes up the majority of this country.

  I can understand having been raised to believe that cops are the good guys, that racism lives in the uneven icing and not the flour and milk of the great American cake, but how can some Americans hear all these stories, line up all these body bags, and somehow still think we’re all lying? That lightning struck all these Black men randomly and without malice or systemic ease?

  Eventually, after days of delaying answering texts, I pick up the cardboard, too, and agree to join my friends. I’ve marched with women in pink hats, I’ve marched against kids in cages, and there’s still cardboard and markers in the hallway closet from both. I can do this, too. If something should pierce through my growing certainty that all you can do is survive or escape in the end, it should be Black lives, no? I can at least be as hopeful as the earnest white folks outside.

  I head for the Brooklyn Museum’s plaza, like so many others that day. I have no map pulled up on my phone. For once, there’s no wit or commentary to my signage. It’s not a tweet. I go simple with black, even block letters on three lines: BLACK LIVES MATTER. Three words; no subtext.

  After exiting the subway, I simply follow the signage and bodies, all dressed in symbolic colors. Today, the color to wear is crisp, pure white. Enough people got the memo for the streets of masked people in stylish white outfits to feel unsettling. Even up close, sweaty, inspired, with signage cutting into my armpit and bodies of all shapes and colors all wearing masks around me, I’m still as unmoved as if I was on my bed with a phone on my stomach.

  Why do I have to be here? I think as I move through the crowd trying to keep a safe distance, in a white T-shirt and black jeans. Why are these three words so hard to get across down here in America of all places? The place that taught me flawless, happy, and upbeat English through Kenan & Kel, The Proud Family, The Boondocks, That’s So Raven, Key & Peele, Everybody Hates Chris, The Bernie Mac Show, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Girlfriends, and all the others? Why didn’t any of them cut to black and say, “It’s all imagined, it’s all fake, you know that, right?” at the end. Over a decade later, I want a store credit or something.

  I join my friends and their friends who introduce themselves with head nods and solemn headshakes at passing images of George Floyd. We’re all appropriately diverse, in masks and cargo shorts. None of us are taking selfies, which I’m grateful for. The chants are loud and filled with genuine emotion. Everything is Powerful and Hollow all at once. We move in circles as if waiting for someone to come onstage at a dour music festival. Maybe the point is simply to be seen right here, right now. To have witnessed.

  The fireworks that have been going off nonstop thorough the summer, and sparking conspiracy theories of coordinated unrest, feel appropriate for this important summer that I fear we won’t remember next year.

  Why do I have to tell you that my life matters?

  Why does the absolute bare minimum require thousands of sweaty bodies to amass and walk together in the middle of a viral pandemic?

  Why haven’t Breonna’s killers been hanged from high branches yet?

  “Are you okay?” my friend Francesca asks. She’s from Israel, passes for white most of the year, and is constantly mistaken for Latinx when she tans in the summer. She is woke—the real A-side Woke, not the slur reserved for Millennials munching on avocado toast points. She recycles, donates, volunteers, and educates. Her arms are filled with elegant and meaningful tattoos. She works in a nonprofit and has advanced plant lives all over her apartment.

  “Yeah, why?” I smile.

  “Your eyes are like, dead. I have water if you’re dehydrated.”

  Her tote bag is full of human empathy, good intentions, and healthy snacks from local small businesses. Fo
r a moment, I’m in awe of her. How wonderful it must be to go through life seeing others first.

  “I’m good, it’s just . . . a lot, y’know?” I lie, smiling at her from under my mask.

  “I know.” She nods. “It’s so overwhelming. It’s okay to be angry, Ben.”

  She moves to touch my shoulder before stopping herself. We can’t hug. Pandemic: six feet apart at all times. That excuse is a very good thing right now.

  “This might be it,” one of her friends nearby says, having heard us. His red beard curls under his mask, and he has kind gray eyes, made striking by the red of his face right now.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The real change,” he adds. “Reform, not just retweets. This can’t go on.”

  Francesca nods meaningfully, inspired. I imitate Francesca. This only ever goes on, I think but don’t say.

  We keep marching. I’m barely here and then it’s over.

  On the train that evening, I count down the visible marchers and protestors as they file out at various stops and return home satisfied and sated at having touched no one, done nothing. I’ve left my sign at the scene after parting ways with Francesca and the others. She has already forwarded me details of the next march in three days’ time. I suppose I feel better. Like, having gone through the hassle of going to the dentist for a teeth cleaning only maybe without the clean feeling that leaves you licking your teeth the whole ride home. The train stalls due to a combination of reduced COVID services, delays, and construction, and I spend seventy minutes on the local with my thoughts and 17 percent battery life on my phone. I Google a new name that I only learned because of someone else’s signage.

  Elijah. Age twenty-three.

  In the photo results, he is softness personified—complete with thick-rimmed glasses and a toothy smile. Elijah wore face masks due to his anemia and the Colorado weather, and he looks like the type of lanky nerd I might share a lunch table with. On August 24, 2019, someone called 911 on him for spotting his erratic behavior. The police held him down, beat him, and injected him with ketamine. He went into cardiac arrest and died. The arm flailing in question was later attributed to an introvert dancing to his music. I buy it, too. That guy looks like a dancer with curated playlists.