by Tyson Amir
My father and mother knew this. This is the reason why my father sat me down numerous times to tell me how to survive in the streets of America as a black boy who hoped to one day become a black man. Those lessons included how to survive in Black America as well as White America. I had to learn the traps of the streets we lived on, and the bias of those who placed us on those streets. Pops told me, "If you see folks fighting you go the other direction. Don't stand around and watch." This is how innocent bystanders can get caught up in conflicts on the street, and if the cops come, one nigger is as good as any. You might've had nothing to do with the incident, but being in close proximity is all they need to grab you. He knew that one interaction with police could result in my body being beaten or exterminated. If not, then there was a possibility that I could be violated by law enforcement upon arrest, while being transported to the police station, or once in police custody.
Just recently all officers who were involved in the arrest and transportation of Baltimore's Freddie Gray had all charges dropped against them. The medical examiner ruled Freddie Gray's death was the result of a homicide. Somebody was responsible for killing the boy. He was arrested for committing no crime and somehow between arrest and arrival at the station his spine was severed to the point that he would later die from those injuries. Three of the six officers involved actually had days in court and of course the "judicial system" was able to somehow prove these officers weren't involved in the homicide. The logic the system is telling us is this: the medical examiner rules it was murder, there were only six people who could've been responsible for the murder, and they were all cops. A court of law in 2016 has created a new legal precedent because we have just witnessed legal murder without a murderer.
It is simply insane but many of us still want to put our faith in this system. America is a land where a black person can be completely innocent, unarmed, or a child and still be met with the full force of the law. It gets so ridiculous at times that even the true experiences of black folks seem impossible. Black people have been sent to prison, and the main piece of convicting evidence has been a person's dream. That's not a typo, a dream, as in a person was sleeping, and in their REM state they experienced a vision in their mind where the black man was the perpetrator. This "dream" was used as evidence in a "court of law" and a "jury" of sentient "educated" human beings convicted and sentenced a black man, Clarence Moses-EL, to forty-eight years in prison.
A dream is enough evidence to convict a black man in America, but a video that clearly shows a white officer shooting down a black boy within seconds of him exiting a car, coupled with volumes of evidence stating this officer should never have worn a badge, isn't enough evidence to even bring charges against a white man in America. You have to understand this to be able to see why a black parent would tell their precious child to be very aware when police are around and run if you feel your life is in danger.
I learned these lessons very early on and applied that understanding as best I could. You can have a master’s or a doctorate level understanding of surviving America as a black person, and it is still not a guarantee that you'll survive. It's not like there comes a time when the lessons are no longer applicable. It's a lifelong practice in this society. Knowing that and reflecting on this poem really makes me think of the mind state of a parent who is responsible for protecting the life of a young black child. What do you do? How do you feel? What are the thoughts that run through your mind when you let you child walk outside your door? Especially in today's world of #BlackLivesMatter, which is a response to the intentional and institutional devaluing of black lives. Or when every few days we witness through social media another black life being abused or taken by some authority figure. It doesn't matter the age of the child. Their skin color marks them as carriers of all the stereotypes attached to black skin. They will not be judged for the content of their character, they will be judged and presumed guilty because of the color of their skin. How do parents deal with that reality? How do parents of black children feel when they see another black child abused or killed by law enforcement agents, and they know deep down in their hearts that the child could be their son or daughter? The knowledge that you are placing your child in a world that at any moment can swallow up your precious flesh and blood, all because he or she is the wrong color all the time, is scary.
Ta-Nehisi Coates refers to the taking of black bodies as "plunder." This word connotes a theft of multiple levels. For the parent, the plunder of their flesh and blood represents the theft of everything they had ever put into that child. Coates describes in candid terms the visceral pain resulting from that plunder:
"all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to earth"
This is what is at stake. The loss of the most precious thing a human being has ever held. A parent raises their child with all the love, hopes, and dreams of a brighter tomorrow. All of which was passed on to them when they were born. Their birthright is the legacy of their people. There is nothing more valuable on the face of the Earth than that. The thought of this vessel that is the most beautiful piece of you being desecrated by infidels who show no respect for the sacredness of the temple erected literally out of your flesh and blood is enough to drive a person to war with the killers.
As I sat at the wake for my former student Mario Woods, I kept my eyes on his mother Gwen. I watched her sway from the pain she felt from the loss of her son. I watched her as she looked down upon the casket filled with the body she use to hold as a baby, or console when he was injured, and tears streamed down her face. I heard her cry out loud with the most gut-wrenching soul-stealing cries that can come from a human being. She is not alone; there are far too many black parents of black children who have been in that same place here in America. Crying, shrieking their souls out over their lost sons and daughters. America does not love us, does not greet us with open arms; we are not sheltered by the warmth of her bosom. We are pointed at with a finger that caries suspicion and fear. The fear is irrational but the outcomes are very real. Death and destruction, the plunder of black bodies.
The root cause of all of this is racism, white supremacy, white ignorance, and the pursuit of wealth to fuel the continued domination of Western civilization. When you step outside the false lenses of all the above, you are left with the reality that all people are the same. All children should have the right to grow up safely and live peacefully in their world. The lenses block these biological realities and make one think like the highly honored and esteemed President Abraham Lincoln, who once said, “There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together on the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position ...” This type of speech and thought is what has allowed America to continuously disregard the value of the black child. This is how the poem “Black Child” came to be. If I become a father, my wife and I will have the privilege of raising a beautiful black child in a world that bares its teeth at our child from the womb. It will be our job to raise, safeguard, teach, and love that black child despite the dangers, lies, and hatred that exist in the world for our child. It is not an easy task, but it is the responsibility of any parent who has the blessing of becoming the mother or father of a black child. We must do our part to ensure the safety of our black children.
Death Toll (2015)
I once said before, We hold each breath close
like Uncle Sam holds
political prisoners on death row
he scared to let go
he fears the power
of the child of the ghetto
but this death toll
is at my threshold
and if you didn'
t know
this being black in America ish is stressful.
Never knowing what's gonna happen when you set forth
and step forth from your front porch
maybe that's the reason
why I'm contemplating death more
Like
what's it gonna feel like when my flesh cold
they place my body in that fresh hole
and I hate being so necro
but negroes and death go
hand in hand
like kids back in the day who used to thumb wrestle,
that grim reaper be on our back like an echo
echo
echo
echo
I've seen police choke a nigga until his breath go
I seen them point that glock at his top
cock back that shot
and then let go
Cop must've thought he had a bulletproof dome like Destro
The boy had locks with a front license plate in the glove box
so tell me what he dead for.
I seen them arrest a sister for failing to signal
while driving through a pedzone
should've been a citation
still they took her to jail
and 3 days later she dead though
and they think we stupid enough to believe
that suicide is the reason why we laying flowers at her headstone.
I seen them shoot a man shopping at Walmart
for an air rifle outside of Dayton metro.
Cops magically appear on the scene
with guns out like presto.
Shots get fired while he looking at them falling price specials
now he under at the morgue under a white sheet
with a tag on his left toe.
That's death toll
These American streets are a morbid expo
of lifeless black bodies lying exposed
they try to assure us that this ain't no retro Jim Crow
but we know this that new version 2.0
Michelle Alexander said so
This here is my manifesto
We sick and tired of dying
we putting an end to dying
by our hands
or the hands of white violence
I know I have agency
over this hate in me
but I experience some latency
when I think about those 9 killed
by that white boy at the AME
you can look at my face and see
black rage in the place to be
what you expect
when y'all doing this so blatantly
my country, tis of thee
you have made me a strange and bitter fruit
which you harvest from your tree of liberty.
Roots are buried deep beneath the soil,
four hundred years of racial terrorism and turmoil
better beware before this melting pot start to boil.
You are not equipped with empathy,
you do not have the capacity to change.
You are so thoroughly programmed
that you cannot see the error of your ways.
And my people have changed.
This ain't that docile hat in hand
Stepin Fetchit step to the side,
We that wretched of the earth,
with a ratchet tucked
west side til I die.
We already accustomed to dying for no reason.
And once these lines remove the poison
and blindfolds from my people's minds
whose favorite past time is killing they own kind
they gonna want to get even.
So what does this mean for America as a whole?
keep killing my people stealing those we love from our homes,
And you'll leave us with no other choice
but to show America the true definition of a death toll.
__________________________________________________________________________
Reflections of a Black Boy
Since 1980 close to 300,000 black men have been killed in the United States of America. Wyoming is the lowest populated state in the union. According to census numbers from 2013 there are 582,658 people in that state. In almost 35 years enough black men have been killed to approach the population of a state.
__________________________________________________________________________
No matter how descriptive an artist can be in detailing the experience one may have in America as a result of being clothed in black skin, you'll never be able to understand it without living it. The poet laureate of my family, Prentice Powell, said this, "Being a black man in America is a full time job ... being a black man in America is to be a black man in America and unless you are a black man in America, you will never understand what it's like to be a black man in America." The institutional hatred for black life is embedded so deep in the soul of the society that without its presence, the society might not know who it is anymore. There are many faces at the bottom of the well; the faces change depending on the time and place in America. The two permanent roles at the bottom have been faithfully played by the indigenous natives and Black Americans. Indigenous people were so thoroughly hit by the rise of America that many nations and tribes have become virtually extinct. Entire peoples and histories wiped off the face of the Earth, completely removed from this plane of existence.
Black people were forcefully brought here to the Americas solely for the purpose of exploitation, specifically for their labor in building up the new colonial economies. Over time, the thirteen British colonies and then eventually the United States thoroughly legislated the subservient/less-than-human position of blacks in America. In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson eloquently opines that, "all men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights." Although, the DOI is not a legally binding document of American jurisprudence, it's still essential to the creed and culture of America, inaugurating the rich hypocritical history of America and its treatment of blacks and Native Americans. Jefferson spoke so boldly of universal equality in his declaration, but it seems he was only referring to equality and independence for wealthy white men, for he would later go on to write extensively about the inferiority of blacks and his belief that whites were superior to them in every regard. Imagine Jefferson dipping his quill pen in an ink reservoir scribing those great words of equality and freedom while owning slaves and carrying on a "relationship" that should be better termed as raping a woman he held as a slave, Sally Hemings. I don't know if it's possible to have a relationship with someone you own as a slave. This "relationship" eventually produced multiple offspring, which according to Jefferson's opinions of blacks meant they were of "inferior stock."
The Constitution was the next to make a bold claim and legislate an oppressed status for blacks. In Article I Section II we read the text for the 3/5th compromise that states how 3 out of 5 slaves can be counted for tax purposes and for determining population for representation in the House of Representatives. The application of the 3/5ths compromise was specific, for tax purposes and determining population, but the reality legalized a de facto understanding of the position of black life in America. We were arbitrarily deemed 3/5ths of a human being; the social reality of this was the legalized subhuman status of blacks in America.
Dred Scott further added to the American lineage of government oppression of black life. In the now infamous Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Dred Scott and his wife had no claim to file suit for their freedom against their slave master on account of him moving to a free territory. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney further attempted to clarify the issue by stating in no uncertain terms that the founders of the country never intended to give rights and freedom to blacks, and that slaves, as well as free blacks, "had no rights that the white man was bound to respect." This is 1619 to 1857, 238 years of colonial and constitutional oppression and de
gradation. For all intents and purposes, Taney was stating that blacks have no claim to a free life in America. Their sole purpose is to be beasts of burden for the benefit of White America. His opinion was not a minority opinion then or now in America.
Welcome to the deep dark birthing place of “Death Toll.” Our entire existence, is one of total exploitation. We're used for pleasure, labor, entertainment, sport, and when the need arises our bodies can be exterminated with the explicit consent of the state or complicit consent of American society. White people can't and never will understand this plight. This is the privilege that they have guaranteed themselves. They've shielded themselves from ever having to look at any of the atrocities they've heaped upon black life. Their society will never convict themselves of their crimes—past, present, and future—against us.
I often wonder if there is a way to quantify the number of black lives America has taken. That would force us to tally the numbers of slaves violated through the slave trade in Africa, middle passage, and here in America. Add that to the numbers of those who languished on plantations and those brutally beaten and killed while enslaved for American economic progress. Post-slavery, we'd have to count the numbers of free blacks tortured and brutalized for the preservation of the white social order. Those lynched. Those killed in white riots against black citizens in black towns/cities. Those arrested on frivolous charges to be sent back to slavery via convict leasing or forced back to slavery via debt peonage or sharecropping and tenant farming. You can't; it's impossible to calculate the loss.
