It has happened again.
Twice.
Every Black person of a certain age (perhaps, sadly, most any age) has had these moments. You hear of a heinous crime on TV, radio, online. And as you gasp from the ghastly details, you cross your fingers and say "God, I hope whoever did this wasn't Black."
Because you know - that no matter what your station in life, your pay grade or education - the ones who perpetrated this action will affect you. Strangers will look at your differently, act differently - maybe even with hostility. Some who know you might also. A co-worker may ask - no demand -- to know why "Black people do such things and why unless a white person kills a Black person you don't get upset. And what about all the white people who get robbed, raped and killed by Black people?"
The biggest problem is that you feel that somehow you are responsible. It is hard not to. That this was one of our own. That you live your life going through the motions, consciously or unconsciously, to make the case for your race, to prove that Black people are competent, smart, well-deserving people who are victims of slavery and decades of horrendous slavery and racism.
And here they come to mess things up. For the race. For you.
It had been a while for me to have such feelings, they do occur with less frequency. But then the jogger got shot in his back by a bunch of joyriding thugs.
At first I thought "God that's awful - but Oklahoma? Hmm not too many Blacks there. it wasn't Oklahoma City, right? But then came the faces of James Francis Edwards, Jr., Michael DeWayne Jones and Chauncey Allen Luna in all too familiar orange clothes and mug shots.
Chris Lane was 22-years old and from Australia. He came here to play college baseball and I'm sure with hopes for more. Some day I might have seen in Yankee Stadium. His life, his dreams are worth remembering, as are those with less "credentials" who lose their lives in senseless street violence that doesn't make the papers. Chris was out jogging, as I do most mornings, when the bullets struck him in the back. The stomach churning reason one of the three youths gave was: "We were bored, so we decided to kill somebody..."
Before one could even stop shaking one's head, another "fingers crossed moment" came today.
An 88 year-old World War II veteran was robbed and beaten to death in Washington state. Delbert Belton had survived bullet wounds on Okinawa -- one of the fiercest battles in the war -- to die like this. We lose World War II veterans at the rate of almost 100 a day. They are all almost gone, the generation that truly saved the world and built this nation. They are generation of many of our parents. Just imagine your parents. His son said that his dad was "the victim of senseless violence" and blamed the city of Spokane for this tragedy. Again, once the horror of this began to subside, when I first heard Washington state I thought "not a lot of Black people there either." And once again the knot in the stomach, and shame, and the anger and frustration.
And don't you know FOX News was all over this one. They have taken considerable heat from many with their coverage of the the Trayvon Martin murder, the protest movement it has created and the Zimmerman trial and verdict. So on the local FOX TV station in Spokane, you can watch the video of the suspects while reading the scroll at the bottom of the screen which says:
White World War Two Veteran Robbed, Killed By Black Suspects."
Great. Now they get even for the way poor old, good citizen, Mr. Zimmerman has been treated. Mr. Zimmerman of the "community watch," according to news accounts, has just bought himself a brand new shotgun. This model weighs in at less than 7 pounds, 26 inches long. And the description reads "it holds an impressive 12 rounds..."
This is not your Grandpa's shotgun.
When my parents moved back to North Carolina after they retired, my dad (who grew up in rural North Carolina and was a military police officer in the US Navy during World War II) bought a shotgun for home protection. He kept it unloaded in the closet. It fired one bullet at a time. But then that was dad.
Many will think these feelings are foolish, unnecessary outdated. "Why would someone like you think that what these common street thugs affect how people see you?"
If you don't know the answer, then you have never been worried about being "stopped and frisked" or had to wonder if the state trooper's gun is going to go off as you reach for your driver's license.Or had "the talk" with your sons about how to act when approached by the police. (Maybe we should extend that "talk" to include community watch folks too?")
I thought more about this today while watching some coverage of the events leading up to tomorrow's March on Washington which is part commemoration and part rejuvenation of a movement.
In a different time years ago, it was not usual for a Black police officer to see a group of youths committing a crime - even a minor one like talking loud at night, or graffiti, or other such behavior, and say to them: "you making it hard for Dr. King. He's down there fighting for your rights and you messing up here making us look bad." Sometimes this was followed by a smack or kick in the butt.
Yes it these incidents are still tragic regardless of who commits them or who the victim is. And without a doubt Black-to-Black crime carries its own set of pain and frustration.
And I often wonder if those "fingers crossing moments" will ever go away. Hopefully they will continue to lessen. Or perhaps those moments are a good thing. A thing that makes me remember to not forget that there are still plenty of struggles left in this post-racial society.
