a couple of songs made sense this morning … mostly just billie holiday’s ’strange fruit’ and the otis redding version of ‘a change is gonna come.’ i hate that there are songs for these moments … there should be no moments as inspiration for these songs.

a friend just called to tell me that they found his cousin dead. he was no more than 23. he was a black man. i couldn’t even emotionally connect with the situation … i asked some editorial questions of who, when, where and why. then, i realized that a person is dead and that they have a name. maybe no talking is needed, and i should just listen to the other person breathe. i talk to fill uncomfortable silence. i’d become so de-sensitized to black death, that i compartmentalized these deaths into the aggregate of other indistinguishable dead black bodies. the avoidance/relegation of the known-made unknown brought/brings ephemeral comfort. and sometimes left alone with your thoughts becomes painful, because sometimes memories speak too loudly, or sneak up on you in those moments when forgetting seemed like victory over an impossible task.

i got to thinking about all the black men i once knew who are no longer with me who have names. two men i went to primary school with are now dead … one shot, one stabbed. jason and darryl. and there was my friend john, impaled. and there was and what am i to say about the others whose location i am unsure of, are they alive? and if they are alive, are they really a-live?

it is this narrow notion of death–the permanent end of all life functions. but, what about the death of black folks via incarceration, via in low-wage-flexible jobs, via informal drug economies, via all those acts of violence which slowly kill us physically, but almost immediately kill some part of our spirit. there are these specific moments of death. the moments of forceful penetration, the moments of failed self-worth, the moments of exclusion, the moments of displacement, the moments of invisibility, those moments of stark visibility, those moments of obscurity … those moments when something dies inside of us–something that we may not even be able to identify within limiting discourse.

black folks die physically and spiritually everyday. and if we were to count these physical and spiritual deaths, could we dare say genocide? i don’t want to, because there is no coming back from genocide … there is no revival … there is no hope. i want to have hope that we can be brought back to life so to speak. the parts of us that die the symbolic and spiritual death must be revived/resurrected/renewed/re-broadcast for all to hear. WE need to do this work. the collective WE must understand that death is never solitary, death is never unanchored to the collective deaths of people and the continued life of a horrible, ugly machine.

in 2002, nelson mandela in speaking to BBC about steve biko said: ‘they had to kill him to prolong the life of apartheid.’ not every fallen black person is a steve biko, but every black death prolongs the destructiveness of a litany of -isms … which i do not want articulate, because in some ways it forces me into an academic realm which does not seem appropriate right now …

i am wondering, at what point does our silence and inaction become betrayal … at what point does our silence and inaction make us the sadistic audience of/complicit actors in our collective death … in our personal death … and i am wondering if there is even a “point” so to speak, or if every loud silence and every active inaction is betrayal?

Death, Black Men, Collective Action, Self-Love