On an August night in the late 1980s, as my beloved uncle sleeps in his rural home in Mississippi, he is clubbed so severely with his own shotgun that the barrel is bent significantly from the force of the blows to his skull. A 72 year-old sleeping man who suffers from Parkinson's Disease is left to die. He is a widower. His car and some fishing gear are stolen, along with a microwave oven.
He is much more than my mother's brother; he is truly her best friend. No secrets between them. Suddenly, he's on life support with little doubt that he's actually already dead.
When my sister calls me "up North" with the news of what has happened, she's already pretty sure she knows who the murderer will turn out to be. To her great powers of deductive reasoning, it's got to be the kids who mow his lawn. Jr. High. Not white. If you're ever in need of a great detective, (and Columbo's not available,) gimme a shout. I'll see if sis can work you into her schedule. Her agency has only held forth on that one case, and she was very wrong in the end about who the murderer would turn out to be, but hey, she's only been wrong on one case in her entire career.
I head home to serve as a pallbearer. They unplug Uncle Lee while I'm en route. We lower his body into the grave on a Friday morning. That afternoon, as we lounge on the front porch of the family home, mourning and predictably telling stories about our beloved deceased, the sheriff pulls up. The chains that suspend the porch swing cease their incessant back and forth creaking. The rocking chairs fall silent as well.
"Caught him. Asleep in Lee's car in New Orleans."
Not white.
Fuck.
Telling you this, I'm already slipping into my armor, but if you'll hold off the slings and arrows for a moment, let me attempt to assure you that my purpose isn't to vilify any group of people or even any particular person, irrespective of skin color. My goal is completely the opposite of that, actually, but this very real crime served as a catalyst in multiple ways. If you want, we can discuss how the ongoing profiling and incarceration of large segments of specific populations in the U.S. (male with dark skin = dangerous) is a significant problem. I'm also sadly willing to engage on the topic of how we provide so little opportunity for our "underclass." God I hate that word and all that it implies, but this particular event, this specific experience of my uncle's murder can be understood on the surface in relatively simple terms: a young man comes home to visit his parents (who live across the highway from my uncle) and, one night, he commits a brutal act.
Unprovoked? I can't tell you for sure that my uncle didn't knowingly or unwittingly insult the man somehow. My uncle wasn't known for being a jerk, though, racist or otherwise. He, like his brother-in-law, were sort of "hero uncles" to me. They were the type to tell the Klan "no thanks" in no uncertain terms when "asked" when they were gonna join. That, in fact, happened, and to go on living and working among those who hate you for having integrity and courage is reason for admiration in my book. I ain't sayin' my uncle was a saint, but he wasn't a monster either. Far from it. Strong, but quiet and kind. Unlike my father, he was not cruel, but back to the question at hand.
Unprovoked? In this particular guy's case history, there were suggestions of mental instability and, who knows, perhaps he wanted to strike back against a lifetime of being made to feel powerless, but it may have just been a senseless murder associated with petty theft. Without more information, I chalk it up to the effect of "shit happens." Yeah, it was really painful shit, particularly for my mom, but what really made my skin crawl when the sheriff drawled his announcement was the fear of what would happen next. After all, we're talking about an area known for some particularly heinous example of domestic terrorism thanks to a particularly violent faction of the Klan.
Would there be any attempt at retribution? Was a lynch mob really out of the question?
The morning after the sheriff's visit, I bought a video camera and shot two and a half weeks worth of footage for a documentary about the very complicated and painful unfolding. In the process of editing, I almost went stark raving mad because I didn't take some time before launching into transcribing the tapes and starting the edit. Trust me on this: if you ever shoot a documentary in a situation that's personally very challenging and painful for you, it may be best to put the tapes away for a bit before beginning to deal with it again. Catharsis is very necessary for mental health. Spending every day with your sobbing mother at her murdered brother's graveside might not be the best idea. But that's off topic.
So exactly what is the topic? I guess that's still unfolding too, but let me get this out of the way: the man who's now serving life without parole was found competent to stand trial. Was he? I don't know. I did not attend the trial. None of the family did. We were advised to stay away and let the law take its course. We went about our damaged lives, but I lived with a video camera in my hands at that time, observing and recording all that was bubbling up from within the people around me, and it wasn't a constant stream of racist invective, but it wasn't without a little of that either. There were moments of sorrow, joy, mundanity, etc., and the bubble I was in kept being punctured by news from the outside world that reminded me that we didn't have an exclusive on hatred and bigotry now or ever. Most specifically, the Yusef Hawkins case was unfolding in Bensonhurst/Brooklyn at the time, and it appears in my documentary because it insinuated itself into my work, not vice versa. Very telling.
Nonetheless, I was immersed in Mississippi in the midst of this tragedy and, as I soaked up the family's and community's outpouring onto videotape, I was painfully aware that my young nephew, still in diapers, was a bigger sponge than me. Perhaps you briefly met my nephew in my previous diary here, but I'll tell (or remind) you that he's headed to grad school and is, basically, a birther.
Now you can turn on your caps lock and scream at me if you want or need about some perceived or actual racial insensitivity or whatever, but let me also tell you that, in Philadelphia in the 1990's, as one audience engaged in discussion after a screening of the recently completed film, I had an African American woman screaming at an African American man because she thought my work should be destroyed and never shown again while he strongly but calmly proclaimed that, in his opinion, it was an incredible offering to the dialogue and should be shown far and wide.
Go figure.
I was like a deer in the headlights as that unfolded.
This is so complicated and painful. The nerves are still raw. The topic is so challenging, twenty years later, and I can't even bring myself to speak to some of my relatives down there because, even though they proclaim that are "Christian", they push crap like the "Obamanation" book. So much for that "bearing false witness" stuff, but they are filled with fear and hate because that's what they were taught and, yes, eventually they have to own it because they embrace it as adults and pass it on to the next generation.
I'm not exactly illuminating unknown territory with this, am I? Perhaps I should get back on topic.
Topic...? There's a topic...?
Well, my title is "Lest ye be judged", and I'll tell you that it breaks my heart that my nephew, (the one in diapers at the time this happened,) has become the person he currently is. I've watched this boy from birth to manhood, and I know that he was once tabula rasa, so I don't judge him. He could change if he really wanted to, and I don't want to back him into a corner any more than he already is (in his mind.)
There's a scene of him sitting next to his "Paw Paw" (my father) on a porch, and Paw Paw is singing to Baby Dan sweetly as they swing but, in the next scene, Paw Paw is saying about the alleged murderer: "I guess this is because his mama was a slave, or some other fuckin' lie that they got built up in their minds. That's the kind of ignorant shit the Kennedys are puttin' in these stupid ass niggers heads." And this little boy in diapers LIVES with Paw Paw. I mean, he wakes up and gets fed by the man. They wrestle on the bed and pull a little red wagon down the street while riding stickhorsies. Whatever the "nature" of this boy is, his "nurture" is pretty damned strong, and I should know.
Is it maddening to you to hear this...? It's maddening as hell for me as I tell it, but let me tell you that this experience led to real growth for me. Several years after finishing the documentary, I had the epiphany that I have no more right to judge my father than I do my nephew. Sure, I had witnessed my nephew from day one as his innocent spirit and mind were polluted with hate and fear but, just because there was no way I could have witnessed that same process with my father, it happened even though I wasn't there to witness it. He, too, was tabula rasa as an infant. Innocent.
Yeah... Duh, right...? Well, it was big for me, and it's really difficult to heed that realization sometimes.
I, too, was innocent and shaped by ugliness in my formative years. The effect of that programming eventually came to feel like a cancer of the psyche to me. It ticked me off mightily when I realized that no one could cut out that cancer except for me, and I did cut it out, as best I could, but whenever anyone is quick to judge another person with a flip statement like "If they would just...", it really gets my goat.
If they would just...
Just what...?
Just wake up today and be a completely different person than they were yesterday just because you think they should?
You already know that it don't work that way, for them or you.
After a period of growing increasingly uncomfortable with the prevailing attitude surrounding me, when I was in my late teens / early twenties, I started seriously policing my thoughts and feelings. Ten years of effort were invested before I felt comfortable that I'd dispelled enough of that knee-jerk reaction to people and situations that I could start to cut myself some slack. And the crap STILL tries to well up within me sometimes, damn it, although I've now spent the better part of a lifetime attempting to shine light into dark corners down in there. This, of course, says nothing of all the ways in which I'm still blind to myself or attempting to excuse or rationalize or avoid hard but necessary work.
It's really hard to not want a little retribution.
I am infuriated by the talking heads of hate because they're cold and calculating in the ways that they manipulate with their coded racist language and the ways they tread ever so safely on the side of the line that would protect them from serious prosecution for incitement.
My blood boils when I see teabaggers who are clearly educated folks who should know better but who seem to have chosen to be filled with hate and tribalism and truly fascistic desires.
Still, I've learned that you're not gonna convert them even if you outshout them. I tried that with Daddy. I shut him up, one time, by shouting louder than him (with our noses just inches apart,) and it was my Oedipal moment, but it simply served to solidify his beliefs. I ended up forgiving him because I learned just how hard it is to admit to yourself just how ugly you are and how much focus and energy it takes and how damned long it takes to REALLY CHANGE, particularly if you remain surrounded by the very attitudes you're attempting to jettison.
New Years Resolution...? Psht... Give up making fun of my sister, I guess...
As hard as it is to practice, letting go of judgement of people who are trapped in hatred by their ignorance about the forces that created them is critical to making any true progress for us as a movement and as a society, but that's my opinion. Sure would be nice if we educated folks better here in the good old U.S. of A., but good education for the general population threatens the powerful fundamentalists who don't really want things to change. Karl Rove, I'm lookin' at you and all your minions...
Change...?
Change I can believe in...?
Personally, socially, and politically, I believe it takes time, determination, and it starts with education.
Thus spake Leroy, Roadie on the Great Rock Show of Life, and Master of the Obvious.
P.S. Please forgive me the language with which I've communicated. I do my best to quote racist attitudes only to clearly and honestly illuminate a mindset, not for mere effect or to inflame. In addition, I don't think I can discuss this stuff without cussin'. Oh, who am I kiddin'... I like to cuss. Learned it from my daddy, if you can believe that... And yeah, this "aw shucks" stuff is hokey. We had enough of it between 2001 and 2009. I'll knock it off now... Until next diary at least...
P.P.S. Let me leave you with two photographs instead of 2000 more words. These were taken one morning in Mississippi within a mile of each other . I was out shooting just to restore myself a bit by exercising the creative impulse. The two men pictured have the same last name, but that was happenstance, I suppose. I'd love for it to MEAN something about brotherhood or the family of man, but I don't think it does. Still, it was nice to connect with each of them, if even for a moment. They each have such kind faces. The world can always use more kind faces.