Once again we stand over a crime scene that is distinctly American yet disturbingly foreign. The buzzwords have already been dropped between us as we recoil in disgust. Psychopath, murderer…terrorist. The violence has been declared senseless and the perpetrators name is shunned. We are told to be patient as a manifesto of the killer’s own design is being perused and analyzed ten thousand times over by competent authorities and affiliated specialists who are well equipped to diagnose this madness that is supposedly beyond our comprehension.
This comforts us. This person was obviously an “other.” He was nothing like any of us. How one could slay two individuals mercilessly is beyond reason! This man was sick. There is no logical evolution an individual could undergo that would explain such a tragedy! So begins the distancing. There is no blood on our hands if his actions are relegated to the ranks of the mentally deranged. Accountability is his and his alone to bear.
Allow me, if you will, to humbly offer some semblance of perspective, some modicum of context. Maybe we can offer some sense of clarity if we reverse engineer this macabre spectacle before us. Let us postulate and delve into the world of “perhaps” as we apply social forensics to the happenings today. It is suggested you put on your gloves so as not to disturb the body of evidence and to most assuredly keep your hands clean.
We don’t want to dirty ourselves do we?
Perhaps…
I imagine a younger Vester Flanagan growing up 41 years ago in Oakland California in 1974. Around him racial turmoil is constant. Police violence is a significant issue. The Black Panther Party is a strong presence in the community. Poverty is rampant. Perhaps Vester Flanagan Senior was determined that his son wouldn’t end up in the streets so he raised him with a good stern Christian foundation. Perhaps no rod was spared to raise this child on the straight and narrow, as a strict Black Christian household mandates in such a tumultuous environment. Corporal punishment was probably employed as a form of condemnation for actions considered wayward. His sister’s dissertation at Cal State indicates a strong religious orientation and focus on Black discipline that supports this hypothesis.
Bear with me however…we’re just speculating.
Perhaps this was Vester’s first encounter with violence against innocents as his parents visited it upon him and attributed it to being a necessary byproduct of his Blackness. Perhaps this was how Vester realized not who he was but what he was. Perhaps this is where his mental prison began to be defined and the fuse was initially lit for the powder keg he ultimately proclaimed himself to be.
Perhaps…
Perhaps young Vester internalized this as he looked around him. Optimistic and wide-eyed I’m sure he was told that there were few legitimate pathways out of his community without a proper education and career and that if he worked hard enough and long enough one day he could escape and transcend his environment. He could be anything I’m sure he was told.
Vester probably observed local media personalities for the first time as they covered the various happenings around his neighborhood. I picture him impressed while watching well dressed respected anchors interview his neighbors about the latest riot, protest, rising athlete, community development, or crime and then watching those stories air. I’m sure he saw an opportunity to someday be able to tell those same stories through his eyes. He would work hard. He would stay off the streets. He would assume the obligation that most Black men were assigned in that day.
He would uplift the race.
Perhaps.
He was reported to be “soft spoken and demure.” No doubt he was the opposite of the hardened Black men on the streets of Oakland. Uplift the race. Uplift the race. It was those men who chided him about ‘talking White’ and ridiculed him for never being seen with any girls. Uplift the race. Uplift the race. It was those men who probably caught him looking at them half a second too long. Uplift the race. Uplift the race.
Kill that part of yourself. Shut it off. You’re better than them. Find a date to prom.
And so he did. We know Vester went on to San Francisco State and began his internship at a local television station, KPIX-TV. Perhaps after his initial orientation at the studio Vester would sit in the anchor chair and pretend to be those same anchors he’d seen in his troubled Oakland streets. Perhaps he adopted a mentor. It’s here that I’m fairly sure he was made aware of his identity as very few (if any) of these reporters looked like him.
“What’s your name?” I’m certain he was asked.
“Vester. Vester Flanagan.”
“Vester?” This was probably followed by polite laughter. Maybe a more subtle head nod. “What kind of name is, Vester?”
“It’s my father’s name.” Vester probably replied.
“No offense kid, but you’re not going to get anywhere with a name like Vester. Cronkite, Rather, Jennings-those are names. Vester sounds kind of…ethnic. No offense.”
None taken.
Perhaps Vester realized at this point that ethnic meant bad in this business. Ethnic meant foreign. Ethnic wasn’t marketable. Ethnic didn’t poll well with demographics.
Perhaps Vester fought this initially as he went from California...to Texas…to Georgia trying to keep his identity; trying to keep his name. Perhaps it was in Florida that he finally succumbed to the fact that he would have to whitewash himself further to be more palatable.
Kill that part of yourself. Be reborn. Be…be…Bryce Williams.
Perhaps he thought this would certainly tip the scales in his favor.
Perhaps he was given a rude awakening.
He’d changed nothing. Never granted a “big break,” he was still resigned to small-scale stories and puff pieces, refusing him any significant notoriety.
“The target audiences couldn’t handle it,” I’m almost sure he was told as his ideas were rejected by station-managers and news directors who were more familiar with presenting White familiar faces to families during breakfast morning shows and evening reports over dinner.
Perhaps marginalized as a token in the background of a medium that focuses on the familiar aesthetic landscape dominated by Caucasian visages, the newborn Bryce tried to reconcile his lack of advancement through the mental framework of his Oakland upbringing. He was not White yet he must find a place. The shelf life of on-air talent in the field of journalism is remarkably short. Entering his thirties with nothing of merit under his belt, his professional life span was waning.
Perhaps at least by this point in his life he found solace in being able to explore his sexuality somewhat now that he was away from the judgmental eyes of his family and friends back in Oakland. However I doubt he was that open in a southern market that would judge him just as harshly. The most he could hope for would be some semblance of a shadow of a real relationship. Everywhere he turned he was being deprived of realization of himself.
Surely there must be someone to blame.
There is a certain heightened awareness and racial sensitivity that occurs in the mind of Black professionals as we navigate halls of corporate America. Political correctness is sneered at with derision. Equality is often mentioned as pretense for dreaded workshops about cultural sensitivity. We know of frustrations Bryce had with coworkers; irreconcilable professional differences with racial undertones resulting in litigation that were settled out of court.
His perspective constantly undermined (and in most cases invalidated) due to lack of support from his ostracized peers he descended into paranoia. His raw nerves were honed into a bitter hammer where every offense looked like a nail. He could not receive criticism by this point. Contention was a constant companion.
Perhaps it was what he saw day in and day out. Given a front row seat to the ugliness in front of the camera for years ranging from the racist vitriol spat discretely and overtly about Obama, the xenophobic projections of a population concerned about the downward spiral of an America overrun by illegal aliens, and finally the massacre in South Carolina something inside him snapped. Having worked in network news for a few years here in the South I’m quite familiar with negotiating those environs and how they’re handled by the media. A hide of the thickened variety is a necessity. I’ve been in those news meetings where casual references are made about that suspect or those people. The camera is never rolling then. Bryce was more than mentally fragile at this point as he reacted to more than one offense real or imagined.
He bought a gun.
Perhaps his tunnel vision prevented him from doing his job by this point. Perhaps he flirted with the idea of getting help but recoiled at the label such assistance would place on him in a society that vilifies and stigmatizes those seeking mental health treatment. Perhaps he considered himself the protagonist fighting his own personal war against an unjust system that continued to reject him when the worst of all labels was placed upon him:
Angry. Black. Man.
He’s mad I say. Erratic. Insane even. Terminate him.
And so he was…
So perhaps after a lackluster career, a now 41-year old Vest-er…Bryce Williams isolated and with no hope for a desperately needed recommendation to advance his career, looked back at the detritus that was his sad and fragmented life.
Trapped in his skin, sexuality, and now his age, he would never have the career nor make the difference he intended when he entered into the classes of San Francisco State University so many years ago. Perhaps in his mind he had failed. Perhaps he saw the promising meteoric professional rise of the young lives of Alison Parker and Adam Ward as an affront to his own personal struggle to nowhere.
He would never be able to celebrate a marriage with loved ones like Alison was about to have. His family and community would most certainly reject him if they hadn’t already. He wouldn’t advance professionally like Adam was bound to. His career had hit a brick wall. He was black listed. Tomorrow would be the same as today. He would still be Black. He would still be gay. He would still be angry. He would also be unemployed.
He had sacrificed his life, his name, even denied and suppressed his sexuality for years for this? Oh hell no.
Kill them.
And so he did.
I’m not asking you to pity Vester Flanagan. I’m not forgiving his actions. That responsibility is up to those who he has harmed directly. I am asking however for a discussion about the society that validated and fueled the bitter paranoia of rejection and exclusion that is quite evident in his actions; a society that encouraged and facilitated the fabrication of a completely different persona simply for acceptance.
Perhaps we should remember Bryce Williams name simply because of the reason that it wasn’t his to begin with. #BlackLivesMatter #AllLivesMatter