Babylon, the Bandit
It’s a fact so mundane as to be unremarkable: black skin. Mere pigmentation.
If only. The reminders come daily—supermarkets, pharmacies, restaurants, bars, movie theaters, classrooms, hospital rooms, even public bathrooms—that this dark skin of mine assigns me to second-class citizenship. The indoor spaces are bad enough, but outdoors is where my frustration veers to worry. On the streets, the surveillance (which constantly hovers) gets worrisome because of the possibility of dealing with—no, being dealt with by the police. They show up, and public space is suddenly a panopticon: I am suspicious of them being suspicious of me, watching them watching me, anticipating them coming to ask me what wrong I’ve done or am about to do. Call me paranoid and I’ll tell you: bad experience has trained me well.
When I walk in public space—those parks, squares, plazas, sidewalks that are supposed to be goods held in common; shared space that doesn’t require shared values; that public realm where we have the opportunity to play or protest together (or against each other)—I’m reminded that I have less right to the space because I’m black. Shouldn’t be, but not according to the cops who time and again press me for a rationale for being there. “I’m just living, man,” I want to say. Instead, out of love for my teeth and my recognition that I bruise too easily, I trot out some unnecessary justification (alibi?). “Yes, sir,” I add for good measure, offering courtesy, if not respect, in large supply. In my head, I call them Babylon, the word we use for them where I’m from—the oppressor, the agent of a depraved system.
I match their lowered expectations with my lowered expectations. Mutual distrust marks our encounters, and I dare not reveal my annoyance or anger, lest some innocent gesture gets me punched, choked, body-slammed. Or shot. That’s the pact: I don’t move, they don’t shoot. (Well, my pact; who knows what will set off someone whose modus operandi is “shoot first, think after”?). This scenario has repeated itself so often I’ve long lost count.
My excessive caution is reasonable behavior in occupied territory, which is what public space becomes for many black people when the police enter it. From the abundance of witnesses—
James Baldwin in “A Report From Occupied Territory”:
I have witnessed and endured the brutality of the police many more times than once—but, of course, I cannot prove it. I cannot prove it because the Police Department investigates itself, quite as though it were answerable only to itself. But it cannot be allowed to be answerable only to itself. It must be made to answer to the community which pays it, and which it is legally sworn to protect, and if American Negroes are not a part of the American community, then all of the American professions are a fraud.
Nas in “Cops Shot the Kid”:
White kids are brought in alive
Black kids get hit with like five
Get scared, you panic, you're goin' down…
Tell me, who do we call to report crime
If 9-1-1 doin' a driveby?
KRS-One in “Sound of da Police:
My grandfather had to deal with the cops
My great-grandfather dealt with the cops
My great grandfather had to deal with the cops
And then my great, great, great, great—when it's gonna stop?!
Prince in “Baltimore”:
Does anybody hear us pray
For Michael Brown or Freddie Gray?
Peace is more than the absence of war
Lucille Clifton in “why some people be mad at me sometimes”:
They ask me to remember
But they want me to remember
Their memories
and I keep remembering
mine
Toni Morrison in Sula:
It was a fine cry - loud and long - but it had no bottom and no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.
For now, feet occupy the streets, demanding that public space not be treated as occupied territory. Bodies protest, bear witness, and affirm human dignity, that territory that occupying forces can’t trample.
Garnette Cadogan lives and works in far too many place for his own good
