my Night
Comes to mind because of (1) yesterday's discussion of Nahash the Bully and (2) Charles LaFond's "The Daily Sip" for July 11, 2020, "Bullying". Everyone is someone and something and somewhere for a reason and reasons and many roads not taken. Other than perhaps my sense of owing my life to the 1918 shipwreck that brought the death of my father's brother Alfred, I don't feel I spend overly much Time contemplating Why I am Who and What and Where I am.
But this covid19 shelter in place Time - - which being a quiet introvert I don't mind, which I am rather enjoying, which I do not foresee ending, and of which the World Health Organization this morning predicts there will be "No Return to Normal" - - has given me pause to reflect, ask and try to answer. And I'm finding out that I don't necessarily like all that ὁράω (Mark9:1) I see, I perceive, I understand, I realize about myself.
In this time of protests because Black Lives Matter, yet another personal report surfaced:
I’m a black doctor. I wear my scrubs everywhere now.
Like many black Americans, I’ve been followed by security personnel through stores without cause and pulled over by police officers at night for no reason. When I’m in scrubs, all of that happens less often.
+++++++++++++
There are innumerable stories on line like that of Dr Holmes, including everyday black people as well as college professors, corporate executives and medics. Like the rest of the world, I watched a sickening video streaming a bully murdering George Floyd. I watched the man die being bullied, and I will never forget it, it is now part of my Being.
And another in which a white bully murdered Rayshard Brooks, a black man found asleep drunk in his car; and the bully who shot him several times yelled "I got him, I got him". The bully is beyond forgiveness, his sin is retained unto him. May he have an interesting life bullying men in the prison Population with him.
Not sure, maybe I've told this here before. Linda knows, my sister knows: The Night I Became a Black Man. Summer 1954 I'd been diagnosed with a heart issue, and rode the Greyhound or Trailways bus from Panama City to Birmingham for my first appointment with a cardiologist. Have I told this? IDK. Boarding, I took a window seat on the left side halfway back in the bus. The bus was not crowded, but in Marianna passengers got off and others got on and the bus started to fill up.
Evening had set, and on the dark highway north of Marianna the driver stopped several times for people to get on such that most seats filled and passengers were standing in the aisle. At one stop after Marianna, a black family got on, the woman holding a baby. The seat by me was empty, she looked at me, I motioned her to sit, and she sat down, holding her baby. A mile or so down the road, the bus driver looked in his mirror, slammed on the brakes, bringing the bus to a screeching halt. He got up, stalked down the aisle, stopped, pointed at me and said, "You move to the front of the bus". I said, "I'm fine". Raising his voice, he said, "Move to the front or I'll put you off the bus".
It was a dark night in the middle of nowhere, and with every eye on me, eighteen years old and a "rising sophomore" at the Univ of Florida, I got up and moved to the front of the bus.
That night I experienced a slight dose and mild case of the humiliation of prejudice, discrimination, racism, the ire of a white racist bully in white racist America. This, my minuscule experience of being black, has been part of who I am for 66 years this month.
Part of my hatred of bullies comes from that life experience. I hate bullies, especially white male racist bullies.
I don't necessarily appreciate all the change that's going on in America these days. I grew up holding General Lee in highest esteem, feeling pride seeing his statue and others of our CSA generals in town squares around the South. I grew up with a sense of heritage in the Confederate flag, a thrill when a band struck up "Dixie" and standing to sing it out. But these years, I've found out that for black Americans, some things I grew up cherishing are offensive, in-your-face, rub-your-nose-in-it. I've realized that to a black person they memorialize our history of black Americans being slaves and still today not the same as I am. Not equal, not treated equal, do not feel equal.
And so I willingly as a sense of what's minimally decent as a human being, give up what I can as a beginning of reparations for what I and my ancestors did to them and their grandparents, and for what to this day we still do to them, to every black American parent who lives in constant fear for the life of their child growing up in America. Black Lives Matter as a FACT OF GOD'S CREATION. Not as some far left or far right organization asking for money and assuring you it's a tax deductible donation; but because Black Lives Matter. The life of every black parent's black child matters. As a Christian and a man, I am on their side to overthrow the systemic evil of racism that defines America, regardless whose statue is toppled, whatever the human, social or economic cost.
To the cry "Black Lives Matter", the response "All Lives Matter" or "Police Lives Matter" is imbecilic, refusing to see and hear the point of standing up for Who It Is That's Bullied as an institutional concomitant of our society. All Lives are not bullied as an institutional given. Police Lives are not bullied as an institutional given. Black Lives are bullied as an institutional given. Let us not be mentally obtuse and morally blind. As Jesus says, Let whoever has eyes to see, see.
T
Pic and column: WaPo online Mon, 13 Jul 2020