Denene Millner says it’s time to stop telling Black parents to stay calm and time to stop the senseless killing of our children by any means necessary.
–
A 12-year-old shot by police this weekend is dead.
The CHILD, Tamir Rice, was playing with his sister and a friend in a Cleveland, OH, PARK when a grown ass drunk in a bar across the street dialed up police and said a man was waving around a gun, “scaring the s— out of everyone.” That drunk went on to tell the dispatcher that the PERSON they were all scared of was “probably a JUVENILE” and that the gun was “probably fake,” but neither the caller, dispatcher nor cops could be bothered by those details. The police officers responding to the call showed up, guns drawn, told a 12-YEAR OLD CHILD to put his hands in the air and then executed the BOY when he reached for his TOY.
Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old shot by police, is dead.
Don’t say s— to me about how real his TOY gun looked. Don’t say s— to me about legit fears people may have had about the TOY gun or the CHILD who was PLAYING with it in the PARK—in an open-carry state that allows its (white) citizens to wield weapons in public with impunity as part of the law the citizens themselves approved. Don’t say s— to me about concerned citizens and cops doing their jobs. Don’t say s— to me about how a 12-YEAR-OLD BOY PLAYING in a PARK with his friends, completely unaware of drunk neighbors fearing CHILDREN, should have responded to cops screaming at him to raise his hands. Don’t say s— to me about mistakes.
Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old shot by police, is dead.
Instead, let’s talk about these key words: 12-YEAR-OLD CHILD. PERSON. JUVENILE. BOY. TOY. PLAYING. PARK. Tamir Rice was a 12-YEAR-OLD CHILD. A PERSON. A JUVENILE. A BOY who was PLAYING with a TOY in the PARK.
You know what else he was? A BLACK BOY.
But in America, there is not room for Black boys and girls to be children. Ever. Consider these words from child advocate Dr. Stacey Patton, who, just this past Friday, delivered this powerful speech, “There’s No Such Thing As Black Childhood: How the Murders of Trayvon Martin & Mike Brown Are Rooted In Jim Crow Racial Ideology,” at the University of Kentucky College of Law:
From Emmett Till and Mike Brown to legions of other young people whose names and lives have been violently lost to the hidden holocaust of racial history in America, white supremacy REQUIRES the intentional, insidious, and pervasive devaluation and destruction of black childhood.
Rather than a sanctuary from harm, or an eventual route to full adult citizenship, white supremacy REQUIRES that childhood for Black Americansbe imagined as devoid of innocence and marked by various processes of imposing stigma, oppression, and danger.
White supremacy REQUIRES that black childhood not be defined, in the western sense, as a distinct period grounded in a linear set of unfolding stages toward maturation, civility, responsibility, and citizenship worthiness, but that it be imagined as undifferentiated from black adulthood and that it be accelerated toward intellectual, spiritual, social, sexual, and physical death.
And, white supremacy REQUIRES the participation of black people (sometimes unintentionally) in that dehumanization process – a process, which unfolds at each developmental milestone in the life of the child – embryonic development, the moment of birth, infancy, adolescence, and puberty. Each life stage is seized by various actors, racialized, and baked into popular images, attitudes, behaviors, educational and medical practice, policing, and social policies around child welfare and juvenile justice. One way we see the evidence is through the repeated failure to prosecute white men who murder unarmed black children…
Friends, racism prevents us from collectively fixing our lips to say, “a child was killed” when the victims are black. In America, the notion of what is a child and who gains access to the category, affords levels of protection, sympathy, innocence, remorse, redemption and the privilege to be a kid, and even making mistakes without the consequences of a social or physical death.
With Dr. Patton’s words ringing in my ears and my heart, I say again, a 12-year-old shot by police this weekend is dead. Tamir Rice was A CHILD. PLAYING WITH A TOY IN THE PARK WITH HIS FRIENDS.
The drunk did not have to call the cops.
The cops should not have shot this child.
Tamir’s mother should not be mourning her son.
Still, here we are again, we Black parents screaming from the rooftops and in cap locks that OUR CHILDREN MATTER—that, in the name of TRAYVON andJORDAN and AIYANA and MIKE and all the other Black children who’ve been bucked down by people with callous regard for our babies’ humanity, this… must… STOP. Another Black child is dead. Another set of Black parents is grieving. Another community has been torn apart. And our hearts, battered and bruised and worn from the continual shock and anger, are shattered and stomped into the ground like dust, left to blow in a bitter wind. Like we’re nothing.
When it happens, and the police shrug their shoulders and get to denying, and the authorities in charge start rolling their tanks and armed troops through American neighborhoods and the national news treats the death of yet another BLACK CHILD like it’s normal to buck down kids in American streets, don’t take to the mic and ask Black parents to be calm.
Fuck calm.
This… madness… must… STOP.
By Any Means Necessary.
–
Originally appeared at MyBrownBaby
The arrogance and self centerdness of youth, their confidence in their short years of experience of knowing they ask one are right. I do believe Dr. King would be mortified to see what has happened, even knowing the bad things that he experienced, would pale with the travesty his words and beliefs would been twisted.
To the suburban white girls like the one in Ferguson hitting the window with a baseball bat: “By any means necessary” is not a suggestion of arson and looting. From a practical standpoint, arson and looting are poor tactics to inspire change.
I remember growing up on the west side of Chicago. Cops and robbers as a kid was still a game kids played. My dad bought me two play guns and they were cool. They were polished gun medal gray. One particular day, I’d gone to the corner store with one of the guns. Just playing around I walked in with the gun in hand. Mr. Burns was at the counter. Now keep in mind that the Burns family knew me and my family and I can say that we were all family friends. As Mr Burns stood by the cash… Read more »
I had a similar situation I in Milwaukee when I was 15. Unmarked came up to us 6 kids on the corner, next thinng I see is a 38 pointed at me. Because I was wearing a blue jacket that was on a guy who just had broken into a home a few blocks away. I was told not to move and didn’t and taken to the home to be identified. Let go after the homeowner acknowledged that I was not the one. Denene, the problem is not just this, it is multifaceted and needs to be dealt with as… Read more »
My God, Mark, if you have even an ounce of regard for Tamir and his mother and their humanity, you know that now, when a 12-year-old is laying in the morgue and his mother is contemplating life without being able to kiss her baby’s sweet face, to hug him, to cuddle him in her arms, it is absolutely not the time to question why a boy was playing with a toy gun. Certainly, I’m not even sure how the heck you found your way to discuss gangs. Can you, even for a moment, show an iota of respect and let… Read more »