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There’s nothing louder than being Black in Iowa. Take it from a girl who hails from one of the loudest cities in the nation.
I haven’t lived in my hometown of Chicago for twenty years, having spent those last two decades in the cornfields of Iowa. It wasn’t much of a culture shock for me to move from a dorm room in small town Iowa to a two-bedroom apartment in the not-as-small enclave known as Iowa City. Hawkeye Nation.
I get back to The Chi monthly, enjoying the city of my birth. True, Chicago has been in turmoil. Crime is rampant and young people are dying, I know. Despite it—and, quite possibly, in spite of it—the back-to-back murders that happened during the second week of July struck me hard.
I was working from home that Wednesday, the day Alton Sterling’s murder video went viral. My fourth grader and kindergartner were both home with me, taking a breather week from their respective day camp obligations. While the older child, my son, played one of his many online games, I’d seen the video in social media feeds on my work laptop. The spread of anger was evident from a variety of my connections: high school acquaintances, colleagues from my old gig in advertising, my older relatives who usually allow their Facebook profiles collect dust. Everyone had an opinion about the gruesome video, and not one of them was good.
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The link met my sight, urging me to play it. I just couldn’t, not that early in the day. It wasn’t even noon yet. That’s what I told myself: It’s too early.
I avoided it until my husband arrived home from work, asking me if I’d heard about the incident in Baton Rouge. I nodded, loading the dishes into the washer. Yes, I’d resorted to cleaning to dodge the inevitable: watching yet another video of a black man being slaughtered in the street by those vested and badged to protect him. He reached for the remote and turned on one of the 24-hour media churners and bam! There is was, in motion. I had no warning, except for the hours that had ticked away at home while I hid from it.
It’s too early.
We both watched Mr. Sterling, splayed on the ground. His arms pinned as a gun was cocked at his head. My husband, who is Caucasian, shook his head. “They have his arms pinned. Why the gun?”
“Why the arms?” I’d retorted as the video segued back to the anchor’s perfect sad face. As talking heads from the network droned on about brutality and cameras and statements and allegations, my own head banged with fury. Another death at the hands of law enforcement – not that this was a complete shock to me. I’m from a city where corruption was and is a hallmark. Where black bodies being destroyed daily, both by law enforcement and our own citizens. But there remains a sting that emanates when you watch a person with the ultimate power take down the powerless. It hurts, makes me question our nation – one that’s closer than comfort to electing an Eighties pop culture punchline for President. Is this what we are?
It’s too early.
After dinner and bedtime tuck-ins, my husband and I detached ourselves from the news. We turned on a few episodes of mindless reality television, half-watching, half-talking. We discussed all the factors: white privilege, possible community responses, what hell got our nation here again after countless of other murders. I got into bed, snuggling under my covers to check my social media pages a final time that evening. Then, there was his name in between two Black Lives Matter memes in my feed – Philando Castile. I yelled over the sound of running water to my husband, who was brushing his teeth in the adjoining bathroom, “I think another man has been shot by a cop.”
“Are you sure? Can’t be. Gotta be the same guy,” he said after rinsing his mouth.
I clicked the link immediately this time and the video played. His body slumped. His girlfriend speaking straight into the camera. A gun pointed at both of them.
“No . . . this is someone else,” I said, my voice small. “It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours . . . ”
It’s too early.
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Thursday came too soon. I tossed and turned that night, confused and concerned. Two men in twenty-four hours. As I arose from bed and went about my daily morning routine, I realized that I was leaving the confines of my home to go to a lonely place for me during times like these: my workplace. It was lonely after Trayvon Martin, after Mike Brown, after Sandra Bland, after every human being transformed into a hashtag after the bang of an authoritative gun. I don’t feel like dealing with white people today, I instantly thought as I stepped into my steaming shower. Such a profound statement for me, a woman married to a white man, to think, but my feelings were still raw at seven in the morning.
It’s too early.
Arriving into my office – where I am the only brown face in my department – was surreal. Most of my colleagues were out on vacation, still enjoying remnants of the Independence Day holiday. As the hours ticked by, I engaged no one about the events that had transpired. No one sought to engage me. It left me feeling despondent by the close of the business day.
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After getting home with kids in tow, we fell into our typical fare: kids on the computer, husband and I on the couch. After we naturally found ourselves talking about Alton and Philando again (how could we talk about anything else?), I asked my husband the question that had been on my mind all day:
“I’m going to talk to our son about it. You think that’s a good idea?”
My husband nodded and I could feel his brain twisting, as was my own. Our son is nine, is rarely (if ever) unaccompanied by an adult, and has never asked any questions about what’s been pumping through our television screen over the past 36 hours. Still, I felt that something needed to be said to give him some context. I walked into our room, where he was hunkered down in front of a MineCraft scene. I turned him around in the swivel chair and caught his gaze.
“Is there anything you wanna ask about what Daddy and I have been watching on the news?”
He hesitated before answering with a “Nope”. A part of me was relieved, thrilled that he was still innocent enough to regard the events as something out of his childlike realm. But another part of me remembered that Tamir Rice was just three years older than my son when he was gunned down for playing with a toy gun in a park. I continued, “Because you know, if you have a question about anything, you can ask Dad and me, okay?”
He paused again, his brain now doing the twisting. “Were those men that got shot doing something bad?”
“I don’t think they were,” I said.
“Then why did the police shoot them?”
I cleared my throat. “I don’t know. I think that it’s like at school, the teacher calls all of your classmates ‘friends’, right?”
He nodded.
“Well, you know that there are some good friends in your class that you play with every day and then there are the not-so-good ones that might bully other students or backtalk the teacher.”
He nodded again.
“Well, police are the same way. You have good cops and you have bad ones. I think that these men were shot by bad ones.”
“Okay, I understand,” he said with a nod before turning back to his computer world.
I felt that it ended rather abruptly and I, in all my wordiness, was itching to talk more. As I left him to his devices, I realized that maybe The Talk comes in stages as he grows. That three minutes we shared was enough for now.
I understand that five years from now, the conversation will become more granular. We’ll have to discuss how to follow proper protocol, what to do if his body is touched, who he needs to call if he’s ever apprehended. It will take longer than three minutes. It will take everything in me to keep my charged opinions to a minimum while still espousing truth to him.
For now, it’s too early.
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Photo credit: Pixabay/Ferobanjo
