The Black Man's First Mistake...

Let's get really uncomfortable here.  The title of this article and the title of this blog are not attempts, outright, to troll.  Yes I want people to read this, but I also want people to understand the point that I am trying to make.  For someone in my position, that is terribly difficult.  For someone like me, it is very awkward and it requires a great deal of effort to make a point.  There is a bit of what I would like to call the black man's irony in that no one really cares what you have to say until you die.

Maybe this is not a condition of all black men and maybe it is not the burden that the black man alone must bear, but I have found in my 40 years that while I am breathing, no one really gives a shit about what I have to say.  It is heaped with more layers of irony when we look at the fact that people are always talking about me.  Sometimes me specifically, but more often me in the abstract, solely as black male.

I take this tack because the main thing that I have learned while I have been here is that there might be even more irony built into the idea that I both as black man and as Eli Montgomery, am really very stupid.  Black men everywhere are really just very stupid.

I mean this in that their/our/my logic is based on a reality that they/we/I am not really a part of.  It could be called naivete or ignorance purely in the rhetorical sense.  We simply do not know any better. So, we tend to make mistakes and those mistakes tend to be fatal.  The results of that thought process do not tend to render themselves until after our body goes cold and the discussion begins.  No matter what we may have done leading up to it, our lack of understanding of the situation is what will lead to our demise.  There is a puzzle that we simply cannot figure out and a riddle to which we don't have all of the clues, I guess?

Let's talk about some of these cases, shall we?
Roy Middleton went out to his mother's car to get some cigarettes last year, but ended up getting shot  15 times by police who were called by his neighbor. Let's get this straight.  He goes outside of his own house and is shot 15 times in his own driveway just for going outside to get cigarettes.

John Crawford

John Crawford was shot earlier in August for carrying (and some say, pointing) a bb gun that he had picked up in the Walmart he was in.  Police arrived and shot him after they say that he did not obey commands to drop it.  Reportedly his last words were, "This isn't real".

Eric Garner died on July 17 when police confronted him about selling cigarettes illegally.  They attempted to place him under arrest and several officers jumped him.  He was taken to the ground with one officer having placed him in a choke hold (an illegal hold, even for officers) and reportedly his last words were "I can't breathe".

I can speak from personal experience about these things and no I have never been shot, but I have had a gun pulled on me both by criminals attempting to rob me and by police.  I can also say that it has been more times by police and (though I have done things in the past) it has been while I am doing nothing wrong.

I enjoy reading the comments when these articles appear.  It is often a bunch of people who say things along the lines of "why didn't he just get down" or something like that.  Some people allow their minds to wonder what they would do if, while they are reading an article on their computer or walking through the mall, the police busted in the door, guns drawn and began shouting orders.  In a calm situation while it is NOT happening to you, sure you can make all the right decisions.

Add pressure to the mix.  Combine that pressure with fear.  Mix those two with the surreality and incredulity that comes with not having done anything and you have a situation similar to what the average black man goes through on a daily basis.

Our mistakes come from the notion that we cannot shake, that we are human beings.  That is what makes us stupid.  We think we have the right to avail ourselves to the same system of justice that everyone else is allowed and that is not the case.  Eric Garner thought, as anyone would that if he cried out in agony that he could not breathe that the cops would do the logical thing and let him go.  If you watch the video of his last moments, he is basically pleading his case for why he is even being surrounded by police in the first place.  It doesn't make sense to him (nor to me when I watch the video, but then, I am a black man).  Similarly, though I have never even met the man, I can almost guarantee that John Crawford's last thoughts were that there was no way that the police were going to shoot him for holding a toy gun.

Roy Middleton thought that he could go out on his own property to his mother's car and have a late night cigarette.  Police would later say that they felt that he was lunging at them with a weapon.  Turns out that he only had his flashlight on his key ring which in retrospect makes the police's claims ludicrous.  Or does it?

Officers make the same claim about John Crawford, that he refused to drop the bb gun and they felt like they were in danger.  Officers are now making the same claims about Michael Brown, that apparently he was charging at an armed officer.  So all of these police are making all of these claims that all of these black men are challenging and attempting to attack them with no weapons of their own.

The latest Kajieme Powell, was wielding a knife and had just robbed a convenience store not too far from where Michael Brown was killed.  Yes, he did just rob the convenience store (of energy drinks and some donuts).  Yes, he did have a knife (the video would reveal that it was in his pocket and his hands were at his side when the officers arrived and he was killed within 15 seconds of their arrival.  His last words were "Shoot me!" They were all too happy to oblige.

The strand that runs through all of these cases is just a pure disbelief.  It is a strand of this is so silly that this cannot be happening to me that is running through these men's (and lately women's heads too) heads that give us a moment of pause.  We are stupid because we think that there is no way that we will be killed over a toy, or over cigarettes or anything of such.  It cannot be.

John Crawford's last words may be a bit too ominous on many levels.  How much of those words apply to what he was saying to the cops surrounding him and how much of those words were directed inward, at himself as they pulled the triggers.  "This isn't real."