This Is America

This Is America.

I’m a sucker for unapologetic artistry, so I was enamored by Childish Gambino, AKA Donald Glover, in 2018, when he dropped the song and visual for This Is America. A stirring representation, through visual reenactments, of America’s dirty, little, guilty pleasure; the love of violence. The lyrics alone were enough to cause some pearls to be clutched.

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“This Is America, don’t catch you slippin now, look what I’m whippin now, police be trippin now.”

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But it was the imagery and all of the hidden messaging in the song’s lyrics, and especially in the songs visuals, that got everyone talking. For most people, it was that the actor in the opening scene, Calvin the Second, looked eerily similar to Trayvon Martin’s father. Still, for others, it was the machine gun massacre of the church choir that was the breaking point. Either way, there was another hidden message that was highlighted; this ain’t for us.

The target audience, some believed, was not Black folks. People largely decided that, perpetuating the image of a black man killing a black man, was something they were done being entertained by. Many noted that Glover was playing the role of America herself and was thereby speaking to how America inflicts its love of violence on its citizens; namely Black Americans. The idea being that the torture and death of black bodies has become so normalized that appealing to the humanity in others, through stirring imagery, reenactments and actual video footage of murder, is seemingly the most effective way to awaken the souls of those who too easily turn a blind eye.

I’ve never quite developed the emotional bandwidth for actually watching someone die. I can recall nearly filing for divorce after my spouse shared a dashcam video of a handcuffed black man, in police custody, alone in the back of a squad car saying, “I can’t breathe” until he literally stopped breathing. Just typing this brings back the image. I had no idea what I was watching, until I did, and it infuriated me. I was already as uncomfortable with extrajudicial killings as anyone could be; and this was all before Philando Castile took his final breath on FB Live. There are some things you simply can’t unsee, and for (I would imagine) most Black Americans, there is already an overstock of compartmentalized images of violence perpetuated against the Black body. This IS America. Simply by virtue of being a Black American, with Black loved ones, I cannot escape the thoughts, which play in my mind, like a movie trailer, of my own black family members being the subject of someone’s violence filled live stream.

So I spared myself the pain and torment of seeing the live footage of George Floyd taking his final breath. I have somehow been able to go 2 weeks without seeing, or hearing, that torture. But true to form, I couldn’t escape the pain of an impassioned black woman; namely Tamika Mallory. A shared FB live, of her speaking at a Minnesota rally, caught my attention; and so I watched. Stuck; listening to her plead for collective, corrective action. But it was the man who spoke immediately following her, that triggered my final thoughts. A former NFL player, I believe. He took the mic and described the life of “a black man” broadly, but it was clear that he was referring specifically to George Floyd, who he claimed to know like a brother, when he said,

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“you get into some trouble, get in the system; you do what they say you gotta do. You do a little time, get rehabilitated cuase that’s what they say you gotta do; get rehabilitated. You get out, try to make a life for yourself. You get on the straight and narrow; you stumble a little bit, get into some trouble, but it shouldn’t cost you your life.”

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His description, rings true for so many Black American men, women and children who are overpoliced, surveilled and funneled into the prison system. This is a reality, and this reality has a playbook. As is the case with extrajudicial killings, George Floyd’s past criminal history is now being discussed. The hope is that evidencing that he wasn’t perfect could somehow help us cope with, and quickly move past, the pain and traumatizing effects of his public murder. It doesn’t; at least not for me. In one moment, the world watched his story become history. The tragedy is that he didn’t get to write his own story.

But there is one final story to be told about George Floyd’s life; a higher truth that’s does bring me comfort when I think of him. And that is this, that despite how anyone will describe George Floyd’s life, no one can change the highest truth, that George Floyd was a man whose life on Earth was so powerful that it changed an entire Nation, with one breathe.

I will forever say his name, in adoration of the gift that George Floyd’s life has given to me. He taught me that, my past does not have the authority to write my present moment. And that in each moment, if I am not writing my own story, someone else will attempt to do it for me.

#GeorgeFloyd #BlackLivesMatter #CoCreateYourLife #HEALYOU