African American
Related: About this forumTa-Nehisi Coates just keeps hitting balls out of the park...
To Raise, Love, and Lose a Black Child
Last Friday, I called Jordan Davis's mother Lucia McBath. It's been almost two years since her son was murdered by a man who took offense to his music. The murderer was Michael Dunn. After shooting the boy, Dunn drove to a motel with his girlfriend. He ordered pizza. He mixed a few cocktails. Then, the next day, he turned himself in and claimed that he was defending himself against a shotgun-wielding Davis. No shotgun was ever found. In his first trial, Dunn was convicted of attempted murder, for shootingunjustifiablyat Davis's friends. He was not convicted of murdering Jordan Davis after the jury deadlocked. The state of Florida retried the case, and this time convicted Dunn of first-degree murder.
McBath and I had talked twice before and each time I'd found her to be a woman of direct and open feeling. The first time we talked she cried as she recounted the life of her lost son. The second time she stood before my son and insisted that he mattered, though all the powers of the world might tell him different. With wild theories of phantom shotguns now banished, I wanted to know how McBath felt and how she was filling the yawning space left by her departed son.
"I guess I'm speechless," she said. "Excited. Happy. It feels like the weight of the world has been lifted. But I definitely am waffling back and forth. I was elated about justice for Jordan, but I would prefer to have him here, thriving and growing. I wish that was my reality, but in light of everything this is the best I can get."
She told me that she'd taken the energy that she'd once put into child-rearing and given herself over to activism. She has set up a scholarship fund in her son's name. She is working with President Obama's My Brother's Keeper initiative.
"I've been working with them because my heart is for our people," she said, speaking of My Brother's Keeper. "My heart is for everyone, but I know that there is a lot of work that has to be done for my own people."
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/10/to-raise-love-and-lose-a-black-child/381189/?single_page=true
IMO, Coates has been on fire for pretty much all of 2014...
bravenak
(34,648 posts)Number23
(24,544 posts)I read and talked quite a bit about that story here. It was not lost on me that this woman, who talked so much about how racist, homophobic and closed minded her community was, appears to have internalized some of these unsavory traits even if 100% unintentionally. Her comments about having to go to the "other" side of town to get the child's hair cut (who cuts a 2 year old girls' hair???) where locals weren't "nice" to her made that really obvious to me.
And to be honest, that's the really horrible, gut wrenching thing about racism and why it will NOT die. So many of its greatest perpetrator are unwilling or unable to even realize that it's the reason that they are thinking/doing/saying what they're doing. It's hard to slay a dragon when you can't (or won't) see it.
Edit: And in doing his Greatest "Hits" against black folks by the cops, Coates leaves off the black actress who was arrested for sitting in a car and kissing her white boyfriend while sitting in his lap fully clothed.
JustAnotherGen
(31,828 posts)Because it needs to be read by quite a few at DU.
sheshe2
(83,773 posts)kwassa
(23,340 posts)and with his position as editor at The Atlantic he has a big influential bully pulpit to use for quite awhile. This, in itself, is fantastic.