They have always been there.
Their bodies have always been there.
Their suffering has always been there for all to see.
They were stolen, sold, crammed into ships, raped and murdered during the “Middle Passage”, sold, raped and murdered by their owners, sold, sold, sold with all their children and children’s children — a few names: Ghar, Dayhoo, Ba, Frar, Humom.
More names than you can ever imagine have always been available for all to know.
Old News. Eternal News.
History has been available in books, in stories passed down, in the implements of cruelty, persecution, bondage. In collars and shackles and slave badges. In iron masks, branding irons, in cattle-hide whips, in posters announcing rewards for runaways — a few names: “Mary, wife, stout and strong”; Fielding, the oldest, 12, with heavy eyelids”; “Matilda, a smart looking child”; Malcolm, 4, a cloth cap, a swelling at the navel”; Washington, husband, several teeth gone” …. More names than you might imagine have always been available for all to know.
Old News. Eternal news.
America has been busy lynching black bodies for well over a century. From bridges, telegraph poles, low branches, high branches. America has burned those bodies alive, cut them, smashed them with stones, shovels, hammers; shot them with rifles, shotguns, revolvers; taken souvenirs — bones, skulls, skin; taken photos of smiling townspeople gathered around the remains — a few names: Warren Powers, Floyd Carmichael, George King, Zacharia Walker ….
More names than you might imagine have always been available for all to know.
Old News. Eternal News.
After slavery came segregation, red-lining, police violence, terrible schools, drug trafficking (the opioid epidemic in white America suddenly made us aware that addiction is a disease, a moneymaker, a wrecker of families and neighborhoods. How shocking. Who knew.) Mass incarceration is another way to keep the stamp of ‘animal’ on their bodies. Their bodies turn against them with rates of high blood pressure, strokes and cancer almost double that of whites. Then too, the modern kind of lynching persists. The bodies persist. You might know some of the new names: George Floyd, Philando Castile, Elijah McClain. Other names persist until they are forgotten in the sea of names, the ocean of names, the water planet awash in storms: Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, Oscar Grant.
More names than you might imagine are available for all to know.
The old news, the eternal news, is this: “A black life is worth less than a white life in America.”*
That has always been true. Their bodies have always been there. Their suffering has always been there for all to see.
Do you see?
