Forgiveness.
“50, ya’ll”
Those
are the words—a number separated by a contraction, of my comrade, Esther
Armah. As this stalwart of journalism, known for the radical concept of
Emotional Justice, celebrated her fiftieth birthday, with that declaratory
Facebook post along with beautiful selfies, that prove that black don’t crack, I sit in a bagel shop
where memories of hate and pain reside—by others towards me. I avoided walking into this place because I
was responsible, if even partially, for the repeated trauma and bad dreams of
many people. Though this particular
location is just a franchise of the actual ground zero of sadness; though this
location is in the stomping grounds of my birth; just across the street from
where I was raised in apartment 4B on 616 Nostrand Avenue; just three blocks
from my elementary school, where despite a horrifying year of bullying I still
somehow happened to graduate as valedictorian. Where, now white people walk
carefree, and Black people still pace frenetically and worried, as they did
when I rode my bicycle along these Crown Heights streets during the late 1980’s
and 1990’s. At the convergence of upward mobility in this once forgotten
neighborhood, and friends and enemies of my childhood past languish on street
corners unemployed—unemployable—uninspired—stagnated—I sit in a Connecticut
Muffin writing. Writing about and
painfully acknowledging that I was forced to go away for over a decade where
despite the hell of contemporary Black male inevitability—prison—I was able to
earn a degree, write, teach, discover my self-worth, and prepare myself for
academic conversations around things like emotional justice, feminism, and
patriarchy, and whiteness, and social exclusion.
Light
jazz music plays in the background in this muffin shop where people that look
like me glance into the space with eyes of awkwardness and distance. Gentrification, the term used in politically
correct arenas, but usually explained as, “white people taking over,” behind
closed doors complicates this moment of personal forgiveness. So, I put my
headphones on and play some Sizzla, the Praise
Ye Jah album, to block out my own hypocrisy of supporting “white people
taking,” by buying a cinnamon raisin bagel and Martinelli’s apple juice from
this place when I could have easily went to the Jamaican restaurant across the
street, right? But I couldn't because I needed to be here in this place where
lost, confused, struggling, and hurting Black boys invaded the same muffin
shop, but in SoHo over a decade ago, and changed lives forever. So, I needed Sizzla
because songs like Dem Ah Wonder and Homeless and
Did You Ever takes me back to a time when the
struggle of being young and confused and wanting and lost, all while being
Black and male, was vivid—was real. The nostalgia of his music allows me to
feel my pain of 10:13:99,
amid the new Select Bus Service lane, college town type bar called Nostrand Ave
Pub, and this muffin shop that are all signifiers of upward mobility to some,
and reminders of marginalization to others—community development to some and
“white people taking over” to others.
This
pain that has long evolved beyond guilt, still resonates—maybe like white
guilt? Systems of oppression (something else I learned about in despite being
that sickening place of Black male inevitability) that make things like armed
robbery very viable venues of upward mobility for young brothers from places
like Crown Heights (before and after we started calling Prospect heights) is to
blame for why we are lost and hurting, still.
bell hooks, Malcolm X, Audrey Lorde, and James, Baldwin taught me about these
systems. First-hand racism in places like Otisville, Oneida, Green Haven, and
Downstate made these theories visible to me. Yes, the pain my cohorts and I
caused (and still causing for some on 10:13:99) are all evident displays of
structural oppression that explains why so many Black, Brown, and Indigenous
folks are hurting and hurting others the world over. This disaster of (dis)order of
white supremacist capitalist patriarchy is why in places like Laventille,
Trinidad and Soweto, South Africa and New Orleans, Louisiana, hurting Black
folks rank high at the margins of society. I understand why gentrification
invites visceral feelings of white hatred—it makes us feel less; it makes us
feel wrong and guilty for observing that the neighborhood seems safer when
white people move in, though crime reduction is monolithic problem that is obfuscated
by many things—not just white people moving into the hood. Intellectually, I
understand that now.
Yet,
10:13:99,
is not and should not be felt as simply a machination of systemic oppression.
10:13:99, for some is the reminder of the seed of depression, lost love, new
fear, and understood hate—partially because of me. For some, the nightmares of
that evening ruined good memories of past 10:13:99’s. Where some remembered
that day as their wedding anniversary or birthday, they now ominously associate
that day with death, and bullets, and reckless abandon. That day, not much unlike this day for some
who live near this Connecticut Muffin franchise in Crown Heights, is filled
with pain and hurt. Whether it is the
ritualistic illustration of whiteness exemplified through Black marginalization
experienced as gentrification, or Black boys ruining 10:13:99 for dozens, maybe
scores, of people, it is all hurt.
It
is for that hurt that I ask for forgiveness. It is for the visceral pain,
trauma, hate, and depression now attributed to 10:13:99 that I ask for
forgiveness. It is in the spirit of restorative justice that I sit in this
muffin shop where the marginalization of my people, expressed as “white people
taking over,” are really dormant feelings of generational oppression. I write this at the crossroads of a corner
bodega where once lost and hurting Black youths posted up in their baddest
screw-face and employed in the underground economy, now give wind to two
middle-aged and balding white men. I offer this solemn request for forgiveness
as I see a past enemy who once was one of the best basketball players in the
neighborhood, but, now daily languishes drunk on the corner as an ornament of
the past, standing juxtaposed to a twenty-something year old white woman carrying
her laundry. It is in this place where Sizzla comforts me with Dem Ah Wonder I ask for forgiveness from
10:13:99, because I know we as complicated and fragile young Black boys ruined
it for so many and perpetuated the complexity and often-horrid nature of our
human experience.
It
is in within the confines of these experiences that I celebrate my comrade's,
Esther Armah’s fiftieth revolution around this planet. It is within the
memories and consternation of that inescapable past that I celebrate my coming
trek into a new year. It is a forgiveness that is forever conditional.
It
is with this ask of forgiveness that I remember my friend, once also lost, who
shares daily reminders of fifty, not because of a birthday or wedding
anniversary, but because his life is now relegated to a sentence of 50 years-to
life in prison because his contribution to the trauma of 10:13:99. This all messy; this is why so many folks walk
frenetically through these streets in ghettoes and prisons and detention
centers worldwide; why they silently despise those who intrude their space of confusion
and pain; why Treach from Naughty said, “if you aint’ from the ghetto,
then stay the fuck outta the ghetto!” There is no equanimity for the
oppressed or the oppressor. There is only hoped forgiveness which begins a
messy and difficult process of healing.
“50,
y’all.”
