1) The brother found in the river was missing too and nobody seemed to notice. The details are still murky, for we don't know a) if his death is in any way related to that of Ms. Barnes (but I'm thinking two naked Black bodies floating in a river 40 miles northeast of Baltimore--in what typically is an area where Black folk are scarce--is not a coincidence) and b) how long he had been missing. Nevertheless, lets assume its more than 24 hours, so why did nobody ring the alarm that a grown man is missing. Surely someone missed him.
2) We are reminded, once again, that African-Americans are significantly more likely to be murdered than whites, particularly young men AND those murders are less likely to be solved (78% for whites, 64% for Blacks and Latinos).
3) African-Americans are more likely to be victims of crime, yet those who commit offense against Blacks are treated disparately than those who commit crimes against whites. For example, African-Americans are much more likely to receive the death penalty but especially if the victim is white.
And the list goes on. Day after day we lament the loss of life in this country--be it a sick loved one, a soldier who sacrificed his or her life to protect our freedoms, a victim of a car accident or increasingly the case, the death of a young person at the hands of another or even their own hands. The tragedy of Ms. Barnes' death is like that of many other young folk--we will never know the promise that her future held, her family will never see her pass through various phases of life, never again see her smile, comfort her during moments of anxiety or simply be able to watch her live life. That alone should weigh heavily on our collective psyche.
Yet, as my thoughts drifted from prayers for her family, to prayers for justice, to thinking the unthinkable about my two children, part of me said "here we go again." I've been saying for years something that I know in my heart that others know--that in 2011, in America, we continue to devalue the lives of some because of their race, their gender, their socioeconomic status and/or sexuality. There is no denying this, and I've kept (mentally) a running list (albeit not comprehensive) of examples:
- the great attention paid to shootings in predominantly white and/or middle class communities, such as Columbine, when on a daily basis someone young, Black and male is also senselessly gunned down. Are the tears of their mama's no less real? How can we cry for some, but not all? Columbine led to a call for gun control. Why does it take the tragic death of 12 folks to get us thinking about gun violence when countless thousands before them had met their end at the end of a gun?
- DC in 1992: "And in the District of Columbia, Senator Richard Shelby (D-Ala.) proposed that the death penalty be enacted for the city by Congress after one of his aides was killed on Capitol Hill. Congress responded by cutting out the Mayor's $25 million youth and anti-crime initiative while imposing a referendum on the death penalty." While the death of his aide was obviously tragic, DC was dubbed the murder capital of the nation in 1992, with 75.2 murders per 100,000 residents, for a total of 443 murders. From the beginning of Shelby's tenure (1978) to 1992, 4,110 people were killed in the District, the overwhelming majority Black men between the ages of 16 and 35. Where's the moral outrage for those others gunned down on the streets of DC? What did they do that their killers did not merit the same punishment of the man who killed Shelby's age?
- every semester in my class we discuss the prison industrial complex and the impact of drug laws on the racial disparity in prison population. And every semester students report that, yes, there are drugs in the high schools they attended (especially the private schools) and brace yourself....on campus. Why then do police raid inner city communities in sweeps of street level dealers and not hang out in college dorms arresting those who also violate our drug laws? Drugs are drugs, no matter who uses or sells them.
Race and class have long had value in this nation. White privilege and class privilege have shaped not only opportunities and access to the many rights afforded by our nation, but perhaps, both more importantly and subtly, have worked to create a worthiness hierarchy. What's that formula? 1 White affluent white = 4 white women = 28 gay and lesbians = 43 young, poor, Black men = 245 Muslims, or something like that. Maybe its the legacy of slavery, where we as a nation marginalized, devalued and debased a class of people that made us numb to the callous denial of humanity, producing an anesthetized state of being that made suffering and death--as long as it didn't effect someone we loved--a normal part of life. Whatever the cause, here we reside in a nation that champions itself on valuing life and its precious freedoms, whose best and brightest created this nation based on the notion that "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Guess what America, God weeps for us all, from Jon Benet Ramsey, to Natalee Holloway, and most certainly, for Phylicia Barnes.
