Black burning bodies
High school graduation season is over but the killing season keeps the smell of black burning flesh in the air. Reports of black bodies gunned down—they hang in our conscience, dripping blood into our nasal cavities. Bullet wounds mark black human flesh; brands leave keloid tattoos on bodies, while the other boys and girls hover fearfully waiting their turn.
We bring to a close our celebrations, backyard cookouts congratulating those young people who made it through high school. I watched my two black children walk across the stage, handed their diploma—my son and daughter finished high school. While our family celebrated, I tried to silence my fears of releasing my black children into the world.
As a black parent you hold on to your children—praying their bodies are not marked and tattooed by death—but death always come knocking at our doors and we must sacrifice someone’s black child if not our own.
The celebration ended, but a stench remains in the air—burning flesh, human flesh.
Summers are hot; inner cities without opportunities for young people are breeding grounds for violence. Cities with generations of displaced, destroyed, and damaged people feel the heat of bullets pass across their streets and into flesh. Stressed police, stressed residents, and accessible guns give us soundtracks that load cartridges into cylinders and fingers cocked—you can hear the rhythm and we all dance the dance of death-rat a tat a tat—pow pow pow.
As a child, I heard about my cousin dying from a stray bullet in a robbery; as an adult, I received a text message one afternoon that my cousin was killed due to mistaken identity. I remember someone saying “well he was in those streets and he knew what he was into.” As a member of social media, my newsfeed is inundated with the next mass shooting, unarmed black man, woman, cities ripped wide by gang and police violence. Our answers or attempts to justify the burning flesh points fingers to the victim, we tell ourselves “just be silent and keep your head down” “never reach for anything and keep your hands raised so they can see them.” Our answers deny whiteness and the lingering drippings of violence enacted on black people for so long that they internalize the violence—bang bang bang gun shot to head or through mouth. Rat a tat a tat or pow pow pow as bullets line urban streets and forgotten communities.
Black bodies rot away in a society that refuses to give them dignity; black hands pull triggers, white hands pull triggers and burn flesh. We give no value to the flesh, we let the street sweepers come to rid us of the ashes and refuse to mourn the lost—unless of course it is a white body.
My children survived one phase of their life—they will begin college. They must walk through streets, across campuses, and navigate a society that devalues the black body. I thought about painting their bodies white, they could be white minstrels and no one would see their blackness—police officers, vigilantes, “thugs” and the stray bullet with no name. But somehow black rage would still find them, propelled by anger and vexed frustration someone would pull a trigger in an attempt to avenge the death of black bodies—unloading bullets into a crowd of whiteness. The white paint would wash off and their black bodies would join the others—thrown into the barbecue pit.
I know what it is like to pray and cry silent and ask a God to never let you smell their flesh in the air—bullet wounds and burns. I know what it is like to feel pain in silence. I celebrated their lives and I am trying to believe the world they grow up in is far better than the one I knew in the 1970s and 80s. I am sure my father and mother prayed I would grew up in a far better world than the one they knew in the 40s and 50s; each generation of Black people anticipates things will get better and a “change is gonna’ come”.
We no longer remember burning bodies swinging from trees, charred in churches, and we attempt to erase the sound of the clutch being released, the bullet holes, and the smell in the air. We will hold on to our celebrations in the backyard, congratulate those who made it, and thank God our children did not burn.
However, we are surrounded by burning bodies and we inhale the smoke—our lungs become black and we struggle to breathe in a country that allows groups like the National Rifle Association to sway elections. We exist in a country that easily moves guns across borders and into hands of children and mentally broken people—sometimes hiding behind police badges or just our everyday neighbor.
I know what it is like to pray to God, asking him to come out of the slumber and wake up and listen to the cries of the people—that we could live in a society where black bodies have dignity and do not have to be sacrifices—where we no longer have to clutch our children to our bosom and wonder “will this be the day the die?”
