By Jerry Girley, Esq.
Can you hear me now? These are the familiar words of a very famous cell phone marketing campaign. As children, whenever we failed to immediately follow my mother’s instructions she would say, “If you can’t hear me then you will feel me.” Those were her famous last words before she resorted to physical punishment. Dr. King said that violence is the language of the unheard. My father told me that war is a continuation of diplomacy through other means. The common thread that runs through each of these statements is that people who feel that they are being ignored find alternative ways to get their point across. In the context of the current Minnesota unrest Americans are becoming very unsettled. As always there are calls for Black people to remain calm and to not engage in senseless and pointless violence. However, before we rush to tamp down these expressions of outrage we should ask whether they are truly senseless?
Violence is the first language that America taught Black people. We were violently plucked from Africa. We were violently branded like cattle and crammed into slave ships. We were violently torn from our family members and sold on auction blocks. We were violently whipped by cruel slave masters during slavery and our black bodies were violently mutilated by cutting off our toes or blinding one of our eyes if we attempted to escape slavery. After we were, “Freed” from slavery we were terrorized by the KKK and lynched by people who saw themselves as God fearing people. So is it any wonder that Black people would speak back to America in the same manner that America has consistently spoken to us?
The Black people of Minneapolis and other major cities share a collective American experience of living in constant fear of becoming a victim of a grotesque one sided justice systems that consistently only delivers justice to the White majority. It is an enormous and a fatiguing burden that all members of the Black community are forced to shoulder regardless of their social strata, wealth or individual life achievements. Minneapolis must be viewed within this much larger historical and national context. Each time one unarmed Black is killed, like a dog in the streets, all of the members of the Black community die just a little, maybe a lot. The words of our Lord and Savior come to mind here, “If you have done this to the least of my brethren, you have done it to me.”
We can interpret the protest surrounding the death of George Floyd through several different lenses, but I interpret it through the lens of my mother. Black people are saying to America can you feel my pain? I also view this present conflagration through the lens of my father’s words. We are witnessing a continuation of a national conversation, about structural oppression, by another means.
When the members of the Black community break out windows, start fires and even loot, these acts communicate an unmistakable message. It’s so easy for us to dismiss these actions as thuggish behavior. I’ll make a deal with the much larger community; I will not attempt to deify these protestors if you do not attempt to demonize them.
What we are witnessing here is nothing more or less than humanity on full display. All people have an inherent right to defend themselves. We need to keep in mind that the protestors did not just spontaneously decide to march on the police department without provocation. As I have said, Black people are simply mirroring the violence and the mayhem the much larger society has visited upon them for hundreds of years.
Some Black leaders are uncomfortable that the White majority is uncomfortable. They are concerned that the cause of justice will be obscured. Withstanding these considerations the best remedy may be to let the world see our sustained expression of utter fatigue which is linked to hundreds of years of being treated as less than human beings. The danger that we face in quieting the voices of the oppress too quickly is that the much larger society will never be required to share the enormous burden of racial oppression.
Black people have placed a question on the floor for the much larger community. Can you feel me now?
–Jerry Girley is a civil rights attorney in Central Florida. He has appeared as a commentator on television and radio, tackling current events such as the Trayvon Martin tragedy and police brutality. He has sat on various panels from Yale Divinity School to the Florida Agriculture and Metropolitan University School of Law where he discussed issues of race, religion, the law, and their intersection. As an ordained reverend, he also serves as a staff minister at Freedom Ministries Church located in Apopka, Florida and he serves as their General Counsel
