Who Can I Run To When I Need…Justice?

The longer I live the more Audre Lorde’s words ring true to me: the master’s tools will never be used to dismantle the master’s house. In light of Lorde’s words, the more I work as a civil rights lawyer the more I become acutely aware of the absurdity of the idea that I can work within the current legal structure to bring about meaningful change for Blacks. Can I truly expect to use a system designed by the white supremacy structure to perpetuate white supremacy, to eradicate white supremacy? Of corse not!  I ask myself , why am I so surprised when time and again my Black clients are subjected to extreme injustice? My conclusion is this, we cannot seek justice within a so called system of justice that Blacks did not design and have no real power to correct. As long as we are operating within the current system, and agreeing to play by the rules that it imposes upon us, justice will always be an elusive social and political destination.

What then do we do? What is the alternative to such frustration? How do you create a system in which all parties come together to create the rules of engagement? The American dream is a game that’s being played, but we are not privy to all the rules. More troubling, it seems that as soon as we discover how to play and develop strategies, the rules seem to change, but to our disadvantage. We were told we should be slaves because we are ignorant and somehow subhuman. But when we tried to acquire education and learn to read, this was made illegal. We were told we were free from slavery, except if we are convicted of a crime. Then they created laws to criminalize behavior that effectively criminalizes being black. We are told that we must be self-sufficient and take personal responsibility; to pull ourselves up by the bootstrap. But when we established black townships like Greenwood, also known as the Black Wall Street, you incited a racial pogrom that destroyed the city. Or you put a highway through the city and killed it, like you did in Durham. We are told that education is the key. But then we are given inferior schools in our neighborhood and forced on inferior educational tracks after we’ve been labeled deficient in some respects.

How then do we escape this unyielding cycle of oppression? How do I work so that my children are not dealing with the same issues that I deal with, that my parents dealt with and that my grandparents? What must be done so that I am not afraid that some unstable self-appointed neighborhood watchman will kill my future son, and that a jury will acquit him because being afraid of the black male body is always justifiable? How do I escape the agony of being Black in America? Sometimes the pain is so deep that it’s hard to breathe…I can’t breathe!

Riding through the streets, my soul is vexed every time I see the police holing some black boy or man on the side of the road as they illegally search their car. Are Black people citizens or captives being contained? Has much changed since slavery? Too frequently I am forced to believe that very little has changed since Taney’s declaration in Dred Scott when he wrote that “the black man has no right which the white man is bound to respect.” This message has certainly been screamed loudly with each failure to prosecute for the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland and countless others.

What must we do to change this? I do not know, nor will I try to think of a solution. I know I try to end each post on a high note, and offer some potential remedies. However, life is not always about nice, neat solutions at the end of a blog post. There are moments when the most important and appropriate action to take is to simply sit with your questions and emotions. Not all questions are meant to be answered. Indeed, not all questions can be answered. At times questions are a means to processing the painful reality of life. In this instance, my questions are intended for that purpose. I do not seek solutions necessarily, but a method for processing. I invite you too to process through these questions and others that you may have. Perhaps that is the first step to finding viable solutions. Or maybe it’s only the first step that helps me breathe just a little better.

–Until Next Time–
Palooke