I was going to drive across America to visit my older brother in California next summer but his sudden death this year trashed that plan. I hadn’t seen him since my mother’s funeral many years ago and I was looking forward to the adventure. It would also be a check mark on my bucket list. I had told him I was coming and had started an online file in Trello to plot the trip, but after this presidential year’s election, I can’t fathom why a black guy in a two seat convertable sports car with New York plates would want to drive through all those red states of middle America.
According to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons (NamUS) database, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, more than 600,000 people go missing annually. Approximately 4,400 unidentified bodies are recovered each year. Nationwide, there are roughly 6.5 missing
World Population Review
I don’t want to be an unidentified body in the woods.
Some of you read that and said, “I know that’s right”. Others said, “don’t be so paranoid” and the middle of the road folks said, “you’ve got to live your life”. My answer: Sandra Bland. Remember her. Murdered in Texas in police custody after a traffic stop. What would happen to me on Route 66. I’d like to think a State Trooper or a Good Samaritan would help with a flat tire or a broken belt. I’d like to think they’d even let me sleep in the station or on their couch until the garage opened in the morning without thinking unimaginable thoughts about me, but this is the United States and the country just demonstrated it’s trying hard to get back to the Darkie Ages. You know, when black men being lynched was a common occurance, black women were being raped and black boys and girls were being brutalized, criminalized, undereducated or, or, or . . . I could continue listing injustices but you get it. You know stuff like that still happens everyday and in ways the “Average American” might not consider.*
Include the rash of states that have rolled back abolition rights and re-legislated voting rights. Injustice affects more than people of color.
So we’re still not ready. Kamala Harris got closer than close, being Vice President and, in what seemed to be a sweet spot, running for president of the United States. Who would have believed people would vote for the demonstrated devil they already knew and in such overwhelming numbers.
If all 34 million eligible black voters voted for Harris, she still wouldn’t have won. Black voters comprise about 14% of the voting pool. That means “others” would have had to come out in large numbers for the win. There was large voter turnout, but they cast their votes like dice rather than using it as an educated privilege. I am embarrassed to look most people in the eye when the election comes up realizing that they said the right things but in the closeted space of the voting booth they checked the wrong box with steely conscience they were doing the right thing for America while ignoring the biases, prejudices and projected fears they felt.
Every black man in America has gotten in an elevator and noticed the woman already there shift their pocketbook to the other side. It didnt matter how he was dressed or what building they were in. The circumstances really didn’t matter. It was that subconscious act that they took. So we had an election where most Americans shifted their pocketbooks to the other side, checked their wallets or simply took a step back.
We’re still waiting for America to be what we know it can be. What it promised it might be, understanding that from inception some folks were counted as property, 3/5ths people, and others got no rights at all even though they bore America’s children. The question is not why but know long, how many generations, must pass before truly moral and unbiased folks get elected.
*NOTE: people of color are not Average Americans. Every time anyone uses the term African American, they’re calling attention to what they think people of color are and all the biases and stereotypes that come with the association. Every time we are Black or White we are “qualifying” our status as Americans. CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG!
Fried Chicken & Philosophy 