by Ben Philippe
Elijah, by all accounts, had none of the weird anger that I do. This isn’t supposition or narrative like the bit of trivia that he “liked to play the violin to calm down stray cats”; I know this because, while restrained, Elijah is on record as having vomited several times, for which he apologized, saying, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to do that, I can’t breathe correctly.” What was his favorite color, I wonder? What was his first heartbreak? How did he lose his virginity? Where was he born? Was he a momma’s boy, too? Breonna Taylor will later appear on the covers of O, The Oprah Magazine and Vanity Fair, less human and more angelic each time. Her flesh pierced by hot metal, blood splattered over her own home; her phone will never be unlocked again, but she looks stunning. One of us has to be the final straw, right? Please, let one of us be the final straw, a tipping point of some kind as opposed to this neverending accumulation of murdered bodies. It won’t be this summer. I already know that.
A large bald white man in a V-neck that’s almost translucent with sweat enters the train at Times Square. He looks around at the stray protestors and their signage and scoffs loud enough to be heard before finding his seat by the train doors, directly across from me. He wears no mask, and his wrinkles are profound. Black people were probably packed at the end of public transport when he was a young man. He shakes his head, visibly displeased with where all these young people have been today.
“This whole thing,” he eventually says, loudly and to no one in particular, “this ends in a race war if you ask me. No two ways about it.”
He notices me and adds, “I don’t want trouble: I’m just saying.”
The “I don’t want trouble” is strictly for my benefit; to temper down the strange Black man smiling at him from under his mask. I return to my phone, headphones on, containing the smile the rest of the way back up to Harlem.
I smile because, as ridiculous as the concept of a race war is, the fear of the concept lingering in people’s minds pleases me. It brings a sudden manic joy to my heart. I don’t want kinship and brotherhood. I don’t want to jeer depictions of Donald Trump in diapers and a Ku Klux Klan hood. More and more, I want people to throw bricks and for those bricks to hit skulls. No more tiny parking lot fireworks of outrage; I want a forest fire to start and then never stop until it hits the other coast. Daenerys Targaryen at the head of a fleet of fire-breathing dragons; 3.797 million square miles of forest fires.
Making a few of us exceptional was your first mistake. We began to inspire each other more than we fear you. Oprah and Kaepernick are huddled up over maps and strategizing as we speak. Barack is hearing them out with a hand at his chin and his sleeves rolled up, considering all the eventualities, all at once. Kanye is our Joker; a wild card even to us. At some point soon, we’ll get the signal, sharpen our “Excellence in Diversity” medals into jagged shards, and stab you in the eye with them before collecting your keys, wallets, and phones and convening to the nearest meeting spot to await the next set of instructions. You’ll wake up in the middle of the night and run to your front yard barefoot and panicked, hearing us in the wind.
You miscounted the men, you dummy. Yes, we’re only forty-something million here in the United States, but there are legions of us all over the world these days. A diaspora of tiny cells across the globe waiting for the breaking point. French Canadian northerners, Brazilians of African ancestry, and all the warlords and kids with distended bellies in Africa. There are hidden warehouses of weapons and shields all over. We’re building ships and amassing wealth as we speak. Our laughs are louder and our kitchens were hotter and smelled spicier than yours when we were growing up: I promise you we will win. Our parents let us touch the stovetop to learn from the burn to keep away from it. Unlike your imagined slights and grievances—the lyrics you can’t sing, the dreads you wish you were allowed to wear—we know what’s at stake. We will march the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, again, only with blades in hand in this time.
And even that won’t be “overwhelming,” as Francesca says. It will be just enough.
And to be clear, it’s not up to us, Black people, people of color, to fix this. We could all stay home eating nachos all day and be entirely in the right to do so. How come? Because this is not a shared burden. Black people built this country. That is a fact as simple and tedious as you having built your Ikea TV console. The agriculture, the textile, the toil, the soil, we did it all. We simply had no say in how it would all be put to use; only the certainty that it wouldn’t be for our benefit. So, no: we do not share the blame, nor do we share the power to enact this change “we” now all want.
And if you can’t fix this—really fix it—then the old asshole on the train was right: the minister’s dream, that beautiful dream I grew up thinking was a given and that I now realize was just another bit of social media content created around a Black man’s executed corpse, well, that dream will end. You don’t have a lot of time before it does, either. People are chugging melatonin and scrolling through their phones all night. It’s harder and harder to fall asleep, let alone to dream these days. And the moment it does end, the inevitable climax to this story will indeed become war.
And I won’t march alongside you then. Sorry, Francesca, Marty, Kevin, Johnny, Jane, Georgie, Will, and all the other white people I love so much. Sorry, Mia. Sorry, reader. Doubting this, thinking I’m an Oreo—white on the inside and more like you than not—well, it might be your undoing then, friends. When this race war hits its crescendo, I’ll gather you all into a beautifully decorated room under the pretense of unity. I’ll give a speech to civility and all the good times we’ve shared. I’ll smile as we raise our glasses to your good white health while the detonator blinks under the table, knowing the exits are locked and the air vents filled with gas. Movements need martyrs with anger to spare—and my side was decided at birth.
Thirty
One of the Good Ones
One thing that might have fallen through the cracks of all these stories is that I am, at heart, a Black man who likes himself enough to have developed a vested interest in not dying. No, really: terrorism imagery aside, I actually do love it here among the living. As small as it may be, I love my life on this dying rock of a planet, zip code: America.
My “Black joy” isn’t a single monolithic thing. It’s a series of small and ordinary pleasures you might call basic. Candy and desserts. A good from-the-gut laugh you didn’t see coming. Winning over a classroom of teenage students with the right pop culture reference. A hockey game turning out exactly like I want. Watching someone smile while they’re reading a book I’ve read on the train. Leaning in for a kiss with closed eyes, sensing the other person is leaning forward, too. My dog’s cold nose on my foot when I’ve overslept. Nailing a new recipe and the satisfaction of clean kitchen counters.
And in order to go on enjoying my neat and ordered little life, I need my joy to be cataloged as something other than the counterpoint to another Black person’s suffering. I, shall we say, bristle at the idea that it only comes into focus when Black blood is splattered across the pavement or once asphyxiation has occurred.
“I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.”—Eric Garner
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to do that, I can’t breathe correctly.”—Elijah McClain
“I can’t breathe! Mama! Mama . . . I’m through!”—George Floyd
It’s not a slogan or a hashtag coming to these men who look like me at the hour of their deaths. They aren’t quoting one another. These are terrified people dying and hoping while dying that someone, for a brief moment, will remember that they are human beings with airways that require oxygen. They are hoping, praying, begging for their killers to remember that they’re actually killing someone. They’re tapping out. You win. Just spare us.
How many others have there been that you and I will nev
er hear about? How many Black hearts were violently stopped between Emmett Till and George Floyd? Away from crowds and before cell phone cameras?
Being a Black man in America has been an entirely different experience from being Black everywhere before. Blackness is just different here. Here, it comes with a community and a history but also with an immediate fear and a proportional rage at having to be so afraid all the time. And, make no mistake, white friends: I truly am afraid all the time. There is nothing I can do to remove the need for oxygen from my lungs. I can drown right here on solid ground in this country and—I promise you—no one thinks about my death more than me. I’ve been watching variations of it since my first horror movie. Freddy, Chucky, and Jason have all gleefully driven sharp metal into a body like mine in the basement as the pretty white people upstairs suspected something sinister was afoot. It is always a little gorier than it needs to be; a close-up shot on the beautiful contrast of black skin and glistening red pouring out. I’m so rarely mourned. The last chapter of the young and Black is familiar, no? Another shame, another blow to some amorphous community.
I promised myself when I started this book that it would, if nothing else, be honest. So, let’s do just that right now, shall we?
I know I’m “one of the good ones.”
There, I said it. As much as I abhor that toxic description that gauges human life on a messed-up internalized scale of white approval, I also won’t kid myself and pretend I haven’t always been aware of it. Whatever the exact test is, I know I pass it. It wasn’t equality that I was looking for; it was privilege and maybe the safety that comes with the word.
I’ve done everything right since crossing that first border on a Greyhound bus with an Ivy League acceptance letter in my hoodie sleeve and my mother’s hand on my knee. Every last thing. I got the first fancy degree, and then the next. I pay my bills on time and don’t spit on the ground. I have no hint of a criminal record. I’ve also been a good immigrant, never outlasting any of my visas.
I cross the street coming out of the subway at night because that little old lady in front of me is visibly terrified of the Black man behind her and she shouldn’t be scared but she is literally shaking, so why not do her that unfair kindness?
I start every email with “I hope all is well.” And sign them off with a friendly “Cheers.” It’s a framework meant to make everything I say friendly and approachable; written with a smile. When requested, I present my ID to officers with a smile and my headphones off. By even the harshest assessment, I might amount to “moody, insecure, underwhelming human being with trust issues, but still a good Black.” The one you’re not talking about when you talk about them.
I’ve done everything that would make me respectable and safe in this country. It wasn’t conscious but it also didn’t happen without my notice. I was told that if I did then I might just be in the shorter line of the ones you begrudgingly let into your gated community when some have to be let in.
And even still, after a decade of this never-ending, backbreaking game of hopscotch, no one will tell me that I, or my future kids, or my grandkids, won’t die exactly like George and the others—at the hands of people we were taught to trust and obey if we wanted to be safe. No one can.
So, what status quo is there to be attached to if maintaining it doesn’t lessen that possible outcome? Why wouldn’t I feel some curiosity for that all-encompassing fire that burns it all to a crisp?
“It’s okay to be angry, Ben.”
No, it’s not. God bless your heart, Francesca, really, but the absolute well-meaning caucasity of thinking that letting myself get angry about the treatment of Black lives in this country simply ends at a march and a cardboard sign . . . Of thinking that you’d all be safe if we, even the good ones, allowed ourselves to express the anger that this world deserves.
So, no: I cannot let myself get that angry. I can express measured frustration. I can march and protest. Be snarky on Twitter or try to pen an essay for The Atlantic. I can make white friends, pick my battles, and slowly change their minds about a few specific things, hoping it spreads . . . I can compartmentalize and smile through it. I can flirt with the anger, allow myself a stray comment here and there, making a dinner party awkward, but I cannot let it take the reins.
Angry with a capital A? Nah, that’s not allowed. Robert’s son is smarter than to gamble it all away quite yet. That anger extinguishes the goodwill I’ve lived my life accumulating, and like I said: I like my life. I want to see it through to a satisfyingly boring conclusion. My final Pokémon evolution is old Haitian man with thick-ass leather sandals in the summer, walking around the neighborhood with his two old English sheepdogs, Melvin and Gilmore. It’s going to be great.
So, no: I, Ben, still do not want to die in this country. I don’t consent to the cost of admission into this country being my potential lynching if I have a bad day and displease you. I don’t want to be a T-shirt, poster, chant, or statistic. Like every other Black body roaming this land, I want to be safe here and I want to be safe here now. I’m a coward and I don’t want to die.
And before you ask, no, I’m not leaving either now that I’m here. Womp womp. Too much of my Black joy is tethered to this place, sorry. Besides, this whole continent is about people claiming land that isn’t theirs and chasing occupants out, isn’t it? I have no problem ripping your homeland from your clutches now that I’ve found my tribe. You leave if you have a problem with my continued presence here. You go back to Canada, you go back to Haiti.
To quote Kimberly Latrice Jones, a Black Lives Matter activist whose viral video will come to define the summer of 2020 for me: “They are lucky that what Black people are looking for is equality and not revenge.”
You really are, friend. Goddamn blessed. Because some of us? Some of those with the bright smiles, cute dogs, soy milk in the fridge, and Gilmore Girls reruns in the background . . . Some of us do want payback for all of this.
* * *
Negroes,
Sweet and docile,
Meek, humble, and kind:
Beware the day
They change their minds!
—LANGSTON HUGHES
* * *
Thirty-One
Conclusion: How to Thrive in a Black Body at Any Age
You’re four or five years old, it’s hard to remember which. Your world is Creole and you’re completely naked.
You love the power of your newly discovered nakedness. It freaking thrills you to run through gardens, dick out, butt high, shriek-laughing while everyone at your parents’ fancy garden party stares at you. Anyone who makes eye contact with your dick is a pedophile! You don’t even know what that word means, but you know they’re the ones doing something wrong, not you. You stop by the clothed table of food and strike a pose. Twenty Haitian socialite pedophiles, coming up! You won’t know what shame is for another few hours.
Claudine, a family friend, laughs and claps for you as you lap circles around the maids and your dad. “He’s darker-skinned than you would expect from you and Robert,” you hear her tell your mom who is also laughing, and you note that Black comes in ranked shades. You either carry light or darkness in your skin.
Your dad sees no humor in your objectively hilarious wiener flopping around on a Sunday. You might have stood on a chair at some point? You don’t remember it. He is furious, embarrassed, and humiliated all at once. And scary, so overwhelmingly scary. His five-feet-nine looks like a skyscraper crumbling over you. Once the guests are gone, you’re made to kneel in the solarium for forty minutes while he rages, and then you get your first belt-whipping. The one that draws blood. You really should never be naked.
You’re five or six, and your world is not Creole anymore. It’s the second time. He didn’t draw blood this time.
“You can’t keep doing this to him once we’re in Canada!” Mom says, dressed in her white nursing uniform, getting home from work late to find you kneeling in the corner of Dad’s office. The maids are just outsi
de, peering in with their hands on their mouths at all the screaming. There’s no one to call in Haiti.
“Kids need structure,” he says. “He’s not the angel you think.”
You want to say, But I didn’t unstructure anything! I was just playing with it, but it comes out as a shriek of pain. You can’t poop after you get the belt. Your butt is numb for days until it isn’t.
Mom is crying now and kissing all over your head, and she doesn’t have to say anything; you already know you’re the most important thing in the world to her. You want to tell her you’re okay and that you barely felt this one compared to the first one, that your skin is hard and Robert-proof now, but it’s all coming out in wails and blubber and tears.
“I’m a nurse. I have syringes and I have drugs,” she says. “If you ever touch him again, I’ll kill you. I know how to.”
You hold on to her and let yourself be carried out on her wet shoulder. Your mom is not a violent woman; your dad just requires a reconsideration of what she thinks herself capable of doing. This is the part where she ices your butt with tears in her eyes. There’s safety in her violence. No one else will ever love you this much. You will never not remember these moments.
You decide you don’t like this person anymore. You can’t see if he’s staring back at you because of the light reflecting in his glasses, but the thought is sharp in the back of your mind as you watch his desk shrink away: Someday when I’m big, I’ll get you back for this. For her crying, me crying. For all of it.