My Vanishing Country

by Bakari Sellers

  Nosizwe, who had toxic arguments with my mother through the years, always says Daddy was a brilliant and loving father, the best father in the world, but he probably didn’t know how to be the greatest husband. “Daddy would circumvent Mom,” Nosizwe says. “I thought why he did it was probably right, but I do realize that a lot of the issues that she had with their relationship are very valid. And a lot of the things that he did probably made it worse.”

  My mother’s anxiety came with mood swings, which meant she could be the salt-of-the-earth-damn-near-first-lady-of-the-church mother in the morning and then the harshest, most mean-spirited . . . words escape me to describe how disruptive she could be in the evening. And then the next few days she couldn’t get out of bed.

  But don’t for one moment think I am saying her mental health made her weak, because that would be wrong. She survived, becoming the breadwinner during those periods when my father’s felony record made it hard for him to make a living.

  Still, we can’t pretend that mental health issues are merely “life ain’t been no box of chocolates.” It’s more like life is a snake pit, and, while in it, you don’t know whether you’re going to find a garden snake or get bit by a water moccasin. It’s that tough.

  After my parents took me to a therapist to investigate the cause of my anxiety and headaches, my oversleeping and then not sleeping, a theory emerged, through a process of elimination, that indeed I was afraid of death. I refused to go to funerals, and after they prodded me, I’m sure I talked about Al’s death.

  By myself, I linked a lot of the issues I was having to my mother. My relationship with her became particularly fragile around high school. I was going through eighth, ninth, and tenth grades, excelling academically and socially. Even in college, I was coming into my own politically and maturing and having healthy relationships with everyone but my mother—which is kind of different compared with most black men.

  My mother and I were very close when I was young. I was close to both my parents. Since my dad was always working late, though, my mom and I used to travel together to conventions she attended. She read to me, we played games together, she taught us children how to speak properly without using “um.” But around when I was in high school, my mom stopped cooking. I often say that she hasn’t really cooked since the Chicago Bulls broke up, which was in 1998; since then, my dad has done all the cooking. Her behavior changed. I didn’t understand how to handle it, and I don’t think I was strong enough to handle it, so in response, I became very distant from her. By the time I was in law school, I went months without talking to her because I didn’t know what I was going to get in return.

  These days, my mother is doing better through talking to people and taking medication. And even more important, she recognizes that she has a mental health challenge. Very strong people, very independent people often don’t believe that they have such an illness. They don’t believe that they’re affecting other people the way that they are. My mom may have taken a while to get there, but at least she’s there now. And I think that’s the challenge for all of us who struggle with anxiety and related difficulties.

  My own anxiety, which in part expresses itself as a fear of death, is linked to the work I feel I still have left to do. Meeting that ultimate moment petrifies me because of all the things I still want to accomplish. Truth be told, even before Al died, I heard a lot about death. During every Orangeburg Massacre anniversary, I listened attentively to families discuss the pain of having lost a relative and all the details of how they were killed. All of that was branded on my brain. My mother never liked me to attend those anniversaries. All that talk of killings and sorrow, she believed, was no good for a child. She’d see my father crying onstage and then turn to see my little face wet with tears as well as I sat in the audience watching my dad. “Just boohoo-ing,” she recalls.

  My father is my hero, and he has passed his torch to me, but could the weight of that responsibility also be the source of my anxiety?

  The Weight of the Torch

  I fear death, but I also fear failure, which I see as a sort of small death. When you’re black and from the South, failure affects more than you. For those of us who have been fortunate enough to escape or leave the proverbial traps and have a platform to affect others, failure is not just letting ourselves down, but letting down our parents, our communities, the church ladies. I am letting down those people I’m carrying the torch for—those who wanted to go to college but couldn’t, and those ancestors who died, all those people who bled, sweated, and toiled. Failure for a black man from the South is costly. When you fail, you’re failing not only the Emmett Tills of the past, but also the Michael Browns of today.

  I know my truth, and I know right from wrong. But every misstep I make—even when I was pulled over by the Chester County sheriff and accused of drunk driving—are hard moments because I feel like I let so many people down. At that time, facing the sheriff, although I did not do what I was accused of, I put myself in a bad situation where I could be judged. That driving arrest was a secret for four months. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. My anxiety ran high. And when the story came out, I had to deal with it straightforwardly in public.

  Social and political pressures can make it hard for me to breathe, but this is my normal now: I go out and try to make sure that other people can breathe by revealing my own fears and anxieties. Regardless of how hard it gets for me, I’ve been blessed, and I’m fortunate, because I have the means and the support to help me cope with the stress. But I also know many people do not.

  * * *

  When you get elected to public office, you want to be great, you want to be legendary, you want to be remembered for changing people’s lives, for destroying systems of oppression, for being a public servant, not just a politician—but all of that comes with a price.

  Since age twenty, I’ve lived in a fishbowl, where everybody gets to see every facet of my life. When I go out to restaurants, people are watching me, eavesdropping on private conversations. The media may report on where I went, what I said, what I did—and I’m like, “Wait a minute, I didn’t do that.” The only profession that is like politics is the ministry because people expect more of their ministers than they expect of themselves.

  Young people often tell me they want to go into politics. I then ask them whether they have ever heard of someone being half pregnant. The answer is always “no.” Then I explain that it’s the same with politics: you can’t do it halfway. You’re either going to be in politics or you’re not. It’s all-consuming, and there will be many ups and many downs. I tell them, you’ll wake up or go to bed at night with knots in your stomach because you won’t know what the next day will entail; what the next news article, online comment, or tweet will say; what the next polls will hold. I tell young people, you just have to run fast; you’re running against your opponent, you’re running for so many people who have been left behind, and—guess what?—you’re trying to outrun your fears as well. Sometimes it gets exhausting, sometimes you’ll cry and break down, but that fear, that rage and anger, can be forged and transformed into motivation: that’s how you become successful. At least, that’s how I became the youngest state legislator and later a commentator for CNN.

  I try to be open about the pressures that come with being on television, particularly being one of only a few black newspeople on national television. I try to be humble, in part because the way people see me on television is the way they will see a lot of young black people, particularly young black males. I can’t have an off day. I can’t go into the lights and not do well today because then that’s the way people—yes, many white folks in this country—will look at young black men on the street tomorrow.

  I remember a piece of advice my father gave me: never argue with a fool because the people who are watching can’t tell the difference. So when I’m on television, I know I can’t change a person’s mind. I just try to talk to my audience.

  A few years ago, I had an i
nteresting conversation with the radio and television personality Charlamagne Tha God. A product of Moncks Corner, South Carolina, Charlamagne went from selling drugs to attending night school to becoming one of the most controversial and influential radio hosts in the country. Presidential candidates are sure to want to talk to him. Charlamagne is also a great friend of mine who has been open about his own anxiety and has even written a book about the subject. During our conversation one day on the set of his radio show The Breakfast Club, we discussed how prevalent anxiety is among African Americans and in our own families. “I remember my mom taking nerve pills,” he said. He talked about his own panic attacks, saying, “It feels like you are going to die.”

  I told him I could talk to him about politics in Israel, the environment, and tax policies, but when it comes to my anxiety, I stutter because for so long I saw mental health challenges as a form of weakness. I think many black men still do. To this day, for instance, I do not think my father understands my anxiety.

  For many black males, anxiety is grounded in a sense of self-directed anger and rage because our lives appear to be cyclical—to borrow from the rapper T.I., we find ourselves in a proverbial trap. From attending failing schools, to suffering from poor health, to seeing our loved ones gunned down, we feel like we can never get out of this trap.

  Some of the anger and frustration comes from black men not being told they are loved—they are not loved by society or the media—and they are portrayed as savages and thugs. The only people who really love us are black women.

  Many of my brothers have a difficult time expressing this shared frustration, because they feel they can’t show deep weakness. Black men are not expected to verbalize, outside of barbershops and locker rooms, that we might need some help. Our own somewhat self-inflicted distortions of manhood, which come from carrying so large a burden—one that is centuries old—projects as an unwillingness to show weakness. And, of course, this often means that our emotions simmer. For some, that leads to bad decisions. I have peers who suffer from the same things I do, but they mask that suffering with women and alcohol.

  Black men with platforms like Charlamagne and myself can use our anger, which is expressed as anxiety, in the same way superheroes use their power, as a force for good. A popular saying goes, “Pressure busts pipes, but pressure makes diamonds.” We can use that rage to be woke in this country and understand the systems of oppression around us in order to rebuild our communities. Rebuilding a white community and a black community are two totally different things. Because black folk were stripped of everything, we have to rebuild our communities mentally, physically, spiritually, and economically. So the most powerful thing we can do, and the way I live my life, is to be an example.

  There’s that 2009 photograph of a sharply dressed five-year-old named Jacob Philadelphia, standing in the Oval Office while President Obama leans down so Jacob can touch his hair. Jacob had wanted to know whether he and Obama had the same haircut. That image is the most powerful image Obama sent to the black community, because it taught little brown people around the globe that they too can be the leader of the free world. When we lead by example, we make the soil more fertile for the generations to come.

  Yes, I want to set high expectations. Right now, in our community, we have a culture of low expectations; the bad thing about this is you get what you expect. And so, I make sure when I’m back in these communities, in the poor rural South or in urban Los Angeles, that I try to be an example of excellence.

  Researchers say my generation as a whole, regardless of race or gender, is the most anguished in history. We’re certainly at least the most medicated. Like no other generation before us, millennials are afraid of death and failure. We’ve seen our friends die in senseless wars; we’ve watched the world we were just getting to know change before our eyes after September 11, 2001. We’ve seen the world get meaner and colder. We’ve seen black men shot over and over on the streets by people who are supposed to protect them. We’ve seen women now naming their traumatic experiences, speaking truth to power and pushing back on a culture that has persecuted them and manipulated their bodies.

  Back in 2003, three young men from Orangeburg died in the Afghanistan war. One of them, Darius Jennings, a high school friend of mine, was killed six months after being deployed. A shoulder-launch missile toppled the helicopter carrying him and about thirty other people as they flew over a hot spot in Fallujah. Elaine Johnson, his mother, has been a staunch supporter of mine, but I can hear the pain in her voice as she carries her son’s banner loud and proud. She never talked about him in the past tense until recently, spending twelve days in Fallujah. I think about how she ushered her son out of the poor, rural South, imagining his bright future. So, I live for Darius.

  We are a generation that feels the pain of having to live for all those who left so early. When I graduated from college, I was doing it for Darius and for so many others, and when I got married, I got married for them, too. All of the life moments that I am now experiencing, I am also experiencing for them.

  Suffering from anxiety has never stopped me from performing because that anxiety is rooted in a fear of not being good enough, so I always want to do better. People can give a great speech or run an awesome political race but still suffer from deep anxiety. Like when I was younger, I have many moments in my life when I cannot sleep. On many days, I just worry.

  Sometimes I feel like I want to throw up in the morning, or I gag but there’s nothing there. I’m hot, I’m sweaty, and I’m consumed; my mind is racing a million miles an hour. I’m worried about what’s going to happen next.

  But then I ask myself: What am I afraid of? And then comes courage, the one thing no one ever regrets.

  Turning Anxiety to Strength

  My mother says the reason I’m angrier about what happened in February 1968 than my father, to whom it all happened, is because I view the Orangeburg Massacre as the thing that hurt my father—my hero. There is some truth to this. But the pressure I feel about what happened is not just the pressure of living for those innocent young black men who died during the massacre, before I was born, but for those who’ve died during my own lifetime.

  After I lost the race for lieutenant governor, I was a little bit wayward, because I had given my all. And one of the things that I did early in the race, which was very risky, was announce that I was going to resign from the House of Representatives. I didn’t have to, and I could have run for both offices at the same time, but I wanted people to believe that I was all in. I was going to be the first black official elected statewide since Reconstruction. I wanted people to believe that I was going to give them everything. I did that, and I got beat.

  And then the terrible summer of 2015 approached.

  Every single thing I stood for, and everything I was raised to do—living for those who could not and continuing the work that my father and all my “uncles” and “aunts” started during the civil rights era—were put to the test. I had to face my fears of death and failure in the most tragic ways. But those fears and anxieties motivated me to do what I was raised to do: to speak for those who cannot speak, to be the living example they have not had the chance to be, to stand our ground.

  IX

  A Voice for the Voiceless

  Anger and Anxiety

  We’re politically spoiled in South Carolina because we’re home to the first southern primary, which means we get to meet all of the presidential candidates right out of the gate. On the night of June 17, 2015, I attended a fundraiser in Charleston for Hillary Clinton. The event was hosted by celebrity lawyer Akim Anastopoulo and his wife Constance, right on the water where the ships come in on East Bay. The house was beautiful, and naturally I admired their full basketball court. Every big state Democrat was there. I talked to former governor Jim Hodges and Mayor Steve Benjamin of Columbia. Jill Fletcher, my fundraiser, and her mother Candy accompanied me. Of course, we were all there to see Hillary.

  At the conclusion of t
he event, sometime close to 9 p.m., I asked Mayor Benjamin and his driver, a Columbia police officer, whether Ike could follow behind his car. As we made our way back onto Meeting Street, which turns into I-26, we noticed something strange. Emergency units, police cars, and other law enforcement vehicles were blazing by us in the opposite direction—a blur of unending lights, sirens, and police cars that seemed to go on for miles. Then I found something shocking on Twitter: “Nine people dead in Charleston church.”

  I needed to find out what was happening. I called to check on Jill and Candy, who had left earlier for dinner at Hall’s Chophouse. “Are y’all alright?” I asked them.

  “We’re okay,” Jill said. “But the city seems to be on lockdown.”

  Then I received a devastating call from Tyler Jones, a friend and member of the South Carolina Democratic Caucus. “There’s been a shooting at Mother Emanuel, and Clem’s been shot,” he said. The last time I had seen Mother Emanuel’s senior pastor had been at the fish and grits meet-and-greet about seven months before with Vincent Sheheen during his run for lieutenant governor.

  I started making more phone calls and found out that nine people definitely had been shot at Mother Emanuel and many were dead, but I couldn’t discover specifically who was dead. I reached Kelvin Washington, the US marshal, and I talked to state Attorney General Alan Wilson; I believe they were keeping me up-to-date because there was the potential that as a major candidate for a statewide office, I might be called on to comment.

  Soon enough, to our horror, we learned that nine African Americans had been killed by a twenty-one-year-old white supremacist named Dylann Roof. When he had walked into Mother Emanuel earlier that night, he’d been warmly welcomed to join the Bible study. In fact, he asked for Clem and sat next to him. After nearly an hour, when everyone closed their eyes for benediction, he started firing a .45-caliber Glock pistol. He shot Clem first, and he shot many others, even pumping eleven rounds into an eighty-seven-year-old woman. After nearly everyone was injured or dead in the room, the shooter kept firing rounds.