STILL WAITING TO EXHALE.

Israel Hernandez-Llach was an 18 year old graffiti artist who was out tagging an abandoned McDonald's early Tuesday morning when he was accosted by the Miami Beach Police Department. He ran, and was subsequently fatally tased by an officer who is now on paid leave.

I want to talk about Israel in the same breath we use to speak the names of Trayvon Martin Marissa Alexander Shaaliver Douse Kimani Gray Jordan Davis CeCe McDonald Oscar Grant --

It's a deep breath we must take to say all these names. I fear we may soon lose our breath.

Once my brother and father went back to my Hampton Roads to find our family. They visited the site of the Turner plantation -- the revolutionary Nat Turner was my great-great-great-grand something -- and historians gave them dirt to hold, as if it might bring them closer to our family ashes, as if dirt does not just fall through the fingers. My brother and father were told that every time we run for cover at threat of the summers' hurricane coming up the southeast coast to the Mid-Atlantic, up from the Caribbean, out of the ocean, off of West Africa, we are running from our own ancestors. Those winds, they said, are the exhalation of our thousands of dead relatives, returning with rage to haunt the landscapes that hold captive their ransomed bones.

The exhalation is growing stronger; it is building. (I dream of the Dream Defenders in Florida, of the Dreamers recently released, of Dignity and Power in LA, and more.) There is an ocean of rage trembling underneath America's concrete. There is an ocean of black and brown faces that is being parted, over and over and over again: continually disrupted family structures and kin systems that are forced to rearrange and cope anew after each lock-up, each death. There is a tsunami of ghosts, some as old as 600 years, and they are coming for us.

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When I say the name Israel Hernandez-Llach, I am calling to all my kin. I am calling to my artist-people, many of whom are people of color (but not all), many of whom are young (but not all), many of whom have experienced running from the state (but not all). I am troubled by Ben Davis' proposal in his new collection of essays that "the predominant character of [the contemporary art scene] is middle class," despite the poverty most of us live in. I am disturbed by artists' lack of mobilization around the proposed 49% cuts to the NEA, the only federal funding stream for the arts, which is already limping along only by the grace of a pathetic $.06 per capita in taxes. I am concerned by our inability to connect the dots here: many of us are perpetually employed as "teaching artists," a job vastly different from "art teacher," in part because in our post-No Child Left Behind landscape there are almost no more "art teacher" positions to be filled. The art classroom was long ago converted to the JROTC room or study hall or some equivalent, and now many of us find work as low-wage contracted laborers who take on woefully under-resourced and over-capacity after-school classes fortified with nothing but some donated construction paper and juice boxes.

And whether or not we ever were Israel Hernandez-Llach (many of us were), we all can recognize Israel as our student. He is the kid who actually comes to class willfully, or he is the kid who is court mandated to come to class and finds he likes it, or he is the kid who comes to class because he has nowhere else to go and though he sits in the back and doesn't speak his sketchbooks read like magic. He is us or he is the kid across from us, but either way we both show up to a mold-infested cement room 2x a week for 2 hours at a time to make art together. And far too often we, as teaching artists, are charged with the job of saving him from himself, which we fail to recognize means saving us from ourselves as well. Because the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), with its meager resources, can only partially fund the non-profit we are employed by, our ED splits her time seeking grants from Ford and Philip Morris, who also have a longstanding partnership with our city's police department. And because of that -- and because of so many other things, the same things to led to an 18 year old lying dead on a sidewalk while Miami Beach police chuckled over his body -- we are also complicit in a kind of violence. Whether we are Israel or we teach Israel, our stated role is to steward Israel as a member of an "at-risk" population -- though, beyond state violence, he is at-risk of little else besides being an artist with limited resources. Much like ourselves.

When I say the name Israel Hernandez-Llach, I am calling to my artist-people to resist what Rob Horning and Ben Davis identify as the tyranny of "limiting authentic creativity to proven professional artists." At the end of the day, the "proven professionals" (employed as we are as laborers without adequate compensation) are an iteration of Israel. Or he is an iteration of us. We must understand with whom we are aligned = -- both by our own volition, as well as in the eyes of the state/capital. Israel was running from cops with tasers, or he was running from representatives of the state/capital with the power to stop his life, and we should understand that we are, too.

ON OBAMA ON THE ZIMMERMAN VERDICT: A RECOLLECTION OF PAST DEEDS; A RELINQUISHING OF PRESENT CONDUCT

Obama gave a 20 minute speech on Black people's response to the George Zimmerman verdict of "Not Guilty." These are my responses.

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1. 

“The judge conducted the trial in a professional manner. The prosecution and the defense made their arguments. The juries were properly instructed.”

I am concerned with the idea of proper.

Nothing in the Zimmerman case has so far revealed itself to be cause for a mistrial. Everything was done “properly” – in other words: as it has always been done, in a tested and proven manner. For a moment this past week – past-Zimmerman, past-Marissa Alexander, past so many trials past and all trials not yet realized wherein all is done by the books yet justice remains spectral – I was convinced that what Black people have to face down in this country is a dearth of representation. But I am growing to wonder if it is representation that truly matters; I wonder if that is like saying, “If not for his hood, he’d still be alive.”

 Black people in this country will never have the representation we need. We are up against too many centuries of racism, inculcated not only in our legal system, but our systems of education, our economies, geographies, linguistics, theologies, kin systems, health practices, everything. And does that fact not lay bare the reality that the Law – not the law of the multiverse, or the law of gods, but the Law of white heteropatriarchal capitalism (which has never not been used in the U.S. to create and un-create racial citizenship) – is a game that is won by those with access to capital (in the sense that winning means living)? Which means Black people will never win?

Black people will never win this game. Certainly not by legal means, because we will never be legal. The six non-Black judges made this tragically clear when they ruled that not-murdering is not an act of not killing but rather an act of killing a Black person.

I am concerned that Obama’s allusion to the professionalism of the courtroom ignores the issue: professionalism and proper conduct are precisely the problem. To paraphrase Philadelphia activist attorney Michael Coard: “If the law is illegitimate, we should not follow the law.”

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2.

“…sets of experiences inform how the African-American community interprets what happened one night in Florida. And it’s inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear.”

The burden of proof of amnesia will always be on Black people. Proof of amnesia meaning proof that both history and present are understood as that which cannot be recalled. The burden of denying the surpassing disaster, in the words of Jalal Toufic. Which is to deny oneself.

There is no question about which sets of experiences – borne of a violent history and a compoundedly violent present – inform the white community’s ability to interpret a killer as a non-killer. The question is whether Black people, with all of our “experiences,” can live with white interpretations. The answer is inescapable, and the answer is no. 

That is the Black burden.

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3.

"History."

I do not understand him when he uses this word.

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4.

“…demonstrations and vigils and protests… some of that stuff is just going to have to work its way through as long as it remains nonviolent. If I see any violence, then I will remind folks that that dishonors what happened to Trayvon Martin and his family.”

But, speaking in the positive (as one white woman recently implored of me) how would one honor what happened to Trayvon Martin and his family? Is what happened to Trayvon Martin and his family not what is also happening to every Black person, every person of color, and every white person on the planet? Is what happened to Trayvon Martin not directly linked to what happened to George Zimmerman; that is, the militarization of white supremacy, a cop-in-the-head that prevents one from seeing a way away from violence or from fear? Would not the over-determination of Black bodies as always already violent, or at the very least dead, or the overrepresentation of cops in any public or private space made by Black people – would not these incidences all be evidence of honoring what happened to Trayvon Martin and his family?

What is honor? Honor in what sense, or in whose? In the sense of “serving and protecting [NYPD],” or in the sense of “being there when you need us [OPD]” – or in the sense of being killed by a creepy stranger before one’s 18^th birthday? In the sense of being killed while on a BART platform? In the sense of being killed while being a 13-year-old neighbor? How do we honor the sentiment of CeCe McDonald at her sentencing: “I’ve faced worse things than prison.” How is one to honor such a statement?

The violence of Black people is rarely easily distinguished from the violence of white people. There is no telling at what point a body becomes violent Legally, I mean – this is something I would like to ask the judge in Zimmerman’s trial. It seems that Trayvon’s body was violent by the fact of its presence. It was de facto violent. But it also seems that Zimmerman’s body was the unavoidable victim of violence, with no ability to be violent. Zimmerman’s body was, by the fact of its presence, the victim body. Legally, I mean. Is it ever possible for such a body to commit an act of violence? Who will be the victim?

Outside of the Law, I would argue that Zimmerman is violence; that his body and what his body does (on a street at night or in a courtroom in the daylight) is to hold the position of violence. Whether or not he can be judged as guilty of this is secondary to the fact that it is.

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5.

“They’re better than we are.” (re: the views of Sasha and Malia on racial inequality in U.S.)

When Obama says “they” and “we,” he is doing one of his favorite things, which is to use democratic euphemisms. What he really means by “they” is “young Black folk,” and what he means by “we” is his himself. What he means by “better” is “different,” so what he is getting at is a general distance he feels between himself and Black people who create culture (rather than attempt to recall it).

A friend had texted me: “I am watching Obama’s speech,” which I had not yet seen. I asked her, “What is he saying?” and she wrote back, “It seems like he’s explaining Black people to white people.” Unfortunately, that is his job. Even more unfortunately, he is perhaps the least qualified for that position. He who speaks of “the African American community” and its ties to “sets of experiences,” of the disproportionate representation of Black men in the U.S. justice system as evidence of their being “disproportionately… perpetrators of violence.” He, who in his own construction is “they” to our “we,” and who finally acknowledges that he feels different than us.

Does a president ever say when he feels alone? Is an admission of loneliness an honorable choice? Is it honorable to the death of every Black boy walking home at night, or to the emotional death of every Black mother or best friend, or to the psychic death of any Black person who chooses to rest instead of fight – is it honorable to all of these deaths to admit weariness? I wonder what Obama honors, and whom. I wonder who taught him that, and why.

I cannot say if Sasha and Malia are better than Barack Obama. If they are, he should let them be President. I wonder if his conviction in their superiority is actually a euphemism for his lonely terror that young Black people may be more creative, more fearless, and more angry than he and that this his fundamental difference from them might be his well of loneliness. I am not sure that this thing young people have – the ability to let rage course through us past the point of sadness and lodge so deeply into the place of love so as to become a world-making thing that thrives in love – I am not sure that this is “better” than his lonely bottomless well. But it is certainly freer.