Prayers, Blessings and Justice for the family of Ahmaud Arbery
Yesterday's national news highlights yet another unarmed, black youth gunned down by a white person who saw dark skin color in the neighborhood and felt entitled to bear arms and give chase. Not only did the 64-year-old white male grab a gun and give pickup truck chase, he instructed his 34-year-old son to grasp a rifle and join in the hunt. The results were tragic. They were hunting what they suspected was a nigger who had stolen from the father's pickup truck a month earlier. The young 25-year-old black man was an innocent jogger who lived in the rural Georgia neighborhood and was taking his usual afternoon run; unarmed.
I am a black man in my mid-50's with two black sons in their 30's. When I see youth with My Kind of features and skin color targeted with deadly force for no reason other than causing discomfort and/or vengeance in hateful white skinned individuals, I feel angry.
I feel angry because I'm a lover of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness for All Kind. I feel angry because another injustice on My Kind by Another Kind, condoned by another district attorney's office, saps my hope for change in America. I feel angry because if a son of mine suffers the same deadly fate of Ahmaud Arbery, my love for life, liberty and pursuit of happiness for All Kind might get hijacked by anger and hate for Another Kind.
I know of the racist history in these United States, especially in the confederate South. I am old enough to understand the warnings my southern raised father gave about dealings with certain white kind and white law enforcement/courts. As a young liberal, when I first heard father's warnings I thought I knew better than he; times had changed since his youthful era of Jim Crow and segregation. I've since learned how generational indoctrination and repetition of deep racism is a right of passage for certain Kind; "as American as Apple Pie." Now I am the father fearing for my sons safety in a country that still condones violence on My Kind by Another Kind.
I once read a book about the fears of a convicted criminal serving time at an inhumane penal colony on Devil's Island, French Guiana. His fears were not loss of family and freedom or brutal punishments. His were fears that come with penal colony living conditions and treatment that changes a man from a civil being to that of a hateful beast; a dangerous beast with no morals, no remorse, no forgiveness and no hope for himself or those he sees as Other.
"I'll never forgive prison for making me a worse man than I am. A little more and I won't be fit to live anywhere but here. That's what it's doing to me." (Condemned to Devil's Island)
Today I feel angry. I pray for myself, My Kind and those of the Other Kind. I pray that ongoing racist conditions in these United States of America do not change me into a beast filled with anger and hate. For that I would never forgive this country for making me a worse man than I am. God give me the strength to continue praying for and forgiving those who might not like My Kind.
Rabbi Hillel: "That which is hateful to you, do not unto your neighbor"
"What is hateful to you, do not do to another"
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