How We Killed Troy Davis

I could have easily been a doctor. It was my initial professional goal. “I want to be the first person to do a brain transplant.” I remember saying that to a family friend’s husband around the age of ten. He had me hold my hand out straight with my fingers outspread while saying, “Surgeons have to have steady hands. You’re a natural.” Never was I ever told that there was anything in this world I couldn’t do. As a matter of fact, my momma has told me since I can remember that I could do anything I want to do if I put my mind to it.

So I entered Hampton University as a chemistry major and hated it. The first semester of organic told me I was in the wrong place. Maybe I was just lazy. Maybe a divine force was telling me I had made the wrong decision. Maybe I was afraid of my unlimited potential. Maybe my spirit was moving and dragging me behind it. Maybe I gave up. Regardless, I’m a sociology major now and I love it. I plan on going into social work and opening a youth center in my hometown, because I believe that changing a child’s life can change the world.

What does this have to do with Troy Davis? Everything. See, a lot of us (college-educated and aged Black people) have plans to get out of our neighborhoods and drive expensive cars and make our parents proud. We’re trying to get to that opulence and decadence Jay-Z & Kanye tell us about in “Murder to Excellence”. We wanna move our mommas out the hood, and send little cousin Kim to college. Then again, some of us aren’t trying to move mom and dad out of their suburban home with the pool in the back yard, we just want to do better than them so we can say we made it.  And that’s fine. It’s perfectly normal to want more than what you grew up with. THAT’S WHAT YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO DO.

Notice though, that we want to do a lot for ourselves. We want the money, the cars and the clothes, the hoes… I suppose. But we want nothing for each other. Yeah, we might be giving the community more positive role models. Yeah, we’re moving ourselves away from a certain neighborhood that glorifies a certain lifestyle that ultimately leads to addiction, incarceration and death. Yeah, we’re not “that kind” of Black. We’re not “that kind” of person. We’re white people friendly, so we’re good. We work with them and send our kids to school with them and go to the YMCA with them while those “other” Black people continue the cycle of crime and poverty. But it’s cool because we got out of that. We finally got our piece of the pie.

That’s where my generation fails miserably. It is not until something is global news that we are concerned with the welfare of the next man. Until an issue is on our doorsteps, sitting at our table, and staring us in the mirror we are apathetic and disinterested. Our American attitudes of entitlement and selfishness paired with our own, inbred self-hatred have made us comfortable with our circumstances. We are better slaves to the system now than we were 400 years ago because we believe that there is nothing to fight for. Integration and voting rights were enough for us. Once we “broke” the race barrier, we didn’t see anything else to challenge. Now, racism is displayed behind closed doors and we live with it.

Coming together for a cause is unheard of. We won’t join the NAACP because we’re tired of being called “Colored,” yet we expect President Obama to champion all things Black and use his magical Presidential powers to end all of our strife. We can’t have both. We can’t be the victim in every situation. We can’t blame everything on them trying to hold us down, because at this point we are our own worst enemies. We’re the agents of the majority of our problems.

We lost Troy Davis today because of apathy and ignorance. Maybe I have too much faith in our system or in my peers, but I do believe that the force I saw on social networks could have mobilized and affected change. We waited until it was too late. I believe with all of my heart that we have it in us, but I think we’ve forgotten how to channel it and use it. That saddest truth I heard today was that we won’t care tomorrow or next week or next month.

If an illiterate, oppressed people could lead revolts, and create and navigate a network of safe houses across the nation to escape to freedom, then we have no excuse. We are the generation that our ancestors fought, died & protested for. We are the realization of their dream, yet we do nothing with that privilege. We are not worthy of our history.

I beg that you make sure this was not in vain. Don’t let me forget this day. Don’t let any of us forget Troy Davis. Tell your children about it. Bring it up during election campaigns. Remember the MacPhail and Davis families in your prayers both public and private. But also remember Haiti and Japan and Aiyana Jones and Hurricane Katrina and 9/11 and the London riots and Black entertainers that couldn’t enter the front doors or use the restrooms at some segregated venues and children in Mexico that sell bracelets to spring breakers in line at Senor Frogs and Harriet Tubman and illegal immigrants that are fighting to stay in the only country they’ve known all their lives but cannot because of immigration quotas and Marcus Garvey and political prisoners and Bill Clinton and victims of domestic violence and crack babies and young girls being sold into sexual slavery around the world and Shirley Chisolm and magazine adds that undermine afros on black males and Mumia and Reganomics and the Tuskeegee Syphilis Experiments and billboards that called the Black woman’s womb the most dangerous place for Black children. Play “Strange Fruit” for them often. Teach them. Teach everyone. 

Then do something about it.