There is a new opinion piece making the rounds. I have a cousin who shoots these things to me now and then. I’m not sure to what extent she is caught up in any of what follows, but on a quiet Wednesday I took a turn at scoring it. My comments are in blue.

The Vilification of Rush

Liberals would prefer no opposition. Behind the force field of political correctness, there should never be any disagreement once the liberal mind has decided that something is good for society. There can be no opposition to the “correct” way of thinking, and if you don’t think “correctly,” you are attacked.

I will give the last word on this topic to actor Joseph C. Phillips.

He gets it.

Dwane T. Hodges is a good friend of Bennett Blog, a frequent commenter and a class human being. He and I have engaged in deep and meaningful discussions here, at the Morris O’Kelly blog and at the New York Times. Many of our discussions share a common theme: public mis-perception regarding the experience of being a black man in the early twenty first century.

Based on a recent exchange, it became clear to me that Dwane has something to share that would do me and perhaps others a lot of good - he has a way of relating his experiences without bitterness or rancor. He really just wants us to understand.

I asked Dwane to author a guest post and he graciously agreed. What follow are his words, unedited an uncut.

Thank you Dwane, for taking the time.

- Walt Bennett

By Dwane T. Hodges

I always think about him at Christmas time.  And why not, Jonny was the man who first got me “interested” in Christ.  He was my number one hang-out buddy in college, and a man everyone knew as my “little brother”.  Jonny could party with the best of them; the brother could dance his behind off.  We even had a routine where we would take two girls on the dance floor, dance them over toward each other, then leave the girls and dance with each other.  We were silly, fun, and wanted to make the world a better place… me through social activism, Jonny through Jesus.  With his influence, I began to incorporate his way into mine.  Had I known that he was going to die at the hands of the police at such a young age, I would have listened a little more, and a little sooner.

Jonny Gammage.  For many, he is the symbol of Clarence Thomas’ high tech lynching in our modern times.  His death made all the major newspapers in the country.  His family was on Oprah.  He had organizations that fight police brutality formed in his name.  Yet, had he not been the cousin of pro football player Ray Seals, he would have been just another of the many guys who die in police custody each year where an “internal investigation” finds no fault.  Johnny was the first post-Rodney King police brutality case to receive national attention.  The difference between he and King was: whereas King was a man who had prior issues with the law, Jonny was a college grad and a businessman who had been the president of our college gospel choir, and was known to be a “choir boy” in most other ways.  He was a good looking man with pretty dark skin and wavy hair that women adored, yet he was always gentlemanly toward them.  He was an inch shorter and 10 lbs. heavier than I was, but at a small 5’7” and 140lbs., he still had a powerful presence.  But most of all, Jonny was a friend to many, and an enemy to none. 

So it’s Christmas, and Jonny is not here.  He was supposed to come visit that Christmas, since it coincided with my sons second birthday and he hadn’t seen him yet… but he died October 12, 1995.  My son turns 15 on December 23rd of this year, so it has been 13 years since Jonny has been gone… and I still miss him.  Not only do I still feel the pain of his passing, I still suffer from the memory of how it happened.  I still remember how my first wife feared that I would lose my mind from grief.  As I was still harassed by the cops in Buffalo on a regular basis, my tension grew to terror.  I never understood before how the KKK burning crosses could cause such fear in people, but now I knew first hand.  Every police car pulling up behind me, or next to me, could be the reason my sons grew up fatherless.  I remembered the time I was pulled out of my car at gunpoint while driving one of my students home because I “looked too young to be driving this car” (verbatim from the officer), and I realized how lucky I was then.  Klan hoods and police badges, or as KRS-one said, Over-seer and officer, it’s the same thing in a different time.  And now that my son is turning 15 years old, in the same way that fathers in the past had to warn their children about how to deal with the Klan, I have to teach my son how to deal with the police.  

It’s a rites(or rights)-of-passage that every Black father has to take his son through.  How to deal with being stopped for walking, running, driving, shopping, sight-seeing, or standing there thinking while Black.  The advanced course comes shortly afterward… how to deal with the police when stopped as a part of a group while Black.  In that case, you have to read the crowd, and adjust the rules from the first lesson accordingly to make sure that 1) you can save everyone in the group, or 2) if you can’t save everyone, save yourself.  Some folks say I am starting my training late.  This is true, but I did give him some basic instruction on simple things like shopping (if you pick up an item, put it in a cart if you plan to buy it.  Never walk out of the aisle with an item in your hand if possible… that can be construed as intention to steal for a Black man).  I found it interesting that Soledad O’Brien, in an interview after her CNN special on Blacks in America, said one of the most painful things she heard about in her research was “the talk”.  She said every man, from celebrities D.L. Hughley and Michael Eric Dyson, to the poorest working class fathers, all said that telling their sons how to “survive” an encounter with the police was a mandatory part of child rearing.  When a co-worker said that all parents need to teach their children how to behave when questioned by the police, she quickly corrected her.  She said its’ not how to behave, it’s how to survive… there is a difference.  Spoken like a woman with black male siblings.  

There is no denying the pain that’s felt by families of people who lose their loved ones in unjust ways by people who are supposed to represent justice.  Even when police self-reported that Jonny begged for his life before he died, no one was punished.  I am one of Barack Obama’s biggest supporters, but I would be a fool to believe that police brutality will disappear because there is a Black president or Attorney General.  Legislation can’t stop hatred, but I don’t care if you hate me… just don’t hit me.  Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., put it best:  “It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and that’s pretty important.”  At the very least, Jonny’s killers should have received third degree manslaughter.  But they received nothing,., and those who knew Jonny, either directly through shared lives, or indirectly through shared race, received a reminder that it was still alright to kill a Black man in American if the authorities okayed it.  I’m not anti-police, I’m anti-abuse of authority, and anti-discrimination by authority.  When Fidel Castro came to New York, he made the claim that no White man had ever been convicted of raping a Black woman, and dared someone to find a case. They protested his visit, and attacked many of the things he said, but strangely, no one ever addressed that issue.  I know that none of the White men who raped my mother over the course of her life were even arrested.  No justice, no peace.  Like my mother, Jonny had no justice… and years after the deaths of both of them, I have no peace.  

Yes, its Christmas, and Jonny will be on my mind.  I won’t spoil his birthday or Christmas with finally telling my son how Dad’s friend in the photo album died.  But I will tell him soon afterward.  I hear and read how things have changed, and are changing.  We have a Black president, so that must mean that racism is over.  Black people have irrational fears, our country protects all its citizens equally.  There is no reason to pass on issues of the past to future generations… it’s a new day.  I understand how folks may believe those things… because it looks different.  But that’s the thing about perspective, depending on where “you” move, things always look different.  If your father was a White racist, and you have a mixed group of friends, things look different.  But they still look the same to your father.  And they look the same to your brother who chooses to keep all White friends, because he is a good kid and listened when his father taught him about “those people”.  And like any father, unless your brother changes what he believes before he has children, he will try to pass on his perspective to his children.  They told us back in college that things were different.  The Civil Rights Movement was 20 years in the past.  But ten years later Jonny died at age 31.  So I have to teach from my fears, because the worst fear is that something will happen to “my” son because I failed to teach him.  

Merry Christmas to all.  Happy birthday, son. I Miss you, Jonny.