Tyre Nichols

For several days I’ve felt like I should write something about Tyre Nichols - a living, breathing, young Black man who was beaten to death by five Black law enforcement officers in Memphis. Tyre weighed 145 pounds. The combined weight of the officers who beat him to death was over a thousand. But I haven’t really known what to say. I tried to recruit a friend and CCP associate who has been involved in racial justice his entire life and is a smarter, deeper thinker than I. But like me, he didn’t know what to say. Was this even about race? And if so, how and to what extent?

The officer who murdered George Floyd was White. But the two officers who stood casually by and watched Mr. Floyd being murdered were not. One was Asian, the other mixed race Black and White. I guess that a question that I have is this: Is American Law Enforcement such a key and entrenched part of the American State, and at its core, is the American State so White, that some Black officers buy into our National Narrative? A narrative that might have been best defined by a Black, Marine Corps Drill Instructor – who for a rare few minutes in 1968 befriended me, took me aside while in boot camp at Paris Island NC and gave me this advice, “I know that you’re from up north (NH farm boy) and not used to the way things are down here. Down here if you're White you're all right. If your Brown stick around. But if you’re Black, get back.”

Is it possible or even likely that some Black officers take on the animosity that law-enforcement has historically sometimes had towards Black Americans ever since… well… ever since law-enforcement was recruited and rewarded to return runaway slaves? I don’t have the answer to that. But I do know that the fatal beating that Mr. Nichols sustained, had something to do with race, just as Mr. Floyd’s did. Peel away a layer or two and here’s not much in this country that doesn’t.

Years ago I read about a study that indicated that the anti-Black rhetoric broadcast by the very highest levels of our federal government in support of the ‘War on Drugs’ - a war conceived as and executed as a tool to be used against Black Americans - was so effective that around 40% of Black Americans developed their own fear and poor view of Black Americans. I poked around on the internet to see if that was still true today, but came up empty-handed.

For those of us of a certain ‘Watergate’ age, the name John Ehrlichman is familiar. For the rest, Mr. Ehrlichman was a close, trusted advisor for President Richard Nixon. Together, and with the help of others, they conceived of, planned, and executed the war on drugs that has accomplished little except to incarcerate primarily Black men – actually making the plight of Black Americans and the infamous and accusatory “Absent Black fathers” so much worse. But as we consider the rhetoric that accompanied the war on drugs, and the effect it had on attitudes of law-enforcement, as well as  both the White and the Black American public, it’s useful to become familiar with the words of Mr. Ehrlichman. “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be… Black, but by getting the public to associate… Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing (them) heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

I wish I could have gotten somebody smarter than me to write this. Race is such a complex issue here in America that it kinda hurts my brain. And again, I’m not sure what the hell happened, why it happened, or even what to say about it. But I know this: Mr. Nichols’ beating death by five policemen had something to do with race. I know that America needs to get it’s sh** together and do better. Much better. And I know that the country needs to drop that, “Well this takes time, you know” lie. Four hundred and four years is more than enough time.

I think I’ll stop here. I need to go shed a tear for young Mr. Nichols, his Mom, Dad, friends, and family.