What do you do when a Black man dies?

what strikes me, these days, is how quickly it dissipates. the shock. the sadness. the anger. whatever flurry of emotions one might feel when the lines between stranger and kindred have been blurred. so it lasts only a few moments. and then it is gone. 

another black man has died.

it’s possible, of course, that i dissociate. that what appears to be a refusal to react is actually me departing from my body. floating somewhere up in the ethers, and observing the violence being displayed before me. no one teaches you what to do when a black man dies.

but then, of course, maybe they do.

and that is exactly how i ended up here in the first place. i moved to st. louis because a black man died. it was november when that non-indictment was issued, and the city’s fire kept blazing. i was sitting on my parents’ couch in suburban southern california, watching what would become the epicenter of black rage and police violence. if not in reality, at least in my head. but also, it was something like home. the place of my dad’s birth. my dad’s family. my grandmother’s death. and something about that blazing fire asked me to chase it. so less than a year later, around the first anniversary of michael brown’s murder, i moved to st. louis. here, i would learn what to do when a black man dies. how i should feel. what i ought to say. whom i should blame. this was the epicenter. the training grounds. and i was here to learn the things i felt i could not learn about black death back home.

my mother was reflecting recently about how much i love learning. i was the collector of all the books, all the lessons, all the teachers. when i am in, i’m in: with an insatiable appetite for information. my mom said she’s always liked this about me; but also, i am impressionable. the teacher in front of me becoming the expert in whatever way she claimed to be an expert. this is how i encounter people when i am learning. lacking, ever so slightly, in skepticism. so i came to st. louis with a question that i thought it could answer: what do you do when a black man dies? and, without ever saying it explicitly, something told me that i could not leave until i found the answer.

these days - today, for instance - i turn away when a black man dies. i’ll usually hear about it from the sterile playground of social media. here, you cannot feel the emotion or experience any intimacy. not anymore. these platforms, in the torrent of information, have been watered down. diluting the loss of human life into hashtags and recycled quotes and their school yearbook photos. there is no connection. no relationship. no collective mourning with the promise of release. not anymore. the experience is rote and memorized and rhythmic - a dance that none of us ever asked to be part of.

it did not used to be this way for me, though. because when i moved here, i learned that we rabbit-holed when a black man dies. we dive in: excavating his life and his family for the stories that will bring us closer to him. burying his fallibilities for the sake of our collective mourning. we were to stay here for hours at his pixelated memorial. sitting on our couches, in sweats and alone. learning how to mourn appropriately and honorably for this man we would never know. that is what i did when a black man died. 

but not just that; because that wasn’t enough.

i also found my voice, as a writer, because a black man died. and sat anxiously anticipating all the black men that would die. because, statistically, it seems that at some point, one of these men will be my own. but, okay, maybe i did not find my voice, exactly. but i did find a voice. and i thought that maybe if i used it often enough, it might just begin to fit. like shoes that you scrunch your toes into each morning. yes, it might be uncomfortable; but no one else needs to know that. so i found this voice, and decided to call it my own. i was churning out lengthy, emotive essays. pointed, angry letters. about black death. and my newfound blackness. and all of the white people around me who needed to get their shit together. i was combative and unforgiving and resentful and terrified. and if you look closely, or maybe even if you just scan the surface, you can pick up on that fear, my desperation: please, white people, stop killing us so that i can stop performing this blackness that is not my own. please stop killing us so that i can be free. like, really free. like, free from the bondage of race free. free in my spirit kind of free. please stop killing us so that i can stop trying to figure out what i am supposed to be doing when a black man dies.

when i moved here, i broke up friendships with white folx i had known my entire life. set them on fire with the blaze that was moving all around me. finding the perfect combination of words, of accusations, to convince myself that i had been wronged. i sat desperately at the feet of black teachers; believing them to be as true as a person could be. they were the essence of truth. i constructed my library - baldwin and hughes, hurston and morrison, lorde and rankine, and maybe something obscure that only a “real” black person would know; and i failed, under the pressure, to ever really engage with any of this work. i talked shit about white people whenever the opportunity presented itself - dishing out blame and spinning resentments - glancing around to make sure at least one black person caught my performance. and could vouch for me to those that mattered. i regurgitated all of the right things - an impeccable learner, an insatiable parrot - and took on all of the right projects. i grappled tremendously with my relationships with my filipino mother and my white partner, who could not get it. i kept looking over my shoulder, making sure that my performance was pristine. because when the next black man died, i wanted to know that i was part of something. that i would have people to mourn with. that the color of my skin was not just incidental, but well-earned.

at some point, i suppose, the performance becomes unsustainable. it is not sustainable to encounter the violence of black death around every corner; to be reminded not only of your own mortality, but of the egregious and insufferable ways that your breath might be stifled. just because. it is not sustainable to encounter this daily. and then to muster up the energy to choreograph a flawless dance: the one that proves that you know how to mourn black death appropriately.

so, what do i do when a black man dies? 

i read his name. take a deep breath. put my phone down - turning away from the roadside memorial that has made its way into my home. i write. and i decide that that is enough, today. knowing that, even the most immaculately rendered performance, will never bring this black man back.