by Casey Merie
special to The Dreher Report

Casey Merie reflects on a casual afternoon experience in Greensboro, North Carolina.

While walking with my Rocky, my 65 pound pit bull the other day, I stopped on the corner of Oak and Glenwood to allow a man on a moped to keep going after I saw he had his turn signal on; but for some odd reason, he just sat there, staring at me. I again motioned for him to go. Eventually, after a weird amount of time, instead of turning he continued straight instead, and then yelled “Fucking n*gger”. This made me wonder if he was planning to try to run me over.

It was a bizarre and scary moment for me because it happened so quickly. Usually on my walk, I encounter people on foot, and nobody on foot messes with you when you are walking a 65 pound pit bull.

I reflected on this casual afternoon.  Just who is this grungy guy zipping around on a moped? I sensed he was the type of man President Lyndon B. Johnson referred to as “the lowest white man” (probably around the time LBJ was busy calling us n*ggers too). He’s too old to be riding it for fun, I thought. Maybe he has a Johnny Reb flag hanging on his wall at home. If he voted in the last general election, it was probably for Trump. Maybe he would have hurt me, if something hadn’t told me to stay put until he passed me. He called me a n*gger.

This is the practice of white supremacy that we all know to be disgusted about.
It’s direct.
It’s abrasive.
It’s to the point.

It’s the other kind of practice of white supremacy, however, that is really scary to me right now. It’s the kind that is pervasive. Even as the tide of popular opinion turns, and people are coming out to condemn the killing of George Floyd, we still have not developed enough political power to hold the police accountable and make them face consequences regularly when they kill us.

It’s the kind of white supremacy that makes people look at our City Council’s decision to fight tooth and nail to dodge accountability for the murder of Marcus Deon Smith by the [Greensboro, North Carolina] police in 2018, and when reasonable people defend limited public resources. Smith was choked in the street by police officers who used a RIPP Hobble device–a restraint the equivalent of being hooked and hogtied. 

I am scared of the white supremacy that confuses far too many of us into thinking that representation is power.

It’s the type of white supremacy that makes it “reasonable” that when an unarmed Black man is murdered after begging for his life, “protecting the public” means saving a budget from having to shell out money to pay restitution to his family.

I am scared, too. I am scared of the white supremacy that has taken hold in so many minds–liberal and conservative–that says Black people cannot get justice if it costs money.

I am scared of the white supremacy that confuses far too many of us into thinking that representation is power. People applaud, for instance, our Black police chief who, I believe, uses his Blackness as a shield to sidestep dialogues on law enforcement oversight and police accountability in Smith’s death.

I am scared of what this will mean for the safety of the protestors on the highway who, in their righteous anger, are sick of this …

… because if the man who called me a n*gger on his moped had been a cop and had decided to escalate this situation, I know I would have gotten no justice from this city.

Casey Merie lives in the Glenwood neighborhood of Greensboro with her husband and dog. She has organized around food, immigration, policing, and against anti-LGBTQ discrimination. With roots in New York, South Carolina, Tortola, and Virginia, she made Greensboro her home in 2006. She graduated from Guilford College (BA, Sociology & Anthropology) and UNC-Greensboro (Masters in Public Health). She is the Development Manager at People’s Action, a national network of community organizations.

by Dr. Stefanie K. Dunning

(special to The Dreher Report)

I was settling pretty nicely into my self-chosen cloister when the news of George Floyd’s murder came to me and then the uprisings across the country. And then, the director on Twitter that “if there is looking, there will be shooting.”

Do I need to tell adult human beings that the destruction of property isn’t violence in this case?

Do I need to say that violence is the murder of people and that murder of people is the real crisis–not what happens to some resource-depleting crap in Target that will end up in a landfill and only worsen our climate crisis?

Do we need a lesson in the difference between a chair and a human being?

I keep coming back to this quote from James Baldwin, that writer, prophet, and seer who has never left my mind and heart once I cracked open Go Tell it On the Mountain all those years ago:

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death–ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.

All of these anti-quarantine protestors are caught up in a grand and complicated projection designed to forestall awareness of the reality of death, whose imminence materialized quickly with CV-19. Denial of the dangers of CV-19 connects to the deeper aspects of this culture so obsessed with youth (evidenced by the cultures of beauty, plastic surgery, dieting, wrinkle creams, hairlessness, and so on).

Do we need a lesson in the difference between a chair and a human being?

Now, as is the American way, all of those anxieties and fears about death will be offloaded onto the necks of black people. It’s as if forcing black people to die allows their white murderers to feel more alive and more firmly rooted in life than in death. But the fact of death, regardless of your skin tone or class status or gender identity or sexuality, cannot be postponed, negotiated with, or made otherwise a reality of living.

My spiritual journey has shown me that what people do is a reflection of what they feel inside. So murderers “feel” dead and can only feel alive in the presence of an actual dead body. People who can only see criminality in another feel guilty themselves because ultimately, there are no others. Everything is a mirror.

I suspect, black people do not behave in the genocidal manner that racist and murderous white people do is because we project what is inside of us–which is life, not death.

I have seen some racist arguments which wonder why black people don’t terrorize white people in armed militias or take up an eye-for-an-eye strategy vis-a-vis police/vigilante shootings. [My daughter] Omi was speaking to a (now former) friend of hers in Sri Lanka who told her that “black people are weak.” Many people whose consciousness is framed by anti-blackness think like this. By this logic, Jesus was weak too.

A makeshift memorial for George Floyd near the spot where he died in police custody in Minneapolis. 

But the reason, I suspect, black people do not behave in the genocidal manner that racist and murderous white people do is because we project what is inside of us–which is life, not death. As a black person, I have no desire to kill anyone, for any reason. I am too concerned about what I would become if I did such a thing. And, I am too concerned about what I would foreclose in the life of the person I would kill. In other words, if living in this society means becoming a serial killer–I’ll fly away.

I’ll close with a prayer:

I pray for
the safety of
each and every one of us.

I pray that
our children
are safe.

I pray that
wisdom and insight
will rain down upon all of us and
the killing can stop.

I pray for
our collective
healing.

Love to you all.

Stefanie Kyle Dunning is Associate Professor of English at Miami University of Ohio. She is a graduate of Spelman College and the University of California, Riverside and a Ford Fellow. Her first book Queer in Black and White: Interraciality, Same Sex Desire and Contemporary African American Culture, was published by Indiana University Press in 2009. Her work has been published (or is forthcoming) in African American Review, MELUS, Studies In The Fantastic, and Electric Literature. and several other journals and anthologies. Her latest project, Black to Nature: Pastoral Return in African American Culture, is forthcoming from the University Press of Mississippi in 2021.

Meet Guest Writer Angela Carr Patterson, entertainment executive, entrepreneur, Innovator, CEO, Film Producer, Author, Speaker and Spiritual Thought Leader.  Angela also is the Founder of The Fatherless Daughters Network and The Awakened Beauty Experience, the creator of The Journey to Being Process™ and The Divine Ache™ Life Cycles.

Read Angela’s provocative essay on the death of George Floyd, an African American man who died on Monday, May 25 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Disclaimer: Let me start by saying that this article is not intended to offend or hurt anyone. But my intentions are to shake some things up…to step on some toes…to punch you in your gut…in your consciousness and to shift and wake up some folks. Most of you see me as gentle, loving and kind. I still am…but at times…I will become a force and voice for change. This writing is one of those times. I will be blunt, direct and perhaps a little harsh. But brutally honest. I truly believe these things need to be said. They have been said by others in other ways…and they will continue to be said until things change.

we believe you reap what you sow.

I grew up in a southern city, Columbia, SC. I remember as a little girl hearing my mom have the talk with my brothers. She would say things like, never run from the police, keep your hand out of your pockets, keep your ID on you. I also remember, my mom telling me as I started to drive to stay away from Forest Acres and West Columbia after dark. She said it was the clan territory.

As I became a mother of two sons, I remember having the same talk with them. I also told them to make sure when they went in a store to hurry and purchase what they went in the store to get. Because browsing simply was not a luxury for them.

Now that my children are adults, they are now having the same talks with their children. Except now, they have to warn them about walking or jogging through a neighborhood, or be aware when you are having a cook out in the park, or sitting in Star Bucks, or yes…simply sitting in your house watching TV.

Every last one of us black folks have to take a deep breath when we are driving. Because we know that one simple innocent traffic stop of DWB (driving while black) could literally end in our death.

Now those of you who don’t share my same skin color, there’s a little voice in your head that will try to tell you that I am exaggerating. But deep within you…you know that I am not.

I … remember, my mom telling me as I started to drive to stay away from Forest Acres and West Columbia after dark. She said it was the clan territory.

Everyday we leave home could be our last day just because of our skin color. And we can’t wear a mask to protect us. I remember hearing stories from my grandmother about how black folks couldn’t walk down the street without being stopped. Or they couldn’t gather in groups of 2 or more because they could get locked up for loitering.

Black and Brown folks live through our own epidemic and pandemic every single day of our lives. Except our deadly virus is RACISM! It spreads so quickly and if it doesn’t physically kill us, it slowly kills us emotionally. And for some reason we haven’t found a vaccine.

And to add insult to our wounds, we are accused of playing the “Race Card” when tragedy hits us and our communities for simply walking, jogging or driving. What the hell do you call it then if it isn’t RACISM?

Do you have any idea what it feels like to walk in a store with more money in your bank account than the store manager and get followed around like you’re about to rob the joint? Do you know what it feels like to be in a line and not recognized and watch someone else get pulled to the front? And you have to struggle whether or not to say anything because if you do, it could cost you your very life?

Do you know what it feels like walk around daily and be told by groups of people to go back to Africa…when we didn’t ask to come here in the first place?

We’ve learned how to live in a pandemic…called RACISM…a deadly disease that spread quickly…kills and destroys our communities daily.

Do you know what it feels like when even your best intentions are considered suspicious because you are not seen human…or equal…you are seen as subhuman.

Now, we here in the America have to sit and listen to a President who we KNOW hates us. How do we know? He demonstrates it to us daily.

Then to have so called “good white folks” tell us that he’s not racist. Like my mom used to say, “Don’t piss in my face and tell me it’s raining.” Because that’s exactly what it feels like when you defend this man to us. You need to know that’s how we feel EVERY time you defend him to us. It becomes difficult to hear you say you love us and you be okay with how this man treats us.

Now I want to say this. We black and brown folks are some of most brilliant people in the world. In spite of all the odds against us…we still find ways to succeed, to laugh, to win, to live, and to love. We walk tall with our shoulders squared, even when we’ve been beat down on every corner.

We have learned how to code switch and to pivot when we are in your presence because we recognize that our brilliance would BLIND you if we really showed you who we are.

You see, we’ve learned how to live in a pandemic…called RACISM…a deadly disease that spread quickly…kills and destroys our communities daily.

But here’s the secret that you don’t know. The tides will eventually turn. We will rise to the top. And that disease…that Pandemic will eat at the host like a virus that destroys the body.

When you are a racist… or you condone it…you don’t get away with it. You will come face to face with what you have done and you will feel the pain of what you have caused others. It’s call Karma.

It never fails…I’ve seen it happen over and over again. Because we believe you reap what you sow.

So the next time you raise your confederate flag, your MAGA hats and your 2nd Amendment signs…I want you to remember this…

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

We don’t want your pity…because we are proud people. We don’t want your money because we know how to make our own money…and stretch it to feed our entire community.

We don’t want your respect…because we don’t need it. What we want…what we really want is for YOU to recognize that you are living among some of the most powerful, amazing, strong, courageous, resilient and brilliant people in the land.

Oops…but you already know this…this is the truth you know and the truth you fear.

Meet Guest Christy Hyman, historian, 19th Century Studies at the University of Nebraska. Read her skinny on beauty and the practices we endure to maintain them.

℘So as my two wonderful braiders pulled at my hair in varying directions, one of whom was very pregnant and I was face-to-belly with her yet to be born baby more times than I would have liked, I thought about how much of a high-functioning introvert I am; how I have to mentally prepare for being around groups of people; and, how I don’t handle impromptu gatherings very well (I often get out of invitations at the last minute because I have not had time to do my mental preparation for crowds).

But then I think of how intimate our beauty practices are. Two braiders completely in my personal space as I sat poised, ramrod straight with a slight smile as if paparazzi might bust in at any moment; as if my steadied composure would make the photo look any better, knowing my hair half braided would look a total mess.

Then I thought about when I get Brazilians. You know, the wax? A total stranger seeing my privates. The full procedure means getting on all fours at the end as the esthetician rips the hair from behind. How awful? But it gets done because I, and a host of other individuals, embrace certain aesthetic standards we place on ourselves.

I am not shy, no, but I have to prepare for social gatherings. I am not shy, no, but I avoid impromptu gatherings.

I am an introvert but I will reveal my privates to my esthetician so that it is Brazilian appropriate. Ironic.℘

Meet Guest Reviewer Lena Sledge, filmmaker at Sonny Brook Productions. Read her skinny on Maleficent, starring Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning, and Michelle Pfeiffer.

℘It’s a white savior film that relegates people of color to the margins and makes them supplementary to their white counterparts. Even in battle, the black warriors are not given the ability to soar with their white counterparts, additionally characterizing them as underlings in their own culture.

Connal (Chiwetal Ejiofor) — the supposed most powerful of the Dark Fey — has his eyes on what is happening to his people. His keen senses account for his forethought to rescue Maleficent from the deep. He is killed, however, while protecting her. That is a disappointment.

Chiwetal Ejiofor as Connal, the Dark Fey

The aggressive white male, Borra (Ed Skrein), however, causes disruption and chaos; he calls for war. He even excels in battle. Borra’s character arc allows him to evolve, while Connal, the leader and wisest of their people, dies with no fan fair or transformation. The film, in addition, wrestles from the black female elders their powers no matter that they band together to save Connal.

In essence, Maleficent’s  narrative is subservient in its message: Black people, their sacrifices, contributions, and abilities, are a means to an end that serve to propel white voices and accomplishments to the center while marginalizing those who are making the greatest sacrifices.℘

Lena Sledge is the director of Sense of Self, her new film about finding inner happiness. For more information on Lena Sledge and her project, ‘Like’ Sonny Brook Productions on Facebook and SenseofSelfMovie on Instagram.

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Listen Here @ 10:11

It is obvious that Toni Morrison was the main arbiter of the documentary Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am. Directed by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, The Pieces I Am is more a review of the First Lady of Letters; more at a filmic admiration of her and less, much less, a discovery of anything new about this linguistic engineer of the English language.

I anticipated a documentary with an overview of her usual literary accomplishments, especially her novels, yes, of course, The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, and her Beloved, the latter for which she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. Oh, yes, much on Beloved, accompanied by a film clip from Jonathan Demme’s film of the same name and the story of Margaret Garner, on whom the main character Sethe, played by Oprah Winfrey is based.

I expected her to talk about the emotional swerve she experienced when learning about winning the Nobel Prize. She does. Her tenure as a copy editor and her fight for economic parity working as an African American woman in the white male dominated world of publishing. She does. How she raised her sons Slade and Ford as a divorcee—she does. And the power of language and writing—she does.

As the film progressed, however, I began to realize that what Greenfield-Sanders presented onscreen was all I was going to get. Any discussion of her novels Tar Baby, Jazz, Paradise, A Mercy, Home, God Help the Child, Love, and most disappointing, some conversation on her children’s books on which she collaborated with her son, Slade and her volumes of essays on topics such as writing, morality and goodness, school integration, race and the imagination … did not make the cut.

The documentary felt muted. I left in a silent anger, a silent anger I am monitoring even as I am recording this review. The Pieces I Am is but a regurgitation, then a distillation of interviews and commentaries past. It has a very present firewall that kept at bay my longing to learn more about our beloved Toni Morrison. You see, I had studied Toni Morrison in college; she was the Major Author I chose for my doctoral comprehensive exam. Even before college, I studied every single note—every jot and tittle about my beloved Toni Morrison.

All of this I write to make known this: The Pieces I Am is for you, the audience who has a modicum of information about Toni Morrison. It is for you, the audience who has no other knowledge of her other than that she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 and the swirl of controversy surrounding the Nobel from fellow writers.

It is for you, the audience, who curries an interest in literature, writers, black women writers, and Toni Morrison. It is for you and me, the teacher, who needs a teaching tool to situate any of her works for the students. No longer will you need to cherry pick interviews on youtube or print literature—they’re right there for you, for me, for us in Toni Morrison: The Pieces I am

With these notes, I strongly encourage you to see Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am. It is an intellectual, fun overview of our First Lady of Letters. Her friends and colleagues defer reverence for all of her literary achievement and social currency. Friends and colleagues such as Angela Davis, Oprah Winfrey, Fran Lebowitz, poet Sonia Sanchez and Robert Gottlieb—the latter who was her colleague and editor. But the greatest gift in Toni Morrison: The Pieces I am is Toni Morrison … Her presence … She is there in all of her joy.

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Got Me back January 17, 2019 when my knee injury happened on the opening night of the show I directed, Who Will Sing for Lena. It was one of the coldest days of the year in Lincoln, Nebraska. For about three years, I had received the call to stop. To just stop. teaching Zumba x3 wk practicing choreo staff meetings teaching lit/film classes x2 wk semesters and summers writing editing performing travel and more travel meetings upon meetings grading papers office hours vocal coaching practice guest singing Stop! Please Stop! All of this, that, and the other–what my father would call ‘rippin’ & runnin’–took me out. I was devastated over the possibility that I may no longer be able to teach my beloved Zumba–this I learned in the emergency room after the outstanding performance at the Haymarket Theater. I wept well into the night. The Goddess, in all of her generosity, hastened Joy to me that next morning. In the comfort of Joy, I saw me. Right there. In that Holy silence.

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Written and Directed by Brady Corbet and narrated by Wilhelm Dafoe, Vox Lux is a riveting commentary on fame and celebrity culture in the 21^st century. Natalie Portman stars as Celeste, a high school student who is thrust into stardom after singing at a memorial for her classmates who were shot and killed by another student named Cullen Active, played by Logan Riley Bruner. Celeste and her song-writer sister Eleanor, played by Stacy Martin, and her manager-with-no-name, played by an unrecognizable Jude Law, navigate the waters of the music industry as they ride the waves of drugs and alcohol and other means of self-abuse.

Watching Vox Lux is like treading on razor blades; so many scenes I wished for … no longed for Wilhelm Dafoe’s narration to relieve me of the cinematic cuts and bruises. Corbet, however, refused to alleviate my discomfort. Julia Heyman’s art direction adds salt to the wounds as she splashes scenes in hues of blue grey haze, midnight blue, black, white, sepia, and purple and teal laced with silver.

Celeste moves through the film like a marionette whose puppeteer had too many whiskey shots but still thinks he can manipulate the strings. She is so thin so fragile so fractured that you view in fear at some point her head is going to drop off and roll down the street into traffic or one of her limbs is going to break off and land somewhere along the way.

There is more. Corbet frames Vox Lux within the context of gun violence and terrorism. We see, for instance, the bodies of slain students on the floor and slumped against the wall as young Celeste, played by Raffey Cassidy, bears witness to the murder of her classmates. Wait.

There is even more. You will feel the sound effect of each bullet as it travels through the barrel of the gun to reach its intended victim. No one will escape the trauma of this heart break.

For all of its nail-biting drama, Vox Lux loses itself somewhere out there, but the loss has to be noted. Corbet explores in Vox Lux the strain of memories. How does a witness to trauma bear up under the strain when she has survived? Celeste gains fame and celebrity after her performance at the memorial of her slain classmates; this experience has to have had a psychological impact. How does that fact translate the next day and the next and the next?

Vox Lux plays through Thursday, January 31^th at the Ross Media Arts Center in Lincoln.

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