The news I read first each morning is The Washington Post, because it's right there on my Kindle, which is usually on my bedside table because I was reading before sleep the night before. This morning the headline was "Hunting Black Men to Start a Race War." A headline designed to chill a Black mother's heart. I clicked.
The story delved into the making of a hate killer, a young white man who stabbed an older black man to death on March 5, 2017 right here in my own city. Street cameras caught the altercation, with the older man fighting back and the younger man stabbing him with a long-bladed Roman sword so violently that his weapon went clean through the victim's body and broke on the pavement. Afterward, the killer roamed Times Square, looking for interracial couples to kill, but according to the story, "he saw so many he became overwhelmed." By then the police were searching for him. A while later, he walked up to them and turned himself in.
This young man was raised in a liberal family in Baltimore. Outwardly, he could have been any one of the young white men my son and daughter went to school with, given the way his lived experience was described. He was dyslexic, and attended a middle school for bright children who learn differently. He later disclosed that he was sexually abused there. He told no one at the time, and did not receive help. Poor kid. His parents sent him to a Quaker high school, where he had friends of all races and even dated an Asian girl. He enlisted and served in Afghanistan after flunking out of college in his first year. Throughout this time he was suicidal, but hadn't the courage to carry it through, or so he wrote in a 7,000 word manifesto found on his computer.
After his discharge from the military, he failed to find a job. His parents eventually cut off his $1,000 a month allowance in the hope that it would motivate him to take responsibility for himself. Instead he moved in with his brother, and spent his nights into the morning on Nazi and white supremacist websites, and obsessing over porn sites showing black men with white women, all while presenting a face of normalcy to the world. Hitler and Charleston, South Carolina church shooter Dylann Roof became his heroes.
He hid the hatred taking him over from his family as a murderous plan formed in him. He bought two knives and the two-foot-long Roman sword on Amazon and told his family he had reenlisted and was going back to Germany, going so far as to show them forged papers. While pretending to text his parents from Germany, he took a bus to New York City, a media capital he thought would amplify the actions he proposed to take. The fact that he lost the heart to keep going after one murder makes me think this young man might have been saved if anyone at all had known what was blooming inside him. But I could be wrong. He told the cops that his only regret was that he didn't kill a younger and more prosperous black man in a suit, which would have made the press pay more attention.
This whole story has been like a shard of ice to my heart this morning. I lay this at the feet of Trump and all the enabling Republicans who have helped to whip the hate that simmered just below the surface of this nation, into a raging flame. This murder also bloodies the hands of those who don't consider themselves racist, but who plan to vote for Trump anyway because they like how their stock portfolios are rising, and they think they don't having anything to fear because they're white. I'm also looking at people of supposed conscience who don't particularly like Trump, but who say they can't bring themselves to vote for a Democrat. They have the luxury of such a stance only because an accident of birth protects them, and they think the true violence of another Trump presidency will not fall on them.
I confess that initially, when I saw the Post's clickbait news lead this morning, I wondered where this young man had carried out his murderous screed, thinking if my own son gave that place a wide berth, he would be safe. Instead, this killer so twisted with hate was in my own city, roaming Times Square, at a time when my son was stationed there as an EMT, sitting in his ambulance between calls, studying for his paramedic exams.
May we all be saved.
I never know quite how to feel about things like this beyond my initial outrage and sorrow. Could he have been gently led down another path if things had been different? Chances are that yes, he could have been but who knows? And he was a thinking human being who made evil, evil choices influenced by a myriad of horrible things including, yes, Trump and the people who support him. Who have by some terrifying process made this sort of hatred far too easy to rationalize.
ReplyDeleteIt is impossible for me to understand just as it is impossible for me to truly know the fear you live with every day. That every mother of a black son lives with.
I am sorry in all ways. I am sure that some days it must be too much to bear.
weeping uncontrollably here, I just do not know...I have advised my children to leave this country at least until the white nationalists NAZIS have lost what they seem to have gained during the past few years. So far none have, but i do encourage them to just GO. My son lives in Portland Oregon and is terrified every waking moment, staying alert on the streets and trams.....and he is white, living in an old black neighborhood . Anyway , the story ...I just do not know...how can this be- devastating does not even make a dent in this!
ReplyDeleteHow can this still be happening? Will it ever end? I live with fear and dread all the time. I do not understand how we have become this, we humans-- all the hatred, all the killing, all the ignorance. I so want to live in a different world, the one where people are kind, help each other, smile with warmth from their hearts. I have withered with age and know this will never be so.
ReplyDeleteSo much hatred, it seems that men direct their hatred outward while so many women direct their hatred inwards. And scapegoats are so much easier to abuse and hate because, well, they are other. Except none of us are other, we are all us. We are all connected, all human, all need to be treated with decency and love and compassion.
ReplyDeleteOh god, how chilling ... how can people not see what you so aptly called "the accident of birth" for themselves, and how we are all people with the same feelings and hopes and fears and potential?
ReplyDeleteI know that racism was very much still alive at the beginning of Trump's presidency, but it has become so much more mainstream, accepted, and amplified under his tutelage and mentorship. And the rest of his party, who have let him get away with it - I am speechless at their hypocrisy and cowardice.
From my mother's heart to yours, my friend - my wishes for the safety of your son and your family and all families that are in the line of fire in this racial war. Be vigilant and be safe, and know that so many of us are wishing you well.
Yes. May we all be saved.
ReplyDeleteI think that the most terrifying thing to me is how widespread hatred overall has become towards so many Human Beings by other Human Beings! Perhaps now those who have likely always had it in their Hearts, feel emboldened to outwardly express it without shame, because now they realize the divisiveness is being sanctioned at high levels? I just don't know... I don't even pretend to understand it, since it it not in my own Heart, so I have no point of reference as to where such hatred comes from in a Human towards another Human!? After the El Paso Wal-Mart shooting the Grand-Daughter we're raising was fearful to go to a Wal-Mart for Months because she is of Hispanic heritage and felt people were hunting Mexicans at Wal-Marts, to see her legitimate fear chilled my Heart too. I was relieved when she felt safe enough to go back to a sense of normalcy and not feel so much a Target for such superficial random violence.
ReplyDelete