So much of the violence we experience in America is mediated, composed through the prism of culture, critique, justification to the point of turning people into talking points, objects to be moved around a chessboard. But like so many names that have become familiar over the last few years, Philando Castile was not a chess piece. He was, of course, a human being with family and friends who loved him dearly. There are more people than I expected, who I know in real life, who have been directly effected by this tragedy. People who have to find the words and the courage to tell their children that someone they cared for, counted on, trusted is no longer among the living. People I know who had to brace themselves for the reaction after they told their child, “Mr. Phil was murdered.” If we can allow the repetition of the process of degradation and murder in America for the sake of controlling blackness, then we must force ourselves towards the same style of repetition in the reverse, telling ourselves and others, one time and one time more, that Philando Castile was a human being. Philando Castile was not an object. Philando Castile was not put on this earth to be made an example of.
Many of us here in MPLS are a little shaken, but not at all surprised, after the verdict – not guilty on all counts – for Jeronimo Yanez, the St. Anthony, MN cop who murdered Philando Castile. How to move forward, how to act, how to relate and continue to coexist with one another here in a state that speaks so highly of itself, yet knows full well that it must come to terms with both its past and present and future wrong-doings. The first step, as always, is to begin to unpack the nature of it all: how we see it, how we feel it, how our attitudes become formed into our institutions.
Earlier today, frequent squatter at the shop (and dear friend and conversation partner), Marlon James wrote a piece about his experiences being the “big, black guy” here in Minneapolis. Please take a moment to read it in full, and consider how, while this post-verdict moment may feel singular, that moment accumulated becomes the totality of public life for black American men and women.
You can change a system, an institution, a standard of measure, but until you work to change yourself, this shit’s gonna keep going down, and the experiences and daily dread Marlon describes will never go away. Our institutions our us, they do not change on their own.