Zahra Gordon

The Writing on the Wall: #Ferguson #EricGarner

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Amidst all the anger and protest that I’m seeing about the disregard for the lives of Micheal Brown and Eric Garner, I just want to note that Toni Morrison already told us this was going to happen. And if you’ve read Beloved then you already know.

 BELOVED Photo Credit: Zahra Gordon 

I have a quote from Beloved on the wall in my room and even though I pass and read it everyday, I somehow didn’t make an immediate connection between the present, the past, the fiction and the reality. I’ve read Beloved about three times and this scene is one that struck a chord with me. Now, I didn’t really want to write about the situation in Ferguson, Missouri because I didn’t want to ride a bandwagon when so many people have had so many thoughtful things to say and when so many have been part of a vibrant, determined protest movement that I’ve only been able to follow through social media. And especially since, as much as I care about what happens to black people in America and other parts of the world, police in Trinidad & Tobago, where I live, have killed more than 40 young, black men this year alone – the majority of whom are under 30 years old. 

Somehow it only occurred to me yesterday that the quote on my wall was The Writing on the Wall – that Morrison had already told us this would continue to happen until we had total reign of our definitions, until there was a categorical shift or revolution.

In Beloved, the slave Sixo once fed himself food from the master’s pantry. When Sixo got caught, he tried to explain to the master why he (Sixo) needed the food. Then Sixo was flogged. 

“Sixo plant rye to give high piece a better chance. Sixo take and feed the soil, give you more crop. Sixo take and feed Sixo give you more work.” 

 Sixo was “clever,  but the schoolteacher beat him anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers – not the defined.”

This is what it all comes down to: the definers vs the defined. Certain people, institutions define what is human, what is just and those people dictate who is and who isn’t deserving of justice and humanity. The same small group of people and institutions throughout the world define criminal and lawful, decide when laws will be obeyed, when they’ll be bent and when they’ll be outright defied. These are also the people and institutions who define, make and enforce the law in the first place. Why else would a grand jury fail to indict a police officer who, although unprovoked, killed a man, but succeed in laying charges against the man who filmed the incident and brought it to public attention? Because the dead man and the camera man are not the men writing the definitions; they are the men being defined.

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