Maybe the tempest of blue-on-black homicide hasn’t rained down on you. But the police slayings of unarmed black men that continue to grip America are a sinister eulogy; burying hope with one hand and exhuming a twisted justice with the other. As a black man, whatever that means, I’d better give you my take on things. If I get shot by the police, you’ll never hear it like it happened.

If I get shot by the police, you should know that I wasn’t a drug dealer, an ex-felon, or an addict. Better still, you should know that it doesn’t matter. In my life, I met countless men and women who’d been in each of those places. All had many things to teach me.

No matter what they say if I get shot by the police, I wasn’t brandishing a firearm. I wasn’t being aggressive. I may have been listening to music with a beat, but I wasn’t a thug. I repeat: I wasn’t a thug. Of course, nobody can be reduced to a slur.

Who is a thug anyway? A boy-made-man by violent urban divestment? A boy whose image-world became a temple of saccharine Eurocentric consumerism? A boy who saw no intelligent visions of himself? An exile whose neighborhood was run-down, torn-down, rebuilt, and gentrified without him inside?  Know that I tried to make a difference in these issues. I tried to add my nuts and bolts to Lowell’s scaffold of truth.

If I get shot by the police, it won’t be called a “Musician Shooting,” a “Composer Shooting,” or a “Vocalist Shooting.” The headlines won’t say  “Orator Shooting,” “Scholar Shooting,” “Pianist Shooting” “Superb Cook  Shooting,” or “Loving Uncle Shooting.” The headlines won’t mention me at all. They’ll say “Police Shooting,” as though it makes no difference whether I was a man or a fire hydrant; as long as I got shot by a badge. 

Your television set won’t say “an author was shot by the police this evening.” Only a “man,” a “suspect,” or a “resident.” I won’t have an occupation, because that evokes dignity and worth. Only the police will be named by their occupation; to shoot defective humans like me. The newsreels will make real this fantasy. Don’t buy the spin if I get shot by the police.

I won’t be “gunned down,” because “gunning down” affirms the victim. “Shooting” affirms the perpetrator. Police officers get “gunned down,” but others just get shot by them. Equal tragedy will get unequal rhetoric. Beware of this if I get shot by the police. 

There will be no context if I get shot by the police. I’ll be an anomaly. A trivia. A statistic. Time will pass. I’ll be uttered at someone’s kitchen table during a TV commercial: “Remember the guy they shot that year? No…the other one.” Your local paper won’t situate me in the history of police brutality. It won’t be delivered with shrink-wrapped Cliff’s Notes to the legacy of American ethnic cleansing.

Every February, if I get shot by the police, I won’t be acknowledged on the intercom at your local grocery chain. I won’t appear next to sanitized, neutralized, and unrealized caricatures of Carver, Parks, and King. I won’t be in the fifteen-second-spots on your local network affiliates that celebrate Black History. I won’t be a topic as politicians remind us just how far we’ve come. The media will close-up the present as they trumpet closure of the past. You can bet on that if I get shot by the police.

There will be no justice if I get shot by the police. My shooter will get paid administrative leave. They’ll rush before a conduct committee; union-approved with citizens removed. If they are exonerated, no charges will be filed. If they are reprimanded, no charges will be filed. If they are white, race won’t be a factor. If they aren’t white, the question will be profane. Colleagues will give interviews, and be glad to have the officer back in action.  Their family will be made a highlight of the difficult ordeal.

I will be silent; beyond the chamber of fiction. A never-was-didn’t-happen casserole in the atrophied kitchen of critical vision. A raindrop in the flooding genetic memory of some chocolate infant, unreal and unacknowledged in the tribulations of his tomorrow.

Adam Bahner can be reached at [email protected]. He notes that William Pepper’s latest book, An Act of State, makes a powerful case that Dr. Martin Luther King was shot by the police.

June 17 2004
Issue 95

is published every Thursday.