Introspective: Juneteenth

Intruding on Sacred Spaces

One of the ideas I’ve taken deeply to heart is the idea of code switching. The fact that in different spaces and places we act according to the norms and expectations of the culture or vibe in those spaces. Our speech and actions flow from either a conscious or, more frequently, unconscious recognition of those norms. Those norms become far more conscious when these are spaces where we have no prior experience to guide us. In some ways code switching can at times be an innate desire to fit in as an act of social preservation, and in another sense it is a very real way of honoring the space, the culture, and the people.

When presented with spaces or cultures we’ve never experienced before the natural response is to hold oneself in a state of observant, and delayed engagement. We watch. We hesitate. What are the other peope doing? Why are they doing that? Do I need to do that? Again these often aren’t conscious questions, they are simply reflexive. I would hazard to say that most of us have experienced the awkard feelings of entering a new space, a feeling of being on an unsure footing, questioning if the expectation is our default silent observation, or if that isn’t what the space demands of us.

Over the years I’ve heard my brother Christopher on the phone many times, and I always find it somewhat hilarious that when he speaks to different people he quickly picks up their accent, their manner of speaking and reflects it back at them. Not in a conscious way at all, he just does so reflexively. I note it about myself when talking to different groups, I adopt different speaking patterns, levels of outgoingness, even volume level because in the back of my mind that is what the space demands of me in that moment.

Sometimes though, we need guides to help us understand the expected. Call it manners, call it culture — it’s all code. For my students I try to make the code explicit: “I’m not saying that certain words are bad, but certain words are bad in this space, because it is not your home.”

We have all had guides, whether they were actual teachers or just friends introducing us to part of their culture, elders, etc.

There are very real stakes when we fail to code switch. Choose the wrong volume level in a room meant for quite repose and you’ll quickly be shushed. Step into a courtroom and address a judge informally at your own peril. Fail to show immediate and complete compliance and get a knee on your neck. The consequeces for failing a test you didn’t even know you were taking can be dire.

And honestly, some spaces will never be your spaces.

Unbreakable codes:

Some codes are unbreakable, our mere existence in these spaces or interactions is unnacceptable.

On February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery, a 25‑year‑old Black man, was fatally shot while jogging in the Satilla Shores neighborhood near Brunswick, Georgia. Gregory and Travis McMichael, a father and son, armed themselves and pursued Arbery in a pickup truck after assuming he might be involved in local break‑ins. As Arbery ran, he was cornered by their trucks; Travis McMichael exited his vehicle with a shotgun. A struggle ensued, during which Travis shot Arbery, striking him multiple times at close range. Arbery collapsed and died on the spot. Local prosecutors did not initially bring charges.

The code was unbreakable. Arbery was simply “unacceptable” in that space. The consequence was death.

On July 6th, 2016 a 32-year-old black man named Philando Castile was driving through Falcon Heights, Minnesota and was pulled over for a broken taillight. In the exchange with the officer Castile calmly and responsibly informed the officer that he had a conceal carry permit, and he did have a weapon in the car. When directed he reached for his wallet and officer Jeronimo Yanez shouted “Don’t pull it out” and discharged his weapon seven times, hitting Castile five times, twice through the heart. Castile’s girlfriend and child were in the back seat and she was filming.

Castile tried to follow the code, but the code was unbreakable. He died at the scene.

On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black emergency room technician, was shot and killed in her Louisville, Kentucky apartment during an early-morning police raid. Plainclothes officers—Detectives Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove—were executing a no-knock search warrant related to a narcotics investigation on her ex-boyfriend who had not lived at the residence for multiple months. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who was present in the residence, believed the officers were intruders and fired a single warning shot when they forced entry into the apartment. The police responded with a barrage of 22 gunshots, six of which struck Taylor, resulting in her death.

Neither Walker or Taylor could have known the correct code to assume, because they were in their home. The code was unbreakable.

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was killed during an arrest by Minneapolis police officers in Minnesota. The incident began when employees at a convenience store called the police, alleging Floyd had used a counterfeit $20 bill. Officers arrived and attempted to detain him. After initially resisting being placed in a squad car, Floyd was restrained on the ground by Officer Derek Chauvin, who knelt on his neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds. Floyd repeatedly told officers he couldn't breathe, but the pressure continued even after he became unresponsive.

During the entire time Floyd was on the ground he was not physically resisting arrest. The code was unbreakable, because the issue wasn’t his resistance, it was his existence.

As a white male in the US there are few places that are genuinely barred from me, where there is no code switching to be done, I simply am not acceptable. I would hazard that there are few spaces in which I’m tolerated but undesirable.

Stepping into George Floyd square I very much felt like I was a stranger in a strange land. This was sacred ground to people and it emanated that vibe. I knew it wasn’t my space and I should respect it. Don’t misunderstand me, it has less to do with my whiteness, and more to do with the fact that this wasn’t my community. Part of it was also that I brought a very large and very obvious camera and was taking pictures.

I felt very much like an interloper, but I had to see, and more importantly I felt the need to share, because I very much believe that certain places have an assignment — a feeling or vibe that permeates them as a result of certain events. I felt this deeply without realizing it in Golconda, IL when I was biking through the town. I frequently tell people it had a Steven Kingian vibe, where everything looked normal, but felt off. Later I learned it was the crossing point for the trail of tears.

That was the sort of palpable heaviness that rested over this place for me.

Not even necessarily because of Floyd himself, but rather because he is one of many strange fruit, killed because they had no hope of following some enigmatic, unbreakable code for which failure to adhere meant death.

These three examples are just points of light in a galaxy of similar stories.

Bystander:

In the case of George Floyd bystanders filmed him being killed, expressed clear outrage at what was happening, but understood that to physically interviene would mean to suffer a similar fate — brutalization, maybe death.

The code is understood to be “let this happen, or you’re next”.

Philando Castile’s girlfriend filmed from the back seat as he died, in a kind of detached calm, narrated what was happening.

On May 21, 2020 police were called at 2:00am to a Phoenix, AZ apartment building due to a noise complaint. Two officers pounded loudly on the apartment door, but did not announce that they were Police.

42-year-old Ryan Whitaker, a white man, opened the door of his apartment with his legally owned handgun low at his side. Police immediately stepped back, drawing their pistols and yelled “Gun! Gun!”. In under two seconds, as Whitaker is visibly attempting to place the gun on the ground he is shot three times.

Moments later his girlfriend Brandee Nees is pulled from the apartment. As Whitaker can be heard in agonal breathing, in the active state of dying, no aid was rendered to attempt to save him, rather the officers explain to Nees why Whitaker was shot, while simultaneously she is begging to be able to be with him as he died.

Certainly if she had attempted to force her way through to him she would have been brutalized.

Rewriting the Codes:

Look, I’m presenting this to you becuase I don’t want to be a bystander. It does great harm to my soul to watch wild injustices become the norm, one so expected that people have to coach their children how to interact with police so they can survive the interaction — and sometimes even that isn’t enough.

Juneteenth is a holiday because it commemorates the first day in which Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was put into effect, and Slaves became free men. We have the ability to make a better society, but it seems we have become cowardly bystanders, and that some of us are done with standing back.

Recently with masked ICE agents wildly overreaching their legal authority, masked, riding around in unmarked cars without warrants, and snatching people off the streets or their homes, or from courthouses only for those people to be shuttled off, with some of them wholly being denied due process… something is breaking.

My friend put it in this way:

“I'm in the process of getting my conceal carry permit. Not because I'm a gun nut or wanna be hero […] so, anyways, say I happen to come across a situation where men wearing masks and plain clothes pile out of an unmarked van and try to pull a woman or child in?

do I try to intervene, and end up ruining my life and my family's by assaulting, or god forbid, killing a government agent?

Or do I try to convince myself it's a "legitimate" government kidnapping and never really know and have to look at a coward the next time I look in a mirror?

Or am I slow on the draw and I end up dead in a justified law enforcement shooting?

So, basically, would I rather be dead, or be a coward? “

So I ask us all:

Would you rather be dead, or be a coward?

Where is your line, where being a bystander carries with it such intense mental and moral wounds that you can no longer tolerate the codes currently operate under, which are hostile to human life (even if it’s not your life)?

I’m not telling you how to think. I’m just presenting the thoughts and questions I have in my own head about my own experiences.

But damn, I want to live in a world where existence in the wrong place isn’t a crime punishable by death.