I had blogged and journaled, flippantly, for many years before the police murdered Alton Sterling and Philando Castile on film. Their shootings—or, that the end of their mortal stories would be the ultimate conclusion to mine—turned me into a writer.
The politics of fear quickly set gangrene into my psyche. I called my first blog For the Dead and the Dying as a way of drawing attention to the killing field of Black folk our nation’s police were reaping under the eyes of body cams and social media. From my apartment in Maumelle, I documented the harvest. Eugene Ellison. Korryn Gaines. Walter Scott. Charles Smith Jr. I wrote while others protested. Despite this, I felt powerless under the imperial impunity of my nation. I eventually ran out of places to be comfortable and obsessed over the red ledger in all available moments when I was conscious. Steaks with my wife. Cigars with my father-in-law. Side conversations with the teachers I worked alongside.
I had to walk away. My wife read the last post for the blog and said I had to walk away for my health.
I had become a chaser of paddy wagons, ambulances—and more often, hearses. It is always going to be a part of my art, documenting how the state, to subsidize its racial resentment and politics, allows Black folk to be blown away like pollen in spring. But it is no way to continue to tell stories and still be able to live a square, fair life. Earlier in my first blog’s life, I was developing my concept of Black personhood. I simply described it as a maintaining joy as we sought to survive in the shadow of the American Experiment. But my vision was incomplete, and thus I did not feel accountable for using it to create stories. I forgot the feeling of joy and sought only the taste of soil dug up from six feet for my taste buds.
My rescue story begins where all great things come from in America—a Black woman, and her story.
In 2017, I was hired to turn around a school in Little Rock. I quickly found myself overwhelmed. To shore up my efforts, I hired a close acquittance who previously had worked in the same district as me. She towered over me at nearly six feet, with an athlete’s physique. She also remains one of the most intelligent and insightful people I know. I quickly got out of her way and she got to work with her aspects of the turnaround effort, producing stellar results with her students and teachers.
Despite her success, her advancement went roughly. My central administrators refused to promote her for a sorry litany of excuses. I exhausted every last one of them until I could lay bare the essential fact—that this woman was Black, and decisive, and competent, and passionate in a way that would be fully accepted if she was White and a man. They did not take it well; soon, my board of directors asked my bosses to take their leave and I was able to move my comrade up to the position she had earned.
She maintained her sense of joy and duty throughout it all. She focused her outside energies on the totems that restored her faith—her daughters, Delta Sigma Theta, completing her second master’s, her love life; she remained moisturized and unbothered in spite of the crumbling conditions we strove to reverse. Over time, her commitment helped me clarify what I meant by Black personhood. She is a human and yet she was denied the full blossom of her work due to her skin tone. She dwelled fully in the place between her humanity and citizenship, and insisted that the place she was in would deliver joy and meaning.
I soon left the job, exhausted, not thanked, but with results. And I wondered if I could find the same place she lived in to write.
If I had a totem, it would be a daily planner. My only high talent it is my constant discipline in trying to be an upright man. Like the sunrise, I seek to be regular in habits. I schedule my workouts. I mostly eat the same meals for breakfast and lunch. I strive to rise and rest at the same times.
I am now going to do my best to apply this discipline to writing. My old mistake was only looking for the stories with Black personhood that white supremacy said was our only narrative—of half starts toward equality, and arteries and brain stems shredded by state-sanctioned hollow points. For my health and sense of personhood, I had to touch into the same joy my coworker found in family and fellowship. I want to tell truer stories so that I have a fresher mindset when critiquing the stories of Black suffering and death that are all too easy to find.
I am thus going to try a new phase of my writing experiment—editorial foci. Every quarter, I am going to choose a topic and spend twelve weeks maximum researching, writing, and exploring the topic’s relationship to Black personhood. There are so many stories waiting to be unearthed. I want to do this. I want to find stories that resonate with Black personhood, and help to build and sustain a joyful and curious community.
Wish me luck and fortune.