As a Black Man in America, I Am Done Running
By: Lumumba Shabazz
Tags: Race, Family, Equality, BlackLivesMatter, Racism

As a Black Man in America, I Am Done Running

The way white people see me is not how I see myself

Photo: MirageC/Getty Images

You wanna know a secret? Whenever I get stressed, I work. I work a lot.

As a soldier during the first Gulf War, I volunteered to burn shit in huge drums of kerosene because it was the only duty that would allow me the freedom and time to ease the stresses on my brain in a wartime environment.

I am sitting now, after a day of running on the trails, mowing the yard, fixing the mower, and cooking dinner — all of this to avoid having to think about what was going on in Minneapolis and the rest of the country.

This morning as I was preparing to head out to the trails near my house, my 14-year-old daughter followed me around, asking why I couldn’t just exercise in the backyard. Then she started crying — I mean, really crying. Through her anguished cries, she blurted out that she was terrified of me going out because she was scared the prevailing mood in the country meant I could be in serious danger. Her fears shook me, and in that moment, I resented everything about this country for making me have to comfort my daughter so I could run.

Fourteen, after all, is still an age of innocence. It is a time of budding rebellion from the chains of parental control. A time of discovering a way past your own awkward interpretation of self into a world of teenage angst, new awakenings, and what pretends to be love. I am so angry she is not being afforded that opportunity, and it is not like my wife and I haven’t tried to shelter her from the ugliness of the world. We have worked really hard at it, but despite our best efforts, we keep falling short.

I hate that my daughter is being forced to grow up too quickly and that she has to defend her existence every single second of the day.

We fell short when we could not protect her from being called a monkey in school or being told by a middle-school classmate on the bus that his grandfather would have owned her grandfather. We fell short when we could not prevent her from the “nigger whispers,” something white middle-schoolers do when they want you to hear their contempt for you, but can still feign ignorance and pretend they were addressing someone else when challenged. We fell short when we couldn’t prevent her from hearing the sick jokes like, “What do Black people and apples have in common?” The middle-school answer: “They both look good hanging on trees.”

I hate that my daughter is being forced to grow up too quickly and that she has to defend her existence every single second of the day. I resent being powerless to stop what is already here and the troubles yet to come.

I left the house this morning in full agreement with my wife and daughter that I would check in every half hour or so, if just to ease their minds. After all, running outdoors is a new thing for me. The pandemic means I can no longer go to the gym. So off I go, I run…

You wanna know another secret? I was a choir boy growing up in Brooklyn, New York — literally and figuratively so. I was that kid every mother loved, the kind she openly wanted her son to be: kind, compassionate, brilliant student and athlete, and a real nerd for history, arts, and culture. I never smoked, never drank, and never got in trouble for anything. I was a dope-ass kid. However, not everyone liked me, and for that, I had to learn to run.

I ran from the IHOP where I worked on Ralph and Avenue K in Brooklyn every single summer night in high school because not running meant a serious beat-down from the idle white boys who sat outside the pizza shop waiting for me. I would sprint 30 minutes nonstop from there to Kings Plaza Shopping Center, dodging bottles, garbage cans, baseball bats, and a torrential downfall of “nigger this” and “nigger that” just to make it home. And then, I would immediately worry about having to navigate those same streets the next day. This was a year or two before Yusuf Hawkins, a 16-year-old Black teen, who had gone to inquire about a used car, was chased and murdered by a white mob in Bensonhurst. Already, my mother had warned me about going alone into Canarsie, Brighton Beach, Bay Ridge, and Sheepshead Bay, but somehow, she forgot to mention Ralph and K.

Every night they would wait for me, and every time I escaped, they seemed to grow angrier. Rain and thunderstorms were my salvation because, when the rain fell, they wouldn’t be out. Those nights were comforting. I could afford to rest easy with my own thoughts about school, soccer, and which girl I wanted to ask out. Normal teenage shit I suppose. The hot summer nights were the worst because they would gather by the legions, and those nights, I had to run.

I quit my job the night after they almost caught me. That day at work, I was wrecked by migraines and simply had no energy left when I clocked out at 10 p.m. to head home. As usual, they were waiting for me, but this time, they were spread out across two blocks in small groups, instead of congregating in front of the pizza shop. I was terrified, but a sense of survival kicked in. I made a quick decision to start running toward the largest group of boys, and at the last moment, I dodged between two passing cars, only narrowly escaping getting hit, and started sprinting down the middle of the street.

In the din of it, one of them screamed, “Catch the nigger,” but there was no catching me that night. As the boys closed in from behind, I remember seeing the faces of the adults flashing by as they sat on their front steps enjoying the nighttime breeze and Yankees baseball commentary. I remember them laughing when one of the boys got close enough to graze me with a punch on the side of my head. I remember running full speed at the group that was closing in from the front and lowering my shoulder to break through. God must have been with me that night because just as I was about to turn the corner to Kings Plaza, I was praying that a bus would be there. Fortunately for me, it was, but being late at night, the driver decided to pull off a few minutes early, and I had to run a few extra blocks to catch up to it at a red light. Just as I arrived, the light turned green again, and I started frantically slapping the side of the bus to get the driver’s attention. Thankfully, he slowed up enough, without completely stopping, and allowed me to hop on. Apparently, he saw me in the distance being chased and drove slower so I could have time to make it on the bus. That was my last night at IHOP — but not my last time running.

Senior year, I was working the closing shift at the KFC on Kings Highway and Ocean Parkway, still in Brooklyn. It was right across the street from Cinema Kings, the seediest movie theater that ever existed, deep in white boy territory, and yeah, I had to run again. Funny thing is, the same boys would show up in the restaurant during the day, and they would be the most well-behaved, mannerly people. But at night, these fuckers were vicious. Bigger too. All the young Black kids who worked there used to flag down passing patrol cars, and the cops would flat-out tell us they couldn’t help. Some nights, we would pool money to get a taxi to go two or three train stations down, just to avoid them, but I was always the odd man out who lived in the opposite direction in Coney Island, so I had to run a lot more. I ran down busy streets, down train tracks, grabbed on the back of buses, I did whatever it took to survive, until I couldn’t take it anymore and quit running.

I should have run at Albee Square Mall in downtown Brooklyn when a group of white cops started beating a Black vendor on the street for peddling goods without a license. The law stated that the goods should have been confiscated and a summons issued, but since the law didn’t apply to Black people, the cops started beating the young man without mercy. As a crowd gathered, my brother and I said loudly that the cops were in violation. Before we knew it, we were being beaten too. After being beaten, we were dragged across the street to a paddy wagon, had hoods placed over our heads, and were punched repeatedly. The handcuffs were so tight we started losing feeling in our fingers and wrists. The verbal and physical abuse continued for several hours before we were released and issued a citation to reappear in court for resisting arrest.

I should have run when I walked out of a friend’s church’s choir practice (with the Bible in hand). Less than 30 seconds later, I was spread-eagle over the hood of a squad car with guns drawn. Apparently, I fit the description of some “Magical Negro” who commits a crime, goes to church, sings in the choir, and comes out meticulously dressed in white with the Good Book in his hands seeking yet another victim.

My friends and I should have run when the police would stop by our flag football games in the park near our house in Coney Island. They’d force us into their cars and make us stand in mandatory criminal lineups for some victim or the other to point in our direction. All the time we would say silent prayers to whichever God felt like answering to not let it be us.

My two younger brothers should have run when, at 11 and 9, they were arrested for rape. As their older brother and the one who knew them best, I am quite certain that those two hadn’t even discovered how to pleasure themselves yet. But again, they fit the “Magical Negro” description — but then again, they didn’t. The suspects were two Black males and that was about all they had in common. In less than five minutes, the entire neighborhood rallied and made such a racket at the police station that the cops had no choice but to release my brothers. Even after the woman admitted to lying, they still had to deal with pending charges of resisting arrest.

It’s easy to see that my interaction with the police has never been great — and I was the quintessential good kid. It was not a relationship built on reciprocal trust and respect. It has always been adversarial. It is a relationship of contempt and anger, and that anger subsides, only to rear itself again when Black people are murdered in the street, and in their homes, their cars, the parks, and department stores, and their murderers continue to get away.

I know now there is a vast disconnect between how white people generally see me and how I see myself.

It is difficult, I imagine, for my white colleagues to understand how we (Black people) are often approached by the police. There are no pleasantries exchanged, no small talk, no conversation, only fear, contempt, an assumption of guilt, and hands on guns. They reek of fear because, after all, I and others like me represent a clear and present danger.

I hear it all the time about how intimidating and scary I am. How unapproachable, how terrifying I seem. I know now there is a vast disconnect between how white people generally see me and how I see myself. They want me to laugh to make them comfortable because their idea of me terrifies them more than the reality.

The truth is I care about people — all people. I could not be a college soccer coach and be otherwise. I am compassionate to a fault, empathetic, and hate to see anyone being taken advantage of. My parents raised me so. I love music, culture, great books, and wine — even though I am likely to sip on the same glass for an entire night. I have close friends in Ghana and South Africa, and in Mexico, and in the Arab quarter in Granada. Some of my best friends are Romani, who dance flamenco in the hills and caves of Andalusia, and others are Rastafarians, deep in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica. Many of my closest colleagues in coaching are Croatian and Hungarian. I’ve had lovers in Turkey, Germany, and Colombia — please don’t tell my wife — but how is it that they can all see my complex nuances, my many faces, but here at home, I am vilified.

The one thing that the murder of George Floyd brings to the forefront is that we may yet find a cure for Covid-19 but the vaccine for racism, some 400 years later, proves unattainable. I had to shield my daughter’s innocence when Sandra Bland was murdered, and Tamir Rice, and Ahmaud Arbery, and now George Floyd. As a combat veteran who has seen the ravages of death up close, I still cannot bring myself to watch the video. Try as I may to prevent my daughter from watching it, I know that it is an impossible battle to win. The little I have seen of it remains etched in my brain, and truthfully, it haunts my sleep. It robs, steals, and destroys my energy, and it burdens me with worries.

I worry about my children, my cousins, my nieces and nephews. I worry that their youthful naivety is being ripped away from their hands, and I hate that they must live in a world that is unforgiving and callous in its approach. I worry the world will not offer them the benefit of the doubt, and unlike their white peers, they cannot sit back now and think about lake cottages and summer vacations. Our living is not that easy, so this morning, after all these bloody years, I had to run again.

I have to pretend to be okay and not say anything controversial. And while running, I have to be careful to not make anyone feel threatened or frightened by my presence. I have learned to manufacture coughs and make arbitrary noises with every step, so the white ladies on the trail are not startled when I come by. I have to run at midday when the sun is hot and the trail is crowded because, as my wife has reminded me, I could be a suspect for anything that happens early in the morning or late at night. Every Black man fits that Magical Negro description. I am almost 50 years old but may have to consider the offer of one of my friends (who happens to be white) to be my chaperone on runs.

I am tired, though. I am weary. I do not have the energy to entertain the foolishness any longer. Just this past fall while on a preseason bonding trip on Crystal River in Northern Michigan with the collegiate soccer team I coach, an older white woman blocked my canoe and requested to see my passport. Her son and husband talked her down, but I had to manage my anger, manage my response, and truthfully, I cannot do it anymore. My anger is now a festering sore.

I am angry about the silence from so many — angry that they would be more upset if a dog or cat was killed but not George Floyd. I am angry because so many people continue to offer so many bullshit excuses instead of declaring on principle that what happened to George Floyd was wrong. No human being should be treated so. If Dylann Roof can walk into a church and kill nine people and be offered a meal and empathy, why not George? I am angry because I know that George could easily be me, and though I would like to think myself reasoned and calm, there is no telling how I would choose to react to someone who is hell-bent on killing me. I wonder then if the people who know me would still choose to remain silent. I am not certain of that, but I am certain that I am done running.