There is a famous tombstone epithet: “I told you I was sick.” That is the feeling I and, I’d guess, many African-Americans have reading and hearing about the spate of racist skinhead violence in Denver.
The death of Mauritanian immigrant Oumar Dia and the disabling of Jeannie VanVelkinburg, the heroic woman who came to his aid, is in itself quite tragic.
There is, however, satisfaction arising from proof again that Aframs are not crazy to think America will enter the new millennium a country wherein you can be killed simply because of your skin color.
It may seem that some Aframs relish victim status. No doubt some of the 40 million of us do. Thousands of us are also Cubs fans.
But, the joys of inflicting guilt on pale hearts notwithstanding, most of us would rather walk the streets in safety. Still, quiet as it’s kept, there is icy comfort in knowing that even if some of us are paranoid, there are people out to get us.
Such a reassurance is, in a really sick way, welcome in these days of denial. Every other week, right wing radio talkers assert that the popularity of Oprah, Bill Cosby and Colin Powell proves that Aframs now get a fair shake in America. As if pink people’s affection for Satchmo and Jackie Robinson proved there was no Jim Crow.
Next would come the quiet miracle of a normal life, one wherein no brown-skinned person in Denver or Bridgeport need look over their shoulder as they walk. (Unless Bridgeport suffered an infestation of lawyers.)
But for many who have suffered, only recognition can bring closure. The victims of torture in Argentina, for example — when the military junta fell, they who had been beaten, broken and ravaged didn’t demand the generals be drowned in gazpacho or strangled with thong bikinis (as much fun as that might have been to watch). They wanted the politicians and the newspapers and the muralists to say, out loud, that something heinous was done to innocent people and that the nation was sorry. It happened. For weeks thereafter, people wept in offices and on street corners. They wept for their neighbors and for themselves and for a world where such things can happen. And then they moved on. Even victims, especially they, were eager to go forward with their lives and get back to resenting Britain for the Falklands war.
I, and others, may take satisfaction in observing Denver’s unambiguous proof of continuing racism. But those sentiments are overwhelmed by the far more profound comfort and inspiration to be taken from Jeannie VanVelkinburg. One of her is worth a platoon of skinheads and a lake of laws. She will never walk again because she took a bullet for a man she did not know and color motivated not a thing she did. At an anti-hate rally last week, Jeannie VanVelkinburg declared that not only had she no regrets but that the next time she sees a purse snatcher on the lam she’ll roll her wheelchair after him.
. . . Now that I think about it, forget acknowledgment, forget justice, never mind “I told you” anything; if we can all make a solemn vow to emulate or at least consistently honor the Jeannie VanVelkinburgs of the world, I’ll be optimistic enough to just move on from where we are now.
