No, 1994 was after I had lived in and gone to school in areas where the people looked different from me or read books by black intellectuals and had already developed a fondness for W.E.B Dubois. It was after Penny got burned with the iron, Prince Hakeem came to America and Calvin finally got a J-O-B. I already thirsted for knowledge and understanding and was a few years past the bitter cancellation of my 9 year old self's favorite TV show -227. I had already been a strange Caucasoid, on perennial race card probation, saved only by my love of dogs and my complete and utter inability to jump. I have an almost pathological need to understand, but in 1994, I longed to understand but still didn't know shit.
In 1994, Arizona was still reeling from the fallout of our failure to make MLK day a reality. We had been boycotted and skewered in the media, even had public enemy make a song about us, not their best if I'm being honest.
I marched in 1994, the first of many MLK day marches that I would eventually join. My high school was in some ways the heart of Phoenix's black community, yes we have one! It was also at the crossroads between this small but established black community and a larger and more dispersed Latino community. Sometimes there was violence in the surrounding area and this violence usually manifested in the ranks of differing gangs, fighting over turf that neither of them actually owned.
In 1994 it is said that a gang dispute spilled over into the school and started what was widely reported as a race riot between African Americans and Latinos. I've always been suspicious of how the incident was reported but it was before google, youtube and the 24 hour news cycle. Nobody had cell phones and we still thought we were cool because we could send pages with number that looked like they were spelling balls or boobs. What I do know of that day, what I can't un-know- is what I saw with my own eyes. There were helicopters, cops in riot gear liberally giving out free samples of mace and groups of scared and confused children running back and forth, trying to make sense of it all.
The next day the news crews were there, they had already been reporting on the incident using words like riot and melee. Now they were there, asking to speak to some students. To gauge our first hand reactions to our strangest day, since that time there was water in the river and we all had to go home early (if you understand, you're probably from Phoenix). I was on the student council and because our ranking student council members were ironically participating in a camp developed to increase cultural awareness and understanding, they wanted to speak to me.
I was an odd choice. The only caucasian male on the student council of a school that was decidedly uncaucasian in it's makeup. I don't remember what I said, but it was likely a somewhat less articulated version of the following. "Yeah there were some fights, but I doubt a similar event across town would have brought helicopters, riot cops and mace. I also doubt that you'll be here tomorrow to report on our good grades or our academic events or that you will be here on graduation day to celebrate our successes."
It was there that I took the red pill from Morpheus, that which would reveal an uncomfortable truth, from which I could not retreat. I learned that day in 1994, that it didn't matter how bad our so called riot was, or what might have happened on the other side of town. What mattered was that we fit the narrative of a story that they wanted to tell. A story that has been repeated so many times, in so many ways for so many years, that we are born believing in it, just as we are born needing air. A story so insidious that we are taught it without even knowing. A story that we unconsciously believe without ever having questioned. That story is that some are better than others, that some are more valuable, and that some matter less than others.
Follow me for 1994- Part 2
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