Capítulo 4
When Stars Begin to Fall: Black Grief in America
The sudden death of my beloved sister Leisa devastated our family. She had been a constant presence in my life since childhood-teaching me to drive, to dress, and the value of a dollar. When Yma called to tell me Leisa had drowned in the lake near her home, the pain was instantaneous and all-encompassing. My thoughts immediately turned to my mother, whose grief manifested in frenetic energy and self-blame for encouraging Leisa to go fishing.
After the funeral, I returned to CNN, grateful for work that required my full focus. I counted steps from door to door, moving mechanically through days while feeling my innate hopefulness diminish. Between the 2016 election and Leisa's death in January 2018, the world seemed increasingly bleak as headlines scrolled by-from corporate tax cuts to police shootings of unarmed Black men.
The interview with Stevante Clark, brother of Stephon Clark who was killed by police, quickly unraveled as his raw grief manifested in erratic behavior. Despite my attempts to guide the conversation, Stevante's pain erupted in accusations about media exploitation. When I shared my own recent loss of my sister, hoping to build a bridge, it made no difference.
Black Americans have an intimate relationship with death; our funerals reflect a deep understanding of loss through soulful music and uninhibited mourning. As COVID-19 deaths surpassed 160,000 in summer 2020, Trump's callous "it is what it is" response revealed a stunning lack of empathy. This detachment mirrors America's historical response to tragedies disproportionately affecting people of color-from slavery to COVID-19, where Black Americans died at rates nearly twice their population percentage.
Losing my sister taught me that each loss carries unique impact-the inverse of that person's impact on your life-which is the essence of "Black lives matter." America has a disturbing history of displaying Black corpses as spectacle, from slavery-era mutilated bodies on pikes to Jim Crow lynching postcards to today's viral videos of police killings. While these images have awakened consciences and mobilized protests, I question when we'll stop requiring Black martyrdom to inspire action. We must honor the fullness of these lives-like my fierce lioness sister-not reduce them to ethereal martyrs.
Capítulo 5
Reimagining Justice and Policing
The stark contrast in police treatment is undeniable: white supremacist Dylann Roof, who murdered nine people at Emanuel AME Church, was gently guided into a police cruiser, while Eric Garner, arrested for selling loose cigarettes, died in an illegal chokehold gasping "I can't breathe"-the same words George Floyd would later utter. Throughout summer 2020, I tried balancing my coverage between the peaceful majority of protesters focused on police brutality and the occasional looting that occurs when hopelessness meets opportunity.
While I understand the sentiment behind "Defund the police," the slogan made me cringe. It promotes knee-jerk responses and alienates potential allies by suggesting unrealistic simplicity. Diverting resources toward targeted solutions rather than a one-size-fits-all police approach actually makes conservative common sense-specialized teams for different emergencies would better serve communities and officers themselves.
From the beginning, American policing was about maintaining social order, not public safety. Slave patrols dating back to 1690 evolved into early police departments that explicitly excluded Black people and immigrants. Even August Vollmer's reforms in the 1890s, which brought professionalism and dignity to policing, still served a Jim Crow society. For Black communities throughout history, policing has meant the opposite of safety-it's been a mechanism of control and oppression.
In August 2020, Officer Rusten Sheskey shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back, leaving him paralyzed. During subsequent protests, police were videotaped giving water to armed white vigilantes while ordering protesters off streets. Seventeen-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse killed two unarmed protesters but walked past police vehicles unimpeded. The stark disparity continued with Rittenhouse's crowdfunding defense reaching $535,000 while Blake's medical expenses fund topped $2 million-suggesting a possible shift in public opinion.
Twenty-six-year-old paramedic Breonna Taylor was killed during a botched no-knock raid. Despite her boyfriend Kenneth Walker believing they were being robbed and firing one warning shot, police responded with a barrage of bullets that left Taylor bleeding out for twenty minutes before she died. After 75 days of demonstrations, a grand jury declined to charge officers directly responsible for Taylor's death, only indicting one for bullets that damaged a white neighbor's wall.
While police brutality makes for dramatic coverage, the real violence lies in systemic injustice. Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark reduced complaints against police by 80% through body cameras and civilian review boards. Newark committed 5% of its police budget to create an Office of Violence Prevention where professionals respond before situations escalate. True reform requires reimagining our system of justice, with demonstration leading to legislation.
Capítulo 6
Monuments, Movies, and American Mythology
The mythology of White supremacy permeates American society, from Confederate monuments to sanitized history lessons. More than 150 years after the Civil War, the United States remains engaged in an "uncivil war" over the same issue: White supremacy. This ideological conflict pits those clinging to a barbaric ethnic caste system against those determined to progress beyond it.
Confederate General Williams Carter Wickham fathered six children with a slave named Bibanna alongside his legitimate family. In 1891, a seventeen-foot monument honoring him as "Soldier, Statesman, Patriot, Friend" was erected in Richmond's Monroe Park. Two of his descendants-67-year-old Black musician Reggie Harris and 28-year-old White Clayton Wickham-have engaged in powerful dialogue about their shared history. After the 2017 Charlottesville violence, Clayton and his brother petitioned for the monument's removal, but it remained until summer 2020 when protesters finally toppled it.
While South Africa created a Truth and Reconciliation Commission after apartheid to foster healing through truth-telling, America lacks such a framework. Empathy is key to social evolution, which requires questioning storytelling that adheres to old caste systems of heroes and villains.
Growing up watching classic black-and-white films with my mother, I rarely saw characters who looked like me. When Black people appeared, they were typically background figures or servants. The few Black characters in books and media bore no resemblance to the doctors, engineers, and business owners in my real-life Black community. Instead, we got stereotypes like Uncle Remus or Mammy in Gone with the Wind. These portrayals shaped expectations and reinforced prejudices that translated to real-life discrimination.
Rather than erasing problematic films like Gone with the Wind from streaming services, we need context. These works serve as historical documents not of the antebellum South but of Hollywood's racist portrayals. They force us to question why White audiences found such comfort in these stories and one-dimensional characters.
As Black filmmakers rise, new mythologies emerge: Wakanda in Black Panther reimagines African colonialism; Jordan Peele's Get Out creates a parable about slavery with commentary on White liberalism. I feel responsible for discussing these evolving narratives with young people in my life, providing context while creating space for necessary conversations.
The Lost Cause mythology was engineered partly by Woodrow Wilson, who rewrote American history through a White supremacist lens. His work, along with Thomas Dixon's novel The Clansman, inspired The Birth of a Nation, America's first blockbuster that portrayed freed slaves as menaces while glorifying the KKK. Confederate monuments aren't about heritage-they're about ideology. These bronze figures don't preserve history; they erase it by turning complex human beings into metal trinkets frozen in mythological poses.
Capítulo 7
The Economics of White Supremacy
As the pandemic swept across the globe, different societies responded in starkly different ways. The Dutch moved with communal purpose like a V-shaped phalanx of geese, while the United States scattered like a murder of crows, "flapping and screeching in a leaderless frenzy, feasting on carrion ideology." With just 4% of the world's population, America would soon suffer 25% of global COVID-19 deaths.
This is the exhausting reality of being Black in America-existing in a perpetual state of heightened alertness, like a sprinter poised at "SET!" but never hearing the starting pistol. Every interaction carries the possibility of discrimination, followed by gaslighting when you point it out. "Don't make it about race," we're told, as if racism is a relic of the past.
When integration became law, many towns across America chose to fill their public swimming pools with concrete rather than allow Black families to swim alongside whites. The wealthy built private pools, while working-class whites sacrificed their own interests to maintain the "cheap sateen security blanket of White supremacy." This segregation had lasting consequences. A 2008 study showed that 58 percent of African American children couldn't swim-twice the percentage of white children-and Black children were three times more likely to die by accidental drowning.
The 1934 film Imitation of Life encapsulates America's economic history through two key scenes: First, when Bea forces Delilah to pose with an exaggerated grin for pancake flour advertisements, and second, when the two women part ways on a grand staircase-Bea going up while Delilah descends to her basement quarters. This visual metaphor perfectly captures the economic reality of race in America.
Isabel Wilkerson's groundbreaking book Caste reveals America's racial hierarchy as part of a global pattern alongside India and Nazi Germany. She argues that "race is a social construct" while "caste is essentially the bones." Most disturbing is how Nazi eugenicists actually studied Jim Crow laws for inspiration. White supremacy is hardware; racism is software.
Black people were brought to America for one purpose: money. Their bodies were commodified as livestock, and an elaborate social construct was created to make slavery palatable. The true value of stolen slave labor is literally incalculable. Reparations must be paid forward through economic opportunity, education, housing, and healthcare. We must address ongoing monetary damages like higher insurance rates from racial profiling and higher mortgage rates in redlined neighborhoods. Americans must wield economic power as a force for change, as money talks where politics fails.
Capítulo 8
The Path Forward: How Change Happens
Don draws a powerful analogy between a physical virus and racism in America. Just as a virus invades the body, triggering fever and potentially fatal responses, racism has infected America for four hundred years, embedding itself deeply in our institutions, culture, and daily interactions. He argues that both "woke" people who mask racism's symptoms through superficial acknowledgments and denialists who reject the problem entirely fail to address the root cause - the deeply entrenched systems and beliefs that perpetuate racial inequality.
On the way to his sister Leisa's wake, Don, his mother, and sister Yma found themselves stuck in traffic on the old Horace Wilkinson Bridge spanning the Mississippi between Port Allen and Baton Rouge. As they sat immobile, they reminisced about the bridge's significance in their lives-how it connected their family across distances, represented freedom, and symbolized progress as the "old bridge" gave way to the "new bridge." The bridge became a metaphor for transition and connection, spanning not just physical distance but generations of family history. Don reflects that this unexpected delay was "a blessing, a reprieve" that forced them to simply be together in their shared loss, creating an unexpected moment of healing and connection.
Throughout history, even societies "far more messed up than our own" have managed to effect sweeping changes. Don identifies several key drivers of change: rage and desperation (citing the 1789 French Revolution, where centuries of inequality finally boiled over); solidarity (referencing Lech Walesa's Solidarity movement that toppled communist Poland through unified worker action); compassion (pointing to South Africa's anti-apartheid movement and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission); and vision (highlighting how transformative leaders from Jesus to Martin Luther King Jr. inspired followers with clarity of purpose and moral conviction).
Don warns that Trump's "uniquely American racism" - a blend of historical prejudice, modern political manipulation, and economic anxiety - will embolden white supremacy for decades, noting how quickly society returned to complacency after George Floyd's death. Despite this sobering assessment, he sees signs of progress in swifter justice for some cases, increased corporate accountability, and growing public awareness. He urges continued activism through multiple channels: voting at all levels of government, marching in peaceful protest, donating to civil rights organizations, and meticulously documenting instances of racism. He emphasizes that societal evolution is inevitable regardless of any single election's outcome, drawing parallels to other successful social movements throughout history.
America's Declaration of Independence initially condemned slavery as "piratical warfare" before Thomas Jefferson's draft was revised - a telling example of how America's founding documents contained both progressive aspirations and compromises with racism. Yet Jefferson's Constitutional preamble contained a powerful directive-to form "a more perfect union"-not perfect, but more perfect, a perpetual call to action. This careful wording suggests both the acknowledgment of imperfection and the moral imperative to improve. This is our challenge today: to continue the work of perfecting our union by confronting our history honestly, dismantling systemic barriers, and building a future where all Americans can truly breathe free, not just in theory but in daily lived experience.
Capítulo 9
Resources for Continuing the Journey
For those inspired to continue learning and engaging with these issues, Don provides an extensive collection of carefully curated resources spanning multiple formats and perspectives. His reading recommendations begin with James Baldwin's seminal works, particularly "The Fire Next Time" and "Notes of a Native Son," which offer foundational insights into the Black American experience. Isabel Wilkerson's "Caste" provides a groundbreaking analysis of how hidden hierarchies maintain inequality, while Ta-Nehisi Coates' "Between the World and Me" offers a contemporary examination of race in America. These texts are complemented by works from scholars like Michelle Alexander ("The New Jim Crow") and Ibram X. Kendi ("How to Be an Antiracist").
For those who prefer audio content, Don recommends his own podcast "Silence Is Not an Option," which features in-depth conversations with activists, artists, and thought leaders. Emmanuel Acho's "Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man" tackles difficult topics with clarity and compassion, while Jemele Hill's "Unbothered" provides incisive commentary on the intersection of sports, culture, and race. Additional podcast recommendations include "Code Switch" from NPR and "1619" from The New York Times.
Visual learners can benefit from Dave Chappelle's "The Age of Spin," which uses comedy to illuminate profound truths about racial dynamics. CNN's "Cuomo Prime Time" segments on race relations offer journalistic depth, while documentaries like "13th" and "I Am Not Your Negro" provide historical context and contemporary analysis. The series "When They See Us" and "Watchmen" demonstrate how creative storytelling can illuminate historical injustices.
For those ready to take action, Don highlights several organizations doing crucial work. All Voting Is Local fights voter suppression and promotes electoral access, while Black Lives Matter continues to advocate for systemic change. From Privilege to Progress provides resources for anti-racism education and advocacy. Additional organizations include the Equal Justice Initiative, Color of Change, and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, each offering unique opportunities for involvement and support.
The path forward requires all of us-regardless of race, politics, or background-to recognize our shared humanity and commit to the difficult work of healing our nation's deepest wounds. As Don concludes, we must design a new system with determination and purpose, replacing historical cruelty with intentional kindness and self-interest with community responsibility. This transformation demands not just passive hope but active, sustained commitment from every individual. Through education, engagement, and action, we can work together to create the more equitable America we envision, turning these resources into tools for real change.
