“And He said, ‘What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground. So now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.’” — Genesis 4:10-11, (New King James Version)
As we step into this year’s Black History Month, I find myself in a place of reflection and rage. I look around at the systems and structures in our society and ask myself, Why? Why are we still running away from the racial reckoning with the bloody history of violence upon which this nation was founded?
Black, Brown and Indigenous bodies have fertilized ground in every city, county and state across this nation. Their blood is the same color as the lines drawn on maps designed to subjugate and marginalize Black people who dared to demand their freedom (look up “redlining” in relation to housing). The legacies of genocide and slavery persist, and so long as we continue to refuse to reckon with the racialized violence of our past, we will never see a racially healed future.
Claims of colorblindness ring hollow. “Slavery has been abolished.” “We’re past the Jim Crow era.” “We won the fight for civil rights.” Wrong. According to the Exception Clause of the 13th Amendment, slavery is still a Constitutionally sound practice. One need look no further than the sprawling Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) that thrives on the free (or nearly free) labor of a mostly BIPOC prison population.
“Why can’t you people just let this go? Why can’t we just move on?”
Because the blood of my Black and Indigenous siblings still cries out from the ground. I feel and carry each body slain by State violence — in the form of police murders, life sentences and death sentences. The intergenerational trauma of racial terror and violence is infused in each cell of my body.
So, how do we simultaneously work to take reparative action for the interpersonal, communal and structural violence leveled against Black and Indigenous bodies and do so without inflicting intentional racialized violence against white people?
My mother is white. She did not choose to be born into a white body. She did not choose to be born into a legacy of oppressors. Of genocidaires and colonizers. I love her with each breath I draw, and she moves through the world overflowing with love, compassion, generosity and care. She also is not blind. She does not deny the pain of her children. She feels the fear in her body every time her children and grandchildren go out into a world that still sees them as a threat. That still seeks to destroy their lives because of their physical characteristics.
We can choose to stand in solidarity with those who have less than we do. We can choose to engage in mutual aid, and to learn the actual, factual history of this nation. We can choose to demand this government do more than pay lip service to its role in the ongoing subjugation of BIPOC peoples.
What brought me to this place of reflection and rage was the gift of being given the opportunity to contribute two chapters to my best friend, mentor, and spiritual father’s first memoir. I spent two chapters reflecting on how my father prepared me to be a warrior son who was born to protect myself and my family against white violence, and how God has enabled me to become a wounded healer through my journey of various traumas. Ephraim “E” Bennett is aiming to publish God’s Love Kept Me Fighting this summer. This is a man who grew up in and survived the height of the Civil Rights era. A Black man who literally fought his way out of poverty in Chicago. A former professional boxer, more than honorably discharged from the Army. A husband, father and business owner. And a prisoner.
As he, a living, breathing wealth of wisdom, prepares to step outside of this prison, it is my prayer that he is welcomed into a society that has sought to claim his life since his birth. Coming home as an elder Black Statesman in his 60s, it is my hope that his voice will be heard. We are in desperate need of racial healing in this state and in this nation. White people have run every system established on the bloody backs of his ancestors, and we are long overdue for a change. Regardless of race and position, we all have a role to play in facilitating this healing.
The Earth you stand upon is soaked in blood. To ignore the cries of history is to condemn us to a future of racial animus and ongoing racialized oppression. Please open your heart, eyes, ears and mind to the uncomfortable truths still awaiting acknowledgment.
Leo Hylton is a PhD student at George Mason University’s Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, currently incarcerated at Maine State Prison. His education and work are focused on Social Justice Advocacy and Activism, with a vision toward an abolitionist future. You can reach him at: Leo Hylton #70199, 807 Cushing Rd., Warren, ME 04864, or leoshininglightonhumanity@gmail.com.
