I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight (8 page)

Racism is a cancer that is unstoppable if left unchecked. Emmett Till is a messianic figure because his murderers were actually tried for murder, not that it was the first time white-on-black violence had reached the courthouses in Mississippi, even with the long-standing immunity accorded white lynchers in places like Money (fucking ponder
that
for a second: immunity, LONG-STANDING), but the brutality of the Till killing, Till's age, juxtaposed with the unbearably
tiny offense of flirting—fucking FLIRTING??!!!—brought so much publicity to the case that it triggered a wave of outrage across the nation.
Jet
magazine printed photographs of poor Emmett's body. Thousands attended his funeral. His mother insisted on an open casket, so that all could see what had been done to her baby.

The men charged with the murder, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, were declared not guilty, but in my world memory is a jail from which you can never escape, and they suffered, their cages not iron but the indelible blood and guilt, the bars and shackles from which you never will be set free.

So began the civil rights movement. Some months later, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus, claiming her right to exist, to be equal and free, just like any other American.

We have come some distance in the continuing struggle for racial balance. But any progress rates only as fair, average, a little better than okay. There are still lynchings. And while we don't use ropes anymore, there are more efficient ways of doing it. I'm not just talking about Rodney King, but we can start there. There is worse.

Amadou Diallo, just a few years ago, shot forty-four times by four policemen in New York City for merely holding his hands up in surrender. Wouldn't you say that's lynching? Lynching. I believe that is what happened to Kobe Bryant. It seems that William Kennedy Smith can be acquitted, exonerated, welcomed back into the fold. Arnold Schwarzenegger, accused of sexually molesting sixteen-plus women, and never brought to trial, is governor of California.

Vincent Chin, a twenty-seven-year-old Chinese American, out on
the town with his friends at his own bachelor party, was beaten to death by two white men. They were autoworkers, frustrated at being laid off, blaming the Japanese automobile boom. This was their chance of getting even. Who cares if Vincent Chin was an American? Who cares if Vincent Chin was not in the auto industry? Who cares if Vincent Chin was not Japanese? These men walked away with a paltry three-thousand-dollar fine. They never received a jail sentence. But they will pay, as they will never forget their own inhumanity when gripping the baseball bat that would crush Vincent's skull. They will never sleep easy again, hearing the sound of Vincent dying by their own hand. They will suffer for eternity, as God is just.

Matthew Shepard was the same as Emmett Till and Vincent Chin, the only difference being that Matthew was killed because he was gay, not because he was black or Asian. Little Matthew, hung up like a scarecrow, but also hung up like Christ, left in a Wyoming cornfield, dying as he looked up at the stars, wondering when God would come to get him.

Are you angry? I am. I'm angry, and I'm sad. I can only say that we don't have the luxury of our own privatized civil rights movements because the crimes—the ignorance, the rage, the hate against the who/what/why of some of us, is a much much larger foe. We cannot fight alone, since this battle will be lost without allies. Together, we are more than the sum of our parts. In union, in communion, in joining hands, we conquer all, because we have love on our side. Because we have God on our side. And, most important, because we have ourselves on our side.

hate crime trivial pursuit

A
s soon as you start to research historic cases that were clearly motivated by hatred, you realize what an obscenely deep subject you're dealing with. James Byrd Jr.'s horrible death by dragging behind a truck in Jasper, Texas, was one such crime I looked back on. It's a sad story, making me sick at the violence of it, the senselessness of it all. The man who was convicted of this murder, Lawrence Brewer, is having a hard time on death row because there are so many black people there who want to tear him limb from limb.

I would like to tear him limb from limb myself, frankly, because his crime is incredibly, unbelievably inhumane, and the punishment for it seems to merit the loss of my own humanity. Brewer was even renounced by the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who was living in the town right next to Jasper at the time of Byrd's murder. The
Klan
renounced him. You have to be pretty shitty if the fucking KLAN says they don't want to have anything to do with you.

Brewer maintains his innocence, which is certainly possible. However, he sports numerous tattoos celebrating Aryan power. He even has a large image of a black man hanging from a tree emblazoned on his arm. You can bet he doesn't ever go to the showers without a number of guards flanking him. I feel sorry for him, that hate should have consumed him so much that it isn't enough having an emblem of hate emblazoned permanently on his flesh, he had to act out that stupid
shit on his arm like it was the story of his life. Like it was fucking directions telling him what to do. What an asshole. And who the fuck would agree to do such a tattoo in the first place?

Tattooing is an ancient warrior art, with a kind of infernal beauty that few understand, and fewer take as seriously as they should. What self-respecting tattoo artist would say, "Oh, okay. Lynching. Gotcha!" Maybe I have no idea of the array of Aryan tattoos readily available. Maybe Brewer's tattoo of the hanging man is one you can point to on the wall, right next to
MOM
or the anchor or the playing cards. Man's ruin.

The fact is, our nation bringing slaves here from Africa was the biggest hate crime of all. Then, when the slaves were freed, there wasn't anywhere for them to go. Then came the reign of terror begun by the Ku Klux Klan that never really ended. And then there's the fact that none of this stuff is taught in American History, at least not in detail. It's skimmed over, to get from the Revolutionary War to landing on the moon as quickly as possible .

Then there are the laws against homosexuality. Then there's the Asian exclusion act. Then there's the internment of Japanese Americans. I'm not even going to talk about Guantánamo. And then there is the first American hate crime: taking this land from the Native Americans.

We can keep it up forever. Hate Crime Trivial Pursuit. There are more than enough hate crimes to play a decent round. I'd hoped to play it with Cornel West, bell hooks, Harvey Milk, Martin Luther King Jr. or even just a cool gang of ACLU lawyers.

I just want to love everyone. I don't care if that sounds stupid. I want to love everyone.

dear richard pryor

      
Dear Mr. Pryor,

      
We share the same birthday week. We get name-checked together on E!—it happens at the same time, along with Woody Allen and Walt Disney, but I like you the best. What can I say to thank you? How can you put laughter and salvation and the transcendental power to forget race, even for just a moment, the truth of the human condition made hilarious because of its fearlessness, the eternal power of your voice and the gratitude that I have for all you gave me and the world—in a box? Is there one big enough? I need a big-ass bow on it and shit. Not one you stick on, but actually get a ribbon and tie on, with your finger in it making the bow old-school correct.

      
How can this girl send you a gift that is worthy of my love for you? Because my love is big. There is nothing that I can think of in the material world valuable enough that would represent the size of this love. So here it is.

LOVE.

From, Margaret

      
I will hang on to the receipt in case you want to exchange it for something else. I don't know, you might prefer D. L. Hughley's love, or Gene Wilder's love. I am just leaving you some options. I wouldn't be offended in the least.

      
Mr. Pryor, I met you one time at this big benefit for some shit. The Hollywood players love the benefit even though we are not sure to whose benefit they be for, but they do benefit those that need publicity, so there we are. You took my hand and you looked me in the eye. We said nothing, and that moment was everything. Paul McCartney kissed me that night too, told me I was a pretty girl, and I was elated, but I forgot about him when I saw you. I remember running to get to you, and then I was before you, my knees shaking, and hands sweating, thinking of how if you hadn't done what you had done, the work you gave the world, the man you are—I wouldn't exist, not in the way I do now, not in the way I wanted to, needed to. I might not even have lived. Thank you for my life, along with all the other things I am trying to thank you for.

      
I saw your movies. The first one,
Live on the Sunset Strip
, changed my life, my destiny. It was the first time I realized who I was, and what I would be. I never really knew what I wanted to be when I grew up because I never saw anyone that made me want to grow up, and then there was you. You were telling your tales, making motherfuckers helpless with laughter in the aisles. Black people, white people, everyone, right at the time when we all had a hard time sitting together, we came to see you, because you were
beyond race, you disarmed us, we couldn't hang on to our guns because we were trying not to pee from laughing.

      
Historically, you were the bridge between the civil rights movement and the America that wanted finally to be itself. The stories you told were the ones that united the Black Panther and the "honky," the feminists and the pimps, the playas and the fools, the us and the them. There was no more race war/battle of the sexes when you took the stage, there was just you, sweating like Muhammad Ali, because you were a fighter, but also a lover too, as you stopped our fighting, and started us on the idea that we could love each other. Because we laughed at the same things, we realized we had a lot more in common with each other than we thought. I count you among the others that brought change to the world that so badly needed it, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Gloria Steinem, Rosa Parks—fuck it—Gandhi. You the man, Mr. Pryor. As important as any founding motherfucking father, any "Give me liberty or give me death" fool. You should have money with your face on it. It should be a big-ass bill, too. Like the $1,000,000,000,000 bill should have you on the front. Even that wouldn't be enough.

      
Thank you for the truth you told, the bravery that you had, the big balls and the brains to make the ways you almost took yourself out, killed yourself, fucking funny as fuck. How did you make the fact that you were dying from freebasing, even set yourself on fire, burning like a KKK cross running down the street—funny?!!!!!
The poet you are, the genius you are, the beauty you are—is worthy of shock and awe. You gave birth to the kind of comedy that is real, that is life, that loves the listener, loves the laugher, that has no bullshit, no front. You had the courage to be vulnerable, which nobody had, certainly not stand-up comics—maybe the dude that sang "If you're going to San Francisco/Be sure to wear flowers in your hair," whoever the fuck he was. He was vulnerable, but who gives a shit?

      
You were talking about the things that hurt you in life, your lovers, your past, your addictions that were taking you away from yourself, big Jim Brown who helped you and loved you and made us all wish we were Jim Brown because you held him in such high regard and you made his voice and character so full of heart and help, your monkey that the dog ate, and the dog that was sorry about it, who would stop chasing you for that day, just to mourn the loss with you, and we could laugh and cry with you. Mudbone, who broke the stereotypes that were so long held by white people about the black man, who was a character, not a caricature, who was a man, not a cartoon, who was not in blackface but a man with a black face. Mudbone was a genius and a player, a hustler and an honest man, a joker and a sentimental fool. You changed the way we viewed race. You changed the way we laughed. You changed the way America looked at Americans. You gave us new glasses. We could see ourselves as we actually were, just human and no different from each other, regardless of what color we were, who we loved, what we did, who we were, who we thought we were.

      
I owe a great debt to you, because I carry on what you did so beautifully, and I try to think, "What would Richard Pryor do?" Many comics follow in your footsteps, but you got the huge shoes to fill. I got some big feet, though, and I think I can do it. I am like a nasty Bigfoot Cinderella. Whenever I go on stage, I thank you, silently, in the dark velvet of the wings, because you gave me the blueprint of how to tell the truth and make it funny. You taught me to be a teacher, and I am there at school every day. Sometimes I get a shiny red apple on my desk. Humbly, my wish is to be the one who goes forth and continues your work. I want to carry your torch, and I will not set myself on fire. People who love you have said it. Seinfeld said to me once, "You are like Pryor at his best." It was a compliment I couldn't even get my head around. Who knew that this little, confused, sad, ugly, crazy, unwanted, unloved Korean American girl from the cloudy side of San Francisco could one day be compared to you? "I have a dream" are the only words that come to mind.

      
I am out of words. All that comes now is love and tears, and one last thank you.

      
Thank you.

the jeffersons

I
had a fight with a man once when he said, "What everybody said about you is right. You are a selfish bitch, and you deserve to die alone." And what was strange about it was, I took it as a compliment. I was somewhat proud of the fact that I was selfish. Because to some men, the definition of selfish is that you don't think about them all the time. Well, then I am proud to be one selfish bitch. Why not hold your big, selfish hat with ostrich feathers and black net veil hanging over your face up high? And I don't care if I die alone. I'll probably be so out of my head that I won't even know who's around, so why would it matter if anybody's there or not. I'll just assume "anybody" is Sherman Helmsley.