For Iggy ’80 and Floddy-G: Spontaneous Violence “Orgies” — Tyre Nichols and The Memphis Five
To The St. Ignatius College Prep Class of 1980 (and to Floddy-G, to answer your text question to me);
Exactly ten days ago, our class came together to host a webinar featuring Father Timothy Kesicki, the former recent past President of the Jesuit Conference of the United States and Canada and a current member of the Descendants Truth and Reconciliation Foundation, a non-profit organization charged with gathering and managing the $100 million of assets anticipated to be received from the Jesuits for their ownership and sale of the 272 slaves of African descent owned by Georgetown University. The webinar shared information on the whys and wherefores of Catholic Church slave ownership in America in general and the Jesuit Order in Maryland in particular. It also served notice to the Jesuit community that their delays in transferring funds to the Descendents organization were unacceptable, and that the expectation of completion was not only felt by the direct benefactors in the organization and other Black people, but by Jesuits parishioners of every stripe. The webinar was well attended, diverse (more than half of the attendees were non-Black), and feedback following it was uniformly positive and expectant of future positive action. Fr. Kesicki was engaging and passionate about his comment to true justice in this matter.
Then came Tyre Nichols and the Memphis 5.
“Tyre Nichols and the Memphis 5” ought to be a blues soul band, but instead, it is just “the blues.” For those of you just joining us, welcome to the Black American experience over the past 70 or so years — moments of euphoric progress and hope, followed by soul-crushing events that knock the wind out of those making journey with Black people and/or for them. In his address to the graduating class of 1964 at Howard University, President Lyndon B. Johnson, in his historic “To Fulfill These Rights” speech, described the differences of the Black Americans experiencing of poverty as “anguishing to observe.”
“Anguish” (defined as “severe mental or physical pain or suffering”) is the most perfect word I have come across to describe my emotions since watching the video of Mr. Nichols being beaten to death at a January 7th traffic stop in Memphis, Tennessee. And if you took time out of your busy lives to participate in that webinar, you no doubt are feeling some of that anguish as well.
All of us, regardless of ethnicity, or cultural identity, are visited by struggle. But just as all of us with living, ambulatory, and non-imprisoned in-laws we don’t like are occasionally with them, there are others who reside with them on a daily basis and are never far from their annoying, depressing, or infuriating presence. That is largely the experience of the Black man and woman in America — a seemingly inexorable, chronic, and fatiguing struggle, and if you felt that way this week, you felt “Black.” Its enough to make you want to drop out and walk away. More about “quitting the Struggle” later.
First though — what the hell happened? Why did they beat this man so bad for so long? Why didn’t somebody — ANYBODY- say “hole up, dog — chill, chill man! Cameras man, cameras! We killin’ this dude!” And how could a group of 100% Black men, some (if not all of them) COLLEGE EDUCATED, play a brotha like this? What got into them?
Obviously, what got into them was Satan. You can tell it was Satan not only because of what happened but because of how it made you feel. When Satan is directly involved, not only what happens is all bad, but it makes you feel terrible. Not only do you feel bad about the present event, but it tends to evaporate future hope and optimism. Satan does not leave you with a “well, we’ll try again next time” feeling. Satan comes comes from Hell, and Hell is hopeless. And that’s how what I saw made me feel — hopeless. But “hopeless” is a feeling, not a reality. And when I slept off the video and received my understanding of what really transpired, hopelessness faded.
What all of you have to understand is that you witnessed an SVO — a Spontaneous Violence Orgy. Don’t bother Googling it — you won’t find it. I just invented the term last night after I saw the video. I define a Spontaneous Violence Orgy as “ a sudden and capricious, passionate, boundary-less incident of sustained, maiming or deadly violence inflicted upon a person or group of people who are either defenseless or far less equipped to defend themselves than the perpetrators of that violence.” It is an “orgy” because the intoxicating “ecstasy” of seemingly limitless power mimics that of an intense sexual encounter where you are “gettin’ down” and “wearin’ it out.” This orgastic experience by a group of men (and it is almost always men) concludes, not with a “money shot” of reproductive fluid, but with blood, death, or both. It is sick and sickening. It is perverse and perverting. It is evil, but it is not new.
We have seen these events before, but heretofore had no unifying descriptor to understand them through. A list of some of them in the annals of history appear below:
Tyre Nichols and the Memphis 5
The Shooting of Amadou Diallo
The Rwandan Massacre
The Beating of Reginald Denny (LA Riots)
The Beating of Rodney King
The Philadelphia MOVE Headquarters Bombing
The My Lai Massacre
The Rape of Nanking
The Wounded Knee Massacre
The Tulsa Bombing
The Destruction of Rosewood, Florida
The Fort Pillow Massacre
What you must understand is that these were spiritual events. They were demonic, spontaneous conflagrations that can ignite at any moment where festering injustice, a culture of violence, and gross power imbalance co-exist. All that is needed is a spark. Racial hatred. A habit of police brutality. A seething desire for revenge and comeuppance. A wish to dominate a culture through forced genetic intervention. They are like meteorological “microbursts” of evil. You can laugh at me and say I watched the movie Constantine one too many times if you want, but, God forbid, if I ever find myself in one, I will not call out for my mother like George Floyd and Tyre Nichols did — I will out for Jesus and His angels. Those policemen should have been brought to the instant reality of Jesus Christ — that is the only Force I know of that could break the demonic trance they, and seemingly, their late arriving associates) were under. (James 4:7 — “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”)
So what then does the St. Ignatius College Prep Class of 1980 do now? What do you do, Floddy-G? Well, one thing we can do is just quit. We can quit working for justice, fairness, and the good. This back and forth thing may not be one’s cup of tea. And if you are White, and these five Black clowns made Derek Chauvin look like “a man of compassion” chillin’ on George Floyd’s neck, you’ve got to ask yourself if Black folks were just “born to lose.”
I think about the day Christ was born. A sweet little Jewish boy, bringing together family, shepherds, little drummer boys, and monarchs from around the world to celebrate his birth. What a glorious day! (Matthew 2:10,11)
But everything changed a mere five verses after that:
When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.” — Matthew 2:16–18
The numbers vary as to how many “Holy Innocents” were killed — some say as little as 7, others 20, still others say thousands. I say “too many.”
Back and forth good and evil go — back and forth. And yet the believers — the good, the devoted, the righteous, the serious, the undaunted, the hopeful, the ones craving transformative change — persist.
As for me, I will persist. I know that although those men are, if what was seen is to be believed, murderers who deserve maximal punishment for their crimes, I also know that they didn’t create the poverty and the culture of violence that has ensnared Memphis, Tennessee for so long. I know that they weren’t the men that ran my paternal great-grandparents Will Brown and Viola McCright Brown under cover of darkness in the wake of Ku Klux Klan violence of out of Jackson, Tennessee, a mere 88 miles from Memphis, and the state where the Klan was birthed. I know they weren’t the ones who shot Martin Luther King, Jr. in the neck at the Lorraine Hotel in that same, violent Memphis 55 years ago, and I know that they didn’t tell former Memphis Mayor E.H. Crump to hire most of their cops in the 60’s from the Ku Klux Klan like he did, to serve as the spiritual predecessors to these beastly-behaving Black law enforcement officers. And finally, I know they weren’t the ones who formed a police task force that is supposed to serve and protect a community, and name it “SCORPION!!” (Who wants “scorpions” brought INTO their community?)
The bottom line is this — if you are going to “be down” for justice, social change, Reparations, Jesuit Church redemption, liberation of White America from “the shackles of past shame and the fetters of future fear,” and ending the racial net worth gap — you’ve got to stay “down.” You can’t quit or faint at the first sign of struggle; that’s why they call it “struggle.”
I look forward to our next webinar. I hope all of you that were there will return and bring others. I love and appreciate you all.
Darryl