Eulogy

Danny Nguyen sat at the kitchen counter watching the evening news covering Reverend Emmanuel Jeffries moving eulogy for Dante Jordan. In a matter of days since he anonymously posted the video of Dante’s shooting, Danny’s video had already been viewed close to a million times. The news media had quickly latched onto the video as part of an ongoing discussion of police violence with pundits from around the country talking at each other with seemingly very little consensus other than the most basic lamentations of its tragic nature. The phrase “So sad!” was muttered more times then Danny could possibly imagine and yet there was little to no agreement amongst the punditry about any potential courses of action to reduce police violence against the black community.

Danny thought the eulogy was quite political and emotional. Reverend Jeffries’ anger seemed to leap from the television screen; it had the feel of a father lashing out at a world that just robbed him of a son. The people congregating at the Bethel A.M.E. church, where the eulogy and funeral services were taking place, echoed that same anger in both gesture and words. More sympathetic pundits agreed that such echoing was assuredly justified.

Danny felt a tinge of pride when Reverend Jeffries said, “God Bless the person who bore witness to this atrocity and had to presence of mind to record it and share it with the world.” At the time, Danny had been torn; he almost kept pedaling his bike past the scene and probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought. Honestly, he wasn’t quite sure what had compelled him to start recording the video; he could have easily just taken a few still pictures to share with his friends at school. But thinking back, Danny remembered the profound sense of civic duty that he felt after he had uploaded the video to social media.

Danny was momentarily tempted to come forward as the video’s recorder when the family of Dante Jordan had, on the news, expressed interest in thanking him. But, Danny had feared what his dad might have done to him if he found out. His dad, with all good but perhaps misguided intentions, tried to insulate Danny as much as possible from images of violence. Danny wasn’t allowed to play violent video games or watch violent movies but images of violence pervade every news broadcast. His dad might censor his access to images of fantasy violence but his dad couldn’t protect Danny from the very real violence that pervades the world. Even as a young teen, Danny was well aware that violence was a normal part of everyday life for many people and has been throughout history.

When he was recording the video, Danny didn’t know anything about Dante; he didn’t know who he was nor his story. Dante was just a nondescript black man; an object of interest, for sure, but, none-the-less, not a fully fleshed out Being. But from all the interviews with his family and friends, Danny felt that he had grown connected to Dante and his family. He felt responsible for maintaining the record of Dante’s final moments.

What really upset Danny, though, were the armchair talking heads on social media that keep attacking him, the messenger so to speak, and not the what actually happened in the video. As if Danny was to blame for all the riots. Some (mostly white) people were even calling for his arrest for inciting violence. Of all the people to blame for inciting the riots shouldn’t it be the police officer in the video. And as the Reverend Jeffries said in the eulogy, why should black people and people of color solely bear the heavy burden of nonviolence. Even when the pundits have the best intentions, it’s like they simply cannot comprehend, or sympathize with, the righteousness of black anger. Calling black protesters to be nonviolent or abstain from rioting is the same as saying that black anger is illegitimate, inhuman. It’s the same as saying that black people should just accept without question their oppression.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Brent Rhodes had been placed on administrative leave following the shooting of Dante Jordan. Though he’d rather be at work, Brent knew that he had to follow procedures and let the investigation into the shooting play itself out. The attorney for the police department had advised Brent to stay low and absolutely not reach out the Dante’s family nor the media while the investigation remained ongoing. And though if given the chance he would have liked to have been at the funeral service and eulogy, Brent resigned himself to watching it on television.

That wasn’t necessarily such a good idea, because, in his mind, Brent still thought of Dante as a suspect. But now knowing Dante’s life-story, his memory of the shooting started becoming muddled. Now when Brent recalled the shooting, he saw Dante as a hard working, fun-loving, good kid. He had a hard time separating the person that was Dante from the objective actions of both himself and Dante during the moments that led up to the shooting.

He could almost imagine what must have been going through Dante’s mind during that fateful encounter. He wondered what Dante had left unsaid to the ones he had loved. Had he said he loved them that day? Had they fought or argued? What had Dante left unfinished?

The worst part, for Brent, about sitting at home all day with nothing to do but watch television had to be the unending coverage of the shooting on every national news channel. At first, Brent was intrigued by what the commentators thought. But soon, he realized that the talking heads seemed less concerned with the facts and more with subjective reinterpretation of the events. They hadn’t been there and seen what he had seen.

Social media was even worse. His friends kept tagging him with articles, memes, and random posts about the shooting. He didn’t want any part of this ongoing online conflict between blue lives matter and black lives matter. And now he was either the poster-child or the villain depending on the poster’s agenda. And while the national news tried to throw into their coverage some of the facts about the shooting and tried to maintain some resemblance of objectivity, social media had virtual none on both accounts. To some he was being propped up as a tragic hero figure and to others he was an unredeemable monster-in-uniform.

In short order, he suspended all of his social media accounts but not before enterprising amateur sleuths had plastered his personal profile all over the internet. Not wanting to chance his accounts being hacked or worse, Brent decided to all but give up on the internet, except for email which he needed to stay in communication with loved ones and the police department. Though, he would later regret that decision when his email was broken into and his private communications were leaked for the all the world to dissect in minutia.

He only learned that his email had been hacked from watching CNN the morning after Dante Jordan’s eulogy. Shortly after the broadcast, he received a phone call from his supervisor warning him about the impending public relations disaster which would assuredly unfold. So even if the investigation found him to have acted in good faith, his reputation would forever be tarnished.

Brent felt cut off from the world and abandoned. What he wouldn’t do rewind time back to those precious seconds before the shooting! Had he had just given Dante the benefit of the doubt! But time only marches in one direction and some decisions are simply irreversible. By lunchtime, Brent was dreading the loneliness so he called the one person he knew wouldn’t judge him too harshly.

“Hi, mom”

“About time you called your mother. I was worried sick about you.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to bother you when you were on vacation.”

“Son, as soon as we heard about the vacation, we booked the next flight home.”

“Wait, you’re home?”

“Yep, I’m prepping shepherd’s pie for dinner. I figured you’d be over here. So I wanted to make sure you got a decent meal for a change. And besides, it’s your favorite.”

“You knew I was going to call you didn’t you?”

“Of course. Now, head over soon. Your dad went out and bought a case of beer. And he shouldn’t drink it all by himself.”

“Thanks mom.”

“Shower first though. I know you’ve been in a stupor and probably haven’t yet.”

“Okay. I love you.”

“I know you do son. I love you too.”

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — 

This was the part of the job that Reverend Emmanuel Jeffries hated the most. And eulogizing strangers was bad enough but eulogizing his godson was an entirely different beast. For days, he had agonized over writing the eulogy with each new word, new sentence and new paragraph reopening a wound in his heart that he thought would probably never close. He approached the dais of the Bethel A.M.E church with his head hung low. In all the years that he had worn the cloth, he had never cried so hard and so often before delivering a eulogy. He was more angry than he was sad.

As he reached the dais, Emmanuel dropped to his knees and prayed out loud.

“Oh Lord. Give me strength!”

The sight of Reverend Emmanuel Jeffries kneeling and praying with tears streaming down his face brought out the emotions in even the most hardened stoic in the church’s pews. Emmanuel stood up and shuffled the paper copy of the eulogy which had been awaiting him on the dais.

“I know it’s customary to begin eulogies with a prayer but first I wanted to let you know that I’ve agonized over writing this eulogy. This was beyond a doubt the most difficult eulogy that I have ever written. I struggled mightily to find the words that did justice to life of my godson, Dante Jordan. Let us pray!”

After the prayer, Emmanuel stood shuffling the written eulogy for a few moments before he became exasperated. Under his breath, he muttered, “It’s not good enough.”

“Oh Lord. Give me strength! I am but your humble servant. Speak through me. Let your words flow through me. Oh Lord, I beg you please!.”

Before he spoke again, Emmanuel took a few moments of deep contemplation to gather his thoughts and wipe away more than a few tears.

“The quiet genocide of the black man in America has claimed its latest victim, my beautiful godson, Dante Jordan. This quiet genocide, quiet in its obfuscation from the public’s mind and our national discourse, is the stain on our nation’s history. It has been ongoing since the very first African slaves arrived on our shores not too far from here at Old Point Comfort. Our community, Hampton, has been at its epicenter from the very beginning. Don’t get me wrong, it is a genocide even though it has morphed and taken many forms over the centuries. But the one constant that cannot be denied is the systematic state sponsored persecution of people with the color of my skin.

Dante Jordan, remember that name, was no different. Had he not been black, he would still be alive today. But because of the color of his skin, Dante was targeted by Officer Brent Rhodes. Dante Jordan fit the description of a person of interest seen fleeing an armed home invasion. Now the police would say otherwise; they’d say it was Dante’s car that matched the description. But if Dante had been a white man wearing a suit, he would probably still be alive today.

Of course, the police will say that his death was a tragic case of mistaken identity and need not happen. But that does not remove the very fact that Dante is no longer with us today. Today, Dante is in heaven. Make no mistake, Dante is in a much better place. Because the tragic reality of the black experience in today’s America makes any place seem more welcoming.

Dante Jordan had such a bright future. Though he was young, 19, he worked diligently in pursuit of his dream to follow in his father’s footsteps. As an apprentice welder, Dante looked forward to carry on the family tradition of building the very best ships for our nation’s Navy. This family tradition started by his great-grandfather during World War II bore witness to the creation of the mightiest naval vessels in history.

And while deserving of the utmost gratitude and appreciation, the efforts of Dante, and countless other black men and women in service to this country, has been rewarded only with racism, contempt, and indifference. And though we did elect a black man President of these United States, we are still invisible except in moments when the agents of the state are confronted with the unquestionable and unavoidable reality of our existence.

Dante was no different. Human and yet he was still the Other. Rather than being seen simply as a man, no different from any other man, he was a “black” man. He was a beautiful black man. No, I’m wrong. He was a beautiful man. Period.

He was a good, hard working man. He never once ran afoul of the law. When other black men, friends of his and school classmates, wound up behind bars, Dante would reassure his parents that he was different. He would say that he had too much to lose and too bright a future. And how bright that future was for Dante.

I remember that night in the hospital after his beautiful mother, Darlene, gave birth to Dante and I held this tiny fragile bundle in my arms. Mind you, my wife was still pregnant with our first child so holding a baby was very much a new experience. I was so afraid that I was going to drop him, so afraid that he would shatter on the floor like a porcelain doll. But at that moment, I had a profound realization. God blesses us with such fragile babies to remind us that life is precious as well as precarious. But God believes in our ability as parent and caretakers to look after and protect His little miracles. And He commands us to safeguard the future in the next generation.

But at some point, His little miracles inevitably grow up to where we stop seeing them as fragile and as needing our protection. And thus, we abandon the sacred oath each of us swear to God when we first lay our eyes upon the babes: to protect, to cherish, and to love. It’s one thing to continue loving your own child after he is grown, but how many of us continue to love, cherish, and protect the grown children of others. And without the clarity and empathy that love affords us, we forget that all human lives remain fragile and precarious. Without love, we forget the wondrous magnificence of the innocence embedded within the souls of all God’s children. It’s the one bit of each us that cannot be judged by man but by, only, the Almighty himself. But we forget this innocence and we judge others as being unworthy of our love.

If the first time Officer Brent Rhodes laid his eyes upon Dante Jordan and seen him only with love, would that have been Dante’s last moments? I cannot know what was going through Officer Rhodes’ mind in those moments but I suspect that Dante would still be with us today. And this thought compels me, against my better judgment, to hate Officer Rhodes for taking my beautiful godson. It feels me with an anger reserved only for the unloved. Because, how can I continue loving someone, a child of God, who does not love. And we know, it is only the unloved who do not love.

But herein lies our moral dilemma, we want to, we need to, hate Officer Rhodes for taking Dante from us. But we cannot. Because as the Loved, we must love Officer Rhodes. Love is the only path to salvation, the only path to change the unloved into the Loved. So we must bear the brunt of this heavy burden.

The unloved know of our burden and they try to use it against us at every opportunity. While the Loved are saddled with the burden of nonviolence, the unloved have no such qualms. Nonviolence is the burden of the Loved, because unloved hold us to that standard. Violence, the unloved say, is the manifestation of rage and the tool of the uncivilized barbarian. And because the Loved refuse to be labeled as such, nonviolence serves as the cross that the Loved must carry, because violence is not an act of love. Violence is, instead, the hateful act of the unloved.

But why must the Loved be the only ones that bear this burden? Mustn’t we hold the unloved to the same standard? The unloved say that their violence is legitimate. But violence in the service of the unloved is the tool by which the Loved are oppressed. And all forms of oppression, including the quiet genocide of black men and women, are marked by the violence of the unloved. Black people are told by the unloved that they cannot use violence because the violence of black people reaffirms their stereotypes of us. But by denying us violence as a tool to fight our oppression, the unloved have delegitimized our righteous anger. And in doing so, the unloved have robbed us of a fundamental aspect of our shared humanity. To the unloved, we are therefore seen as less than human. While at the same time, the possibility of our violence legitimizes the violent response of the unloved which perpetuates the oppression and genocide of the black man. We are the Other until we become burdensome and then we become expendable.

My beautiful godson, Dante Jordan, was shot by Officer Brent Rhodes because he was expendable in the collective eyes and minds of the unloved in America. But how must we as a community respond? The only way that we, as the Loved, should do so: we must carry our cross of nonviolence. For you see unbeknownst to the unloved, they have made a fatal error; the unloved confuse nonviolence with timidity and silence. You, the Loved, must show the unloved that nonviolence is neither timid nor silent. You, the Loved, must show the unloved that nonviolence is the most powerful and the loudest force on the planet, because nonviolence is love incarnate.

To all, here and wherever you are hearing my voice, I command the Loved, in the name of our Lord, to love the unloved of our world. And in the name of our Lord, I command the unloved hear my voice and know that from this moment on until my dying breath that I love you. You are not unloved. You are Loved. But the unloved will not head my words alone. I cannot show the unloved the love borne from my soul. I need the help of the Loved. I need your help.

In the name of our Lord, you, the Loved, must take to the streets and be heard. You, the Loved, must show the unloved the power of love. And we, the Loved, will show the unloved that love is more powerful than any weapon of violence that can be wielded against us. Because violence may conquer the bodies of Loved but love will always conquer the souls of the unloved. You, the Loved, must wield every weapon of love at your disposal. From this day forth, you, the Loved, must walk upon this good Earth with your hearts, souls, and arms open. Every act of violence visited upon you must be met in kind with a loving embrace.

In the memory of Dante Jordan, let us pray! Oh Lord, give us the strength to love the unloved. Oh Lord, give us the strength to love those who have wronged us and visited violence upon us. And in your name, Oh Lord, we pray that Dante Jordan’s death need not be in vain.

Amen!”