This whole business in the Derrick Chauvin trial about whether George Floyd said, while his life was being squeezed out of him, “I ate too many drugs” or “I ain’t do no drugs” represents a classic kind of cross-racial justification of injustice. First, whether the victim was using drugs is irrelevant. Are you telling me that the cops have no experience with people who use drugs and how to handle them? All they do is bust people over drugs! But my second point is really what concerns me, and actually what traumatized me during this particular portion of the trial and its coverage in the media: Somehow, because the white defense attorney and his client claim not to have understood — or willfully misunderstood — what the black victim was saying, then all callous action and inaction is right and reasonable. I actually wrote a limerick about something very similar back in February of 2017. In the moment, I entitled it “The White Man’s Dilemma.”
If you can grasp the vernacular, Some people will think you're oracular. But parsing Ebonics Is no more than phonics. It's hardly a feat that's spectacular.
I wrote this in response to a white inmate saying to me that it seemed a great feat that I could understand black inmates who didn’t speak “Standard English.” I’d say that my “genius” is non-existent; rather it’s only points out a contrast in how we listen. If you are predisposed to see black speech as a kind of incomprehensible gibberish, then you are more likely to kneel on someone’s neck for nine minutes and twenty-six seconds. If you are not surprised by or fearful of a black person speaking, then you hear what is being said. The latter leads to communication, diffuses tensions, obviates the need for blame, and makes for a potentially better world.