Law Journal for Social Justice at Arizona State University. “Emancipatory Education” by Rashaad Thomas

“Emancipatory Education”
Amendment XIII

Section 1.

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

During Arizona State University’s (“ASU”) Fall Semester 2014, I was enrolled in a course held at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law (“SDOCCL”). The first day of the semester, I took a free moment to tour the beautiful, yet unfamiliar building. During my tour, I noticed that there were only two other people who looked like me out of the large number of people present. The only two people were faces of color on a faculty profile photo poster.

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A Black Man’s Condition

I am no one different from any other systematically created Black man. But, I know that I existed before colonization. I am aware genetically I am conditioned and affected in many ways. Like many Black folks I experience chronic blood pressure. Now, that I have a wife and a child on the way I know its important to make a valiant effort in controlling the fear of dying young, much like my father who died from a result of chronic blood pressure at the age of 47 years old.

I am exploring a jog transition to meditative walk all while chanting, “Om Mani Padme Hum.” I remember in United States Air Force basic training we had to sing in cadence while marching double time. It helps to sync the rhythm and harmony of the vibrations of singing, marching, and breathing. I attempt a similar method to enable my body temperature and heart rate to rise in a healthy manner and then transition to a meditative walk to see if I am able to control my heart rate according to the pace of my steps. This morning a public service vehicle interrupted my practice with its giant colored ears on its roof pointing at me in the shadows. I have learned how to decipher the kind of car, Public Service Vehicle vs. POV, while it shares the same path with me according to the approach of the lights and the shadows collaboration with the streetlights.

I saw the service vehicle in the reflection of the darkness painted on the streets. Immediately, I thought to myself, “Dang it I am running. I need to slow down to a walk.” I turn and the vehicle follows me and suddenly a flash of bright lights hit me. I maintain a consistent pace not to alarm the public service vehicle with colored ears. The bright lights return to normal and it turns off into a driveway. I look back and into my peripheral slightly and I am relieved it is only a SUV with red stripes and not blue stripes painted on its sides and tape that reads, “Scottsdale Fire Department.” I continue my practice and return home. I can’t help but beat myself up for allowing fear and societal conditioning to reduce me to thanking a higher being for allowing me to return home alive.

#BlackLivesMatter

#BlackLivesMatter

As the unarmed Black 18 year-old, Mike Brown, who was fatally shot and killed by the now fugitive Officer Darren Wilson was laid to rest on August 25, 2014, the outside agitators, the media begin to trickle off into the body of America like a drip of a bad bag of coke. Immediately the media is replaced with the Black Consciousness of the Black Lives Matter Movement who traveled from all over the United States to congregate in St. Louis/ Ferguson MO to recall, revisit, return, and reclaim their voices. For weeks the media capitalized on the suffering of the Black body and twisted and turned their Black voices to subtly fit into the book of America’s Mythology. Black Lives Matter are rewriting history because they know the murder of Mike Brown is not a fading story for American Mythology’s storyteller to build White capital, but the true story of both pain and power that Black communities share in churches, homes, and schools everyday.

Similar to post Jim-Crow era’s segregationists’ Governor George Wallace and Eugene “Bull” Connor, post-racial society’s Governor Jay Nixon and Lt. Governor Peter Kinder lamented about the “outside agitators” who heard the call for a rebellion in honor of Black Lives similar to how Dr. Martin Luther King and Freedom Riders traveled from the North to protest Jim and Jane Crow illegitimate children, Racism and Segregation their lives down for the freedom of our country. Yes, this is our country. Together. James Baldwin once said, “I love America more than any other country in the world and exactly for this reason I insist on the right to criticize her.”