Three Black Men

Usually I’m annoyed when White people criticize Black men—

Black men arrested, jailed without bond, found guilty in the press before the trial is even scheduled,

loudly assumed guilty even after acquitted.

I think of all the criminal White men walking free

After they’ve been found out

Of crimes they’ve bragged about

And these commentators from major media to twitter trolls have nothing to say.

Or they make excuses.

Or they admonish us to wait, let the system work.

I get mad.

But this is different.

Something about this week left an unexpected aftertaste in my spirit, a vile taste, a foul stench.

Three Black men were in the news—Eric, Mark, and Sean

Standard Western names

No Yusefs or Antrons or Koreys.

Eric had been in the NYPD

He praised cops who shot Black men on city streets.

Turns out, he was just as corrupt as people had said.

Mark had been a preacher in NC

He praised MAGAs who’d burn the entire LGBT community at the stake.

Turns out, he was just as corrupt as people had thought.

But Sean was the worst. He

Was a musician who choreographed the degradation of black women and teen boys.

He drugged, raped, filmed. Allegedly.

He took pleasure in their pain. Reportedly.

He slapped, beat, kicked a black woman in a hotel hallway

with stark brutality,

with stunning impunity.

There’s video. Hotel video.

Somebody knew and said nothing.

Somebody knew and said nothing.

They said nothing.

This went on for years.

After the arrest, one black comedian took a moment of serious reflection and expressed the thought that

had left that unexpected taste in my soul.

He, and I, must wonder if these three were able to hurt so many for so long

Because their victims were black.

y kendall is a Stanford-educated musicologist who returned to the role of student to earn an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Columbia University, studying nonfiction writing with Ben Ratliff and Margo Jefferson. Kendall’s diverse works include poetry translations published in Alchemy: Journal of Translation, original poetry in the Bayou Review, creative nonfiction in Columbia Journal, and criticism in Music City Review. One of her short stories is a prizewinner in the soon-to-be-published Black Butterfly: Voices of the African Diaspora. Raised in Tennessee, Kendall now lives near Nashville, freelancing as a flutist and writer, while caregiving for elderly relatives and writing about that experience.