Blowing T.A.P.S. for Airman Fortson
To All People's Shame
Today, a funeral will be held to for Roger Fortson, a Black U.S. Air Force senior airman who was shot and killed in his Florida home by a sheriff’s deputy that had, allegedly, entered the wrong apartment. The service is scheduled to take place at the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest, Georgia. Airman Roger Fortson, a 23-year-old who served in overseas combat zones, was stationed at Hurlburt Field in the Florida Panhandle when he was murdered.
Today, another young Black Man in the United States will be “put to rest.” He wasn’t much more than a boy, really. Certainly, if you are my age, and a Black Man in the United States, you fully understand that you were not a “man” at 23 years old. You were either imagining what one was, or you had one to emulate (inasmuch as you might). There was a third option as well; you could do neither. I could see in his eyes he was a great young man.
Roger took his last breath exactly two weeks ago today.
I remember when I was notified of the home invasion killing. A fellow writer and mentor emailed me as I was in a rough edit on a piece that, ironically is entitled “Under Color of Law.” I responded with two words (words I almost never use) “good lord.” At that time, I had read the report, but I had not seen Airman Fortson’s photograph. Ultimately, I saw a picture of the slain young man in his dress blue uniform and said to my colleague “I just saw a picture of Airman Fortson in uniform. As I did, my entire body turned to ice, because I saw myself.”
The Blues
Airman Fortson and I did not resemble each other in any sense beyond that which would be pursuant to the physical characteristics assigned to gender or our ethnicities (plural). However, for reasons beyond my earthly comprehension I was drawn to his eyes. I took out a photograph of myself, in my dress blue uniform, as a cadet attending Southern California Military Academy. I then covered both photographs from the nose down and was astonished to see that the eyes are exactly the same. Identical to the point that I was quite shaken by it, and it was not just the unusual shape of my (our) eyes; it was the stare, the look in them. My blood still has yet to thaw.
I have never liked the blues and I’m no blueblood.
Airman Fortson got the blues. “Serving his country,” he got murdered on the very “soil” he vowed to protect, by the very vicious agents of the society that he was told were there to protect him. Hitler did not kill him. Osama did not kill him. Castro did not kill him. President Xi did not kill him. The Taliban did not kill him. Kim-Jong Un did not kill him. Covid did not kill him. Vladimir Putin did not fucking kill him.
Such excruciatingly magnificent irony.
Billy Bob killed him; just as he has done for four centuries and will continue to do so until he stops, and he will have to be incentivized to stop.
The Black Person in the United States’ Ground Hog Day has continued for so long it has become, quite literally, invisible. The entire drug induced population is so racialized, anesthetized, desensitized, immoralized, hypnotized and jeopardized that the institutionalized terrorism and devaluation of our lives is normalcy. As in normal. Even our own people have become anesthetized, at best and indifferent, at worst.
Except for those who have experienced it firsthand one way or another.
nor·mal [ˈnôrm(ə)l] adjective
conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected:
“it’s quite normal for puppies to bolt to their food.”
Puppies can be expected to do many things.
So, like Bill Murray, the same day, the same theme, the same events, the same shit and the same smell that accompanies it repeats itself in perpetuum for the Black Person in the United States. This is our special day, and we have them every day. We are special that way. Today we blow taps for my young son.
2100 hours, lights out.
To All People’s Shame.
All people in all places please read this all the time until it is not just understood - but known. There's a difference.
To All People's Shame, we continue to walk in place and are somehow still surprised to find ourselves arriving nowhere.
Sometimes I click the like tab against better judgement. The article,as always, is written well so I like it. And as always you bring to the surface powerful feelings.
Often I find myself depressed, and such is the case here. While I certainly don''t like the killing of airman Fortson, licking the like button makes me feel I am liking the killing and I wish there were ways to express gratitude for articles like this besides clicking like.
I defy anyone who can read this article without feeling the airman resembles them. It is not about physical resemblance that we MUST identify with this killing. It is as you say the environment of terror that persists in America society.
I become hopeless and, therefore depressed and angry, though, because everyone doesn't identify with the young airman.
I become angry because those that terrorize others don't understand that they have entered into devil's slavery that destroys them when they let themselves not feel the terror they are imposing in the name of the string puller's who are using them as puppets and destroying themselves just as much as they continue others.
How in the name of God ( a phrase I don't commonly use) do we cut the strings that lead people to not identify with Airman Fortson? How do we make people understand that when they become terrorists against black Americans, or anyone, they have become terrorized beyond their own identities---how do they understand they ARE airman Fortson, not some white bloke against some black bloke, but underneath they are the SAME bloke ensnared by the same chains,.
I continually feel defeated...why cannot white people ever understand how they are destroying themselves while strengthening the very ones they think they are being victorious over? Why don't they understand how they are being used to oppress themselves, that before they can hate another they have already come to hate themselves?
Shut up, Ken Taylor, you are a fool to believe there might be a slimmer of hope..