An Open Letter to Phen

Phen is 17 now and will start his last year of high school in two weeks. How on earth that happened since he was a lap child about six months ago is a mystery for the ages. As the adage goes, "The days are long, but the years are short." 

I wrote this letter to him after the verdict came back in the Trayvon Martin case, because he was angry and scared and talking about getting a gun. Sigh, 17. I couldn't pull my thoughts together without putting them on paper first--twas always thus--and he is used to getting notes and letters from me. So this was a letter to him, never intended for public consumption.  My friend Rémy believes it should be read by more than Phen, though he is the audience who matters most. But I have succumbed. The letter follows.

Dearest child o’mine,

During the Zimmerman trial, I often found my eyes drifting to two framed photos of you on the bookshelf. In one of them, you are about ten years old. You are asleep in my bed in your soccer jersey, clutching my old teddy bear. You are still wearing the green wristband that meant you had successfully swum the length of the swimming pool and were allowed to go down the big slide. Your top teeth have just come in and your face still has the soft curves of childhood.

Phen, age 10

In the other, taken a few months ago, you are tall and lean, your six-foot frame draped over a chair while you play on your phone. The baby curves have melted away, leaving the angular face of a young man: high, chiseled cheekbones, a strong jaw, clear dark eyes. You’re wearing a hoodie.

Phen, 17

You are 17 in that photo. You are Trayvon Martin’s age.

It is not possible to have observed this case without some measure of emotion, I think. What I want to talk with you about—what I hope this will spark as a series of conversations—is the specific elements in this case, and the bigger sociopolitical issue around it. You are angry. That in itself is rare; you are sometimes petulant, occasionally angst-ridden, but rarely angry. You are actually quite even-tempered. It’s not that I don’t want you to be angry; I want you to be angry about the right things, and to direct it in the right way.

First, the case. The hysteria surrounding it has obscured all nuance, and legal cases rest entirely on nuance. Remember that because of our federalist system, the legal system is different depending on what state you live in. We live in Texas, which means you can get the death penalty for crimes for which other states would only give you a life sentence. Similarly, Florida’s laws are unique unto Florida. Zimmerman claimed self-defense. In most states, someone who claims self-defense must prove that he was indeed under threat. This means the defendant would have to take the stand and the prosecution would have the chance to cross-examine him. In Florida, if a person claims self-defense, the burden is on the prosecution to prove that it was NOT self-defense. It has to prove a negative. The defendant does not have to take the stand. Those cases are virtually unwinnable, which is why the state generally declines to prosecute them.

You have heard the phrase “beyond a reasonable doubt.” That is what the prosecution must prove: that events happened in a particular way beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s a high bar, as it should be. Taking someone’s freedom is a grave thing, so we tilt the system in favor of the defendant: the right to counsel, not to incriminate himself, to have the state prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. It should be hard to convict someone. A liberal justice system rests on the presumption that it is a graver offense to convict an innocent man than to let a guilty one go free. The truth about this case is that there is a lot we don’t now. We don’t know who threw the first punch. We don’t know when Zimmerman pulled his gun. The only person who could have contradicted Zimmerman’s story is dead.

This decision was not the result of a racist jury. It’s not Medgar Evers’ trial replayed 50 years later. It was the illogically logical outcome of Florida’s laws and the way self-defense is defined there.

You may have noticed the prosecution didn’t talk about race. They made some opaque references to “profiling,” but race was not central. Most white people do not now how to talk about race. And we have the privilege of choosing not to if we so choose; we can choose not to think about it at all. When forced, our speech is labored and our tongue sticks to our mouths. Try not to hate us for this. We were taught very early that race was not to be spoken of, that it was far too volatile a topic to be broached. We do not have a vocabulary for it. It is one of our great failings.

Phen in his unfortunate cornrows period, circa 13. But SO CUTE, no?

A lot of people hoped the jury would ignore the law and follow their conscience. It sounds nice, but it’s a dangerous proposition. It’s called jury nullification, and it means the jury chooses to ignore the law. That might sound appealing in a case like this, but the face of jury nullification has far too often been the 1960s civil rights cases in which all the evidence was ignored because a white jury just didn’t believe it was right to convict a white person for killing a black person.

But the specifics of this case are not why you are angry and why I cried. That is a much broader, more complicated, more painful picture.

At its heart is the fact that the justice system has not worked well for black people. That black bodies have not been counted as worthy as white bodies. Our heavy history, particularly in this Southland I love so much and which is the only home you remember, infuses every aspect of our lives and, therefore, of this case. We are a land swimming in blood. It is our original sin. And I use that word intentionally: I want you to know, Phen, as the person who first carried you into a Sunday School room and who cried at your baptism, that our country’s racism is a grave, grave sin, one that should drive us to our knees. It is a sin against you. Don’t ever let anyone call it something less or cheapen it. Zimmerman’s racism—the thoughts and preconceptions that drove him to follow Trayvon, to pursue him, to confront him—was a sin. But so is the socialization that led him to believe that was true without questioning it or perhaps even being aware of it. In the South, we all have bloody hands.

Phen, left, age 6, with brother Cesar, 9.  I CAN'T EVEN.

First time at sleepaway camp. Yes, he labeled himself in the photo.

When you were about 12, the fine-boned features of your adult visage just starting to emerge from your baby face, I talked with you for the first time about growing up. This wasn’t the “your body is changing” speech or “you will start to feel strange new feelings for girls” speech. This was the talk about how you were reaching an age at which people would stop seeing you as a charming little boy and start seeing you as a menace. About how it didn’t matter that your hoodie said “Harvard” on it; they would see a young black man in baggy pants and a hooded sweatshirt and they would not see the young man who excelled at math and played a mean game of chess, whose intricate footwork on the football field was a byproduct of a childhood spent on soccer fields, who still watched cartoons and could deliver a killer line without cracking a smile. Certainly they wouldn’t see what I saw when I looked at you, all your earlier selves, like a Russian nesting doll: the tiny boy who brought his church craft projects to me, the child who wanted to be carried on my hip, who stomped on the sidewalk so his Buzz Lightyear shoes would light up; the first-grader with missing teeth, the sturdy fullback on the soccer team, the kid who slept every night curled up against my back, the 11-year-old sick with a fever who nevertheless leapt barefoot into the backyard when Boston got its first snow and then screamed at the unexpected cold. They wouldn’t see any of that. They would see a potential troublemaker. They would see a menace to society, not the extraordinary gift I know you are.

Phen, in Harvard hoodie on the Wellesley grounds, age 12.

Talking to you about that felt like stealing your innocence. You hadn’t had much experience with injustice at that point. You were in a high-performing school in which all of the students and most of the teachers were black. The white people you knew were friends of mine. Your world had been a pretty friendly, welcoming place.

But it would have been at best naïve and at worst negligent not to let you know that the world will see you differently, judge you differently, because you are black. I needed to be sure you were prepared. I wanted you to know how to deal with the police if you were ever approached by them: be courteous, don’t run, always keep your hands in view. These behaviors are second nature to you now.

What is so terrifying about this case is that it demonstrates that it’s not just the police I have to worry about anymore. Now it’s anyone who might think you look daunting and who might be carrying a concealed weapon—which is to say, anyone. Thirty years ago, Zimmerman would have been convicted simply because he was illegally carrying a weapon, and he would have gotten the stiffest possible sentence because that gun acted as an accelerant in a confrontation that ended in death. Concealed weapon laws didn’t exist. Lax gun laws and laws that encourage people to escalate rather than diffuse a confrontation ensure tragedies like this will happen.

This is worthy of your anger, Phen. This toxic combination produces lynching under another name. Was Zimmerman racist? Probably not in the KKK-sense, but in the sense that almost every white American is racist, of having absorbed on a cellular level the idea that black men are dangerous, I’m sure he was. That in itself is only part of the problem. The fact that he had a gun in his hand and could pursue and act on that impulse, one that he may not even have been consciously aware of himself, is the real problem. That is worth fighting, Phen. That is worth struggling and donating and VOTING (you can register on your 18^th birthday).

I don’t want you to hate Zimmerman because I don’t want you to give him the power to warp your character. You are an open, confident, trusting young man. You are trustworthy. You are honest. You give people the benefit of the doubt. You stick up for the underdog. Someone like Zimmerman can’t be allowed to make you less than you are.  In “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (which I know you’ve read, but you should read it often—like Les Miserables and Anna Karenina, you will see something new every time), King talks about watching racism warp his children’s sense of their own worth, damage their character as they learned to hate and distrust. I want to keep that poison away from you. I worry about keeping your body safe, but I worry about your spirit just as much.

My wild child

 With all that said, Phen, know that what I have always said still holds: there are no excuses. Things are not fair; you will encounter obstacles others will never know. It’s not an excuse. Rise up, work tirelessly, live passionately. Much of life is not in your hands, but who you are—you get to choose that.

As I watch you move with feline grace, notice how long and graceful your fingers are, how tall you’ve become, I’m reminded of the Maya Angelou line: “I am the hope and the dream of the slave.” You are indeed. You are also the hope and dream of parents who risked everything to try a new place in the hopes it would be better. And you are the answer to a prayer I wasn’t audacious or imaginative enough to pray when I was 24. You are so wildly, lavishly loved by so many people, and there are no excuses for not being your own marvelous self.

I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be.

Christmas Eve service